query stringlengths 8 249 | answer stringlengths 45 7.8k |
|---|---|
What is happening when you wake up and can't move your neck without extreme pain? | To do stuff, your cells have to create energy. They do this through a chemical process that uses, among other things, oxygen. Your cells have a backup process that they can use when there isn't much oxygen available. This secondary process creates an acidic waste product. That waste product just kind of sits around and... |
Why does a hot shower feel less hot the longer you're in it? What causes this, and what is the limit? | Other comments have explained the nerve desensitization, but not the limit. Your body core temperature will continue to rise, until you become uncomfortable; nausea, headache, lightheadedness. That will usually make you get out o the heat, but if you didnt, you'd eventually pass out.Wait I thought that the hot water is... |
Why do our teeth only fall out and grow back once? | Our teeth are designed to last for our whole lifetime. In pre-modern days, when humans ate a hunter-gatherer diet, cavities were quite rare, and teeth lasted a whole lifetime until people died in their 70s or 80s. There's no need for a new row of teeth if the adult teeth are adequate for use until the rest of the body ... |
Why does California burst into flames every summer? | California's natural climate for the majority of the state is semi-arid brushland. Even the forests in the north evolved to have frequent fires as many of the trees, such as the giant redwoods require fire for their seed pods to open and the seeds to sprout. California spent decades trying to put out every small fire t... |
How does fish get to isolated pool or high up a waterfall? | A lot of times fish eggs are carried by birds, either through feces or they stick to a bird's feet or feathers in some way. It only takes a couple of baby fish hatching in a new place to jumpstart a population. |
Why is it against the law to make false statements to the FBI but not against the law to lie to other law enforcement agencies in the US? | Laws very by jurisdiction, you'd have to check each state and see if such a law exists. _URL_0_. Here's one example for the state of California. It's [illegal to lie to any federal investigator, not just the FBI.] There are a lot of different federal law and regulation enforcement agencies. _URL_1_ |
why do pennies exist? Considering that the cost of producing them surpasses their value, aren't we just wasting money? | They are a waste of money, but they continue to exist because of government inertia. It would require an act of Congress to get rid of pennies, and Congress isn't capable of doing much of anything these days besides cutting taxes for rich people, so it doesn't get done. It would also require some time and expense by bu... |
With the EPA allowing asbestos again, what exactly is it, what are those commercials saying, should I be scared, and if so what can I do to prevent harm? | Also, The different types of asbestos stay suspended in the air for different lengths of time. One of them is basically forever, because it's so small. |
how do fish "breathe"? | Fish swallow water through their mouth, it travels down their neck, reaches the gills, passes through the gills and escapes back into the water. As it passes through the gills, the oxygen is extracted. Note that fish don't use nostrils to breathe. They are there only for smelling things. |
Why do couriers in the USA leave package in front of the door? | The trade off between convenience and fear of theft often swings toward the convenience side. Package theft happens, but it's not so common as to make people all that afraid of it. Most people prefer to receive their stuff even when they aren't home or aren't available to answer the door, and will risk the small chance... |
How does touchscreen work? | There have been a few different ways it was implemented. The early versions relied on the force of pushing on the screen. It was two sheets with a gap between them. When you pushed down, it brought the screens together to tell the device that something was pushing down there. Capacitive touchscreens are the most widely... |
why can you eat egg yolk raw and not get sick but not egg whites? | You can't really. Both parts of the egg have about equal chance of making you ill if you consume them raw as the entirety of the egg has the potential to be contaminated with salmonella or other infectious agents. |
What’s the easiest way to understand rabies/brain inflammation? | Frothy mouth critter = bad Bit by frothy mouth critter = much more bad. See a doctor ASAP. Brain inflammation = bad. Your brain is enclosed in the skull and doesn't have much room to swell. Brain is important. |
Why do radio stations have to play the same 30 songs, day in and day out? | Radio programmer here. It's a great question that I hear frequently. It's a dilemma all radio programmers face. The problem is when you turn on a radio you want instant gratification with a song you like, but once you are turned into the station you want to be constantly rewarded with a variety of music. Both are direc... |
What does it mean that a company goes private or public. | For profit firms are always owned by someone. Most are privately held, meaning they are owned by individuals or small groups of people who manage them as they see fit. Firms can also go public, selling shares of ownership to anyone who wants to buy them. This can, for valuable firms, raise a ton of money for the firm a... |
Tesla is considering going private, and allowing shareholders to keep their shares if they do. How does this work, and what's the difference between staying public and going private? | A privately held company has private investors and only answer to those investors. A public held company has to release their financials and allow general public with voting shares to meddle in their company business. Even some homeless bum who owns 1 share has the right to the shareholder meetings. If you do private c... |
Why do humans' teeth rot and fall out if they aren't brushed, but animals' teeth can do okay without being brushed? | We eat a bad diet . We live a long time. These can contribute significantly to a decline in dental health. Animals can still have poor dental health even without tons of sugar or long lives. However, you don't see many animals with bad dental health, because they can't get dentures. Animals with bad dental health die. ... |
How does the government making new, harder bills to counterfeit help when counterfeiters can just counterfeit old bills that are still used in circulation regularly? | All money has an average life span. Paper money is much less durable than coins. As older money is less common were left with the newer, harder to counter fiet stuff. Now you say I'll just counterfeit old bills. And you could. But if you try to use a large amount of old bills, you'll raised red flags. You'll need to la... |
What is a video game "engine," (e.g. unreal engine) and what differentiates one from another? | It's the framework/development environment for video game design. A lot of gaming companies use the same engine across their franchises, modifying pieces of it or adapting their code to fit the engine. It's more economical for them in the long run and saves time recreating a universe.Generally engines include an assort... |
Why do printers use cyan instead of blue? | Pixels on a screen work with RGB because they emit light and as such can create the entire colour spectrum by changing the intensity of one single colour. This is sort of how a printer works except since it's printed the colours don't emit light but **reflect** light and to create a colour by reflecting you need the co... |
Why does a nap give me a lot of energy but a sleep that is shorter than 7.5 hours leaves me groggy for the whole day? | It doesn't matter whether it's a nap or a sleep, but whether you wake up during your REM cycle or after. Waking up during your REM cycle is what makes you so groggy. Depending on the length of sleep there are multiple REM cycles. |
Despite the fact that railroad crossings are built to compensate for added weight of trains, how do they have such a short life expectancy compared to road and other rail structures? | Potholes form when a small crack in the pavement is filled with water and then freezes. The frozen water expands, causing the crack to widen, allowing more water in, making a bigger crack next freeze. Concrete always cracks. Always. We put in crack control lines to make it crack where we want, but eventually someone's ... |
Why are window air conditioners generally noisy, while indoor cooling systems like central air so quiet? | Perspective. For 'Indoor' air cooling systems, most of the mechanism is located outside the house. If you stand next to one of those units when it kicks in, it's not very quiet. But, some the house is usually buttoned up pretty tight when the AC is running, you can hardly hear a thing. |
How do stock buybacks work? Does a stock holder have to sell if they don't want to? | If the majority of shareholders vote that shareholders are forced to sell, then individual shareholders don't have a choice |
Why does diesel occasionally cost more than gasoline? | Fuel prices in the UK at least are largely down to taxes, and for that reason you very rarely see more than a few pence movement in either direction, but fuel still suffers from market forces such as supply and demand as does any commodity. As has been said not all crude oil is created equally, like all fossil fuels it... |
Why do some cities not get certain restaurants? What's the decision-maker that decides what restaurant goes into a city? | Each restaurant has different criteria to determine where to build their restaurants. For example, The Cheesecake Factory requires that a certain percentage in the area have college degrees, and that the average income is at a certain level. Each chain has their own rules, like how many people live within a certain rad... |
if temperature is a measurement of how much motion particles have shouldn't a fan make it hoter instead of colder? | It actually does heat the room, but the motion of the air itself heats the room considerably less than the fan's motor heating up does, in most fans. The air passing over that motor then heats up the room even more. The reason you feel it getting colder is because the motion of the air over your skin causes the moistur... |
What is Occam’s Razor? | Generally, the simplest explanation is the most likely one. For example, let's say my neighbor's car isn't parked in her usual spot in the lot. She could have had her car stolen, she could have been kidnapped and put in the back of her car, aliens might have taken her car for study, she might have sold her car, she mig... |
are all animals equally important in the ecosystem? would an extinction of some species be totally irrelevant in the big picture? | We eliminated smallpox. The ecosystem is fine. We could greatly reduce malaria infections in certain areas by eliminating some species of mosquito. We've figured out that there's really nothing that depends on them. We could, for a pretty reasonable cost, make those species extinct, and we don't think there would be mu... |
How far does electricity go in water? And does it have a limit? | Yo ho ho! Yer not alone in askin', and kind strangers have explained: 1. [ELI5: Is there a limit to how far electricity can travel through water? ] ^1. [ELI5: How far does electricity goes in water? ] ^1. [If a power line fell into a lake, how close could I safely swim to it? ] ^1. [ELI5: If water can be a conductor fo... |
Why is seeing someone in pain funny? | Doesn't this qualify as an ELi5 with a flawed premise? Signed, Someone Who Is Not Even A Particularly Compassionate Person |
why do people choose to live in a HOA? | HOAs fees also make spending budget for maintenance that you don't have to do yourself. Want that big rotting 50ft tree taken down? Thats prob a $5k-10k job. Wouldn't it be nice if your neighborhood pitched in even though the tree is on your property? HOA How much is a lawn Care service contract? Wouldn't it be nice if... |
Why are US voting machines is so vulnerable? | Doesn't mean they are more vulnerable than any other electronic. They are just more desired targets, drawing in more hackers, more skill. Although there's the reasonable thought that these voting machines might be hard to keep up-to-date with current cybercrime and their methods. |
The mechanisms of voting in the US and the controversy about requiring government ID in order to vote | Your country probably has a mandatory national ID system, well-funded by the national government. Due to long-standing worries about being tracked by the government, the US does not. Instead, it uses state driver's licenses as IDs. These licenses require a fee and often involve a bunch of other hidden costs and hassles... |
Why does science show that we sleep better in a cold room, but during the day when are awake a cold room is used to keep people awake and alert? | I don't think it's low temperatures which help us sleep, it's a *fall* in temperature. If your home stayed the same low temperature all day and night, for instance, it wouldn't work. You are triggered to sleep by the temperature changing.There is actually a ton of study put into this and our comfort. ASHRAE is the orga... |
Why is it so many languages have some form of "mama" and "papa" as one of their words for mother and father? | Because those sounds are easy for young babies to say when they're just babbling and figuring out how to make sounds ", 'During the early stages of child development kids naturally repeat phonetic sounds during the babbling stage of speech development. So they say stuff like baba, papa, mama, etcBabies spontaneously ma... |
Why do adults as they age find it harder to sleep as compared to children who can sleep through just about anything? | Stress is a huge factor in sleep quality. Most children just don't experience the level of stress that adults do.Mortgage job and other aspects of adult life????I wonder if your meaning parents, instead of adults. Children can and often do, change how a parent sleeps. |
How are webs possibly strong enough to hold spiders? | Spider silk is actually, pound for pound, one of the strongest materials known to man. It has great tensile strength, and we've actually hybridized goats that can produce milk with spider silk in it, to make larger quantities of it.Read up about the square cube law. As an animal grows its supporting structure will get ... |
Why do we have a bunch of separate teeth instead of one big "tooth"? | Evolution. One of our thirty two teeth gets rotten and decayed, we remove it and there's thirty one left to chomp with no problem. Our one massive tooth gets rotten and falls out.. uh oh looks like no wooly mammoth for tea tonight. |
How do we know how many people have been living on earth during ancient times? | We'll never know for sure, most of the estimate are based on looking at village and city sizes, and our knowledge of how large a population different cultures at different stages of technology can support. For example a culture at the hunter/gather stage in a tropical forest might be able to gather more food and hunt m... |
Why don’t movie actors play their same roles in video games? | How many actors/actresses can you name? How many *voice* actors/actresses can you name? Now, how many of each can you put a face to? Chances are, unless you work in the industry or are kind of nerdy like me, you probably don't know that many voice actors/actresses by name. Hollywood personas are much more popular, run ... |
How Is It That A Pain Suppressant Like Ibuprofen Or Acetaminophen Don't have dependancy issues But Others Like Morphine-Derivatives do? | Opioids attack pain in 2 fronts, physical pain and the mental effects of pain. The mental part is the addictive part. It binds with dopamine receptors which causes pleasure. Turns out dopamine is one of the most addictive pleasure chemicals in the human body. It's the same chemical that causes gambling and alcohol addi... |
WTF is space force? | It's a political strategy disguised as a new branch of the military to deal with attacks and defence outside earth's atmosphere. |
Why is Malcolm X so celebrated? Wasn't he a racist? | Malcolm X was racist for most of his life, but toward the end when he rejected the Nation of Islam, he similarly rejected racism. Otherwise, to put it succinctly, he was one of the most prominent black intellectuals and activists during the Civil Rights Era. He spoke, wrote, and put himself in harm's way to promote the... |
Why does the United States keep borrowing money from other countries when it's so deep in debt? Why do other countries continue to provide loans? | There is a misconception that US is borrowing a shit tonne of money from other countries, the usual 'we owe a lot of money to China' when in fact the majority of US Federal Debt is held by Americans, the general public, US companies, banks and so on. Having said that, a lot of foreign countries do lend money to the US,... |
What is the difference between credit cards systems in U.S.A and Europe? | People seem to miss the biggest difference between US/UK, and continental Europe that I noticed . In the latter the default credit card you pay *all* the debt off in the next month. As in the former, the usual CC is a monthly minimum payment. Edit: US and UK is one category, the rest of Europe is the other. Edit^2 : If... |
Does Ginger Ale and Saltines really help an upset stomach? | Even if you're vomiting fairly regularly, simple sugars are easily absorbed and can still be digested, to some degree, which helps. |
how do are camera shots where one person is in the shot multiple times done? | There is actually a fairly easy way to make pictures like this with any digital camera and windows paint.. All you need to do is control the background. Use a tripod, and make sure the angle, lighting, and camera settings remain the same for each picture.With the background identical in each picture, you can cut any se... |
why does corn pop and expand into yummy cinema treats? | All grains pop with enough heat Rice, corn even wheat, ragi etc. I don't know why they pop but they do pop if heated. |
How does tap water come out cold? | Here's something you may find interesting. I don't have anything to add to the answers already given, since they were quite clear and quite correct, but here in Phoenix, Arizona the cold tap water doesn't come out cold. In fact, I haven't used the hot tap in the shower for approximately two months, yet I haven't taken ... |
why some websites still check your date of birth when all you have to do to get past it is click a year to make yourself over 18? | It's just to cover their asses from legal issues that might be lurking in the future. You are using their services by stating that you are of legal age so they are not liable to any action from authorities as burden of proof lies with you not the website. |
how are we able to observe and determine how big the universe is? | Mostly based on theories but best that we can do to figuring this out is by watching how galaxies separate and expand from each other. It's also theorized that at a certain point there will be a reversed big bang. In that the universe will stop expanding and will instead collapse into itself again where it will create ... |
Why do so many game devs tie physics and other calculations to frame rate? | It's the easiest way to get consistent physics on a platform where you expect a constant framerate. Game consoles are the most common example since they all have the exact same hardware. Variable frame rate means you either have to decouple the physics from the graphic frame update or write the physics engine to 'step ... |
Is glass actually transparent? Why can you see into well lit places through glass when they can’t see you? | Glass is mostly transparent but also a little reflective. A one-way mirror is just glass that less transparent and more reflective then ordinary glass. If you're standing on the dark side of the glass and another person is on the lit side, then on your side more light comes through the glass than is reflected . On the ... |
Things become slippery when wet, so why is water not used as a lubricant? | To add onto what u/Brocodaily said, another important property of a lubricant is that it must stay were it's needed and keep unwanted stuff out of a high friction area. Lubricants need to have the right about of ability to stick where they are applied and be the right viscosity while keeping dirt and contaminants out. ... |
Why can't necrosis kill tumors? | I suppose in theory you could, but we already have chemicals which could be used to kill tumors. Or the preferred method is to cut them out entirely. The problem with cancer isn't that tumors are some sort of immortal super-tissue that can't be killed, it is that they spread and set up shop in tissue we don't want to d... |
Why can gas prices be so different between two stations? | I own a few gas stations and can speak only to my market. Generally every store pays a different price, even my own, based on distance from the rack, brand, contract etc Some brands offer discounts to the store if there is a major player in your market like a Costco or your fuel contract can have a rebate on cents per ... |
Why isn that, when you prepay for gas, the final $0.25 goes so slow? | To ensure that you get only as much as you pay for. They COULD design it so it pumps full speed until the very last drop, but you could need fast reaction time to do this. It's easier to just slow it down and need less reacion time. It's same concept as stopping at a red light. You could go 60 MPH and stop on a dime ri... |
Why do US households have washing machine and dryer as two different appliances instead of a single appliance ? | I can't speak for your country, but I have seen about the same % of people with 1 or 2 piece sets in the US as outside It's not very common but they're definitely out there. Maybe your country is an oulier. To get the the heart of your question - it's just an individual preference. You don't really save any space with ... |
Euler's number and logarithms | A logarithm is an exponent. It represents the power to which a number much be raised by to equal some value. 10^3 = 1000, so log*_10_* 1000 = 3 In most cases a logarithm will not be a nice, round number: 10^2.09 ~= 123, so log*_10_* 123 ~= 2.09 Euler's number, e ~= 2.7218, is the base used for natural numbers. The func... |
Why does the brain create nightmares if they are disturbing and often unrealistic | The brain usually learns from experiences in real life, which results in us not being able to deal well with things we haven't seen before. There's a hypothesis called the 'threat simulation theory' which says that during dreaming, the brain generates scenarios to simulate threatening events. So by simulating things th... |
Why can you see reflections better off of darker surfaces if dark colors are supposed to absorb light? | Surfaces have a mix of specular and diffuse reflection of light. Only specular reflection produces a reflected image. Purely specular reflectors, like mirrors, have no colour of their own; they're neither light nor dark. But something like polished stone has plenty of specular reflection to form an image while at the s... |
Why aren't all leaves black? | Ideally, sure. That just isn't how chlorophyll works though. [Here] is a graph of where on the visible spectrum chlorophyll absorbs light best.Well look at it like this. The sun gives out white light because its all the colors combined, and with the green light being the most intense. Chlorophyll is green because it re... |
why is the drivers seat places on the left side of a vehicle in countries with right-hand drive (and on the right side in countries with left hand drive)? | You're closer to the center of the road and are positioned to see oncoming traffic and identify hazards better. |
If atoms and particles behave in probabilistic ways and our brains are made up of atoms and particles, how does free will exist? | We can say that we have consciousness because each of us are aware of our own actions in response to things that happen in the universe. The question is really whether those things happen randomly or not. We are merely NPCs inside God's video game. The game's AI is what we feel as consciousness. |
How is it that a photon doesn't experience time or distance, yet it (to my understanding) moves through both? | This is a common misconception. It comes from incorrectly extrapolating the effects of relativity onto a photon. In fact, relativity explicitly forbids having reference frames going at the speed of light, and it is this very condition that is the basis for the theory of relativity. It might seem like the problem at wha... |
When Ravens were used to send messages how did they know where to go? | Carrier pigeons, also called homing pigeons, will always fly to their roost. It's not like in game of thrones where you can send a bird to carry a message anywhere from anywhere else. It needs to be transported by other means to a location where it can then carry a message home with it. To use it again, it needs to be ... |
We get the internet from ISPs(Internet Service Providers). But how do they get it? (Or how does it work)? | Internet Protocol network participants essentially have a gateway address and an assigned address. When they want to send something to another computer on the network, they send the information to the gateway which then routes it to another network node that should know about the eventual destination, and so on, until ... |
Why do electrics showers always have bad thermostats? | I'm sorry, but I don't know what an electric shower is. A tankless electric water heater perhaps? |
How come, in the last few decade, people begin to be more and more depressed ? | There was always depression. It just used to look more like dad drinking away his entire paycheck or mom huffing laudanum all day just to numb herself. There isn't a difference in occurrence. There's a diagnosis now. It used to just be called the human condition. |
How can speed be relative while also having a speed limit and having that objects at different speeds act different? | I'm not a physicist or even well versed in these things, but ~~I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night~~ I did read a very good explanation for these quirks of speed, time, distance and the like. Time and space are **flexible**, not fixed constants. Gravity distorts space-time, as do relatavistic speeds . In sho... |
Why is there so much water on earth? Where did it all come from? | Water isn't particularly uncommon in the universe. The only thing relatively unusual about Earth is that a large portion of its water exists as a stable liquid at the surface. |
What exactly is an HRA and how can I use it to benefit me? | An HRA is a saving account that is funded by your employer using your pre-tax income. It can only be used for qualified expenses, which are medical expenses incurred by you, your spouse, or minor child. The important thing here is that it's pre-tax income. Let's say you have $1000 in medical bills and your net income t... |
How do bowl games work in college football? | Bowl used to simply be an exposition, usually the winner of a particular and a strong out of conference team, and had no real bearing on who was the champion. In fact, the NCAA didn't have an official national champion. Winning a bowl game did give you some bragging rights if you wanted to claim you were the best, but ... |
why does Canada import and export oil at the same time? | Canada is enormous, and has very different political climates in separate areas. Bitumin sands are mined and processed in Alberta, but Quebec won't let them build a pipeline to get it to the refineries on the East coast, where imported oil is generally shipped to to refine and serve the Eastern side's gas needs or at l... |
why is everything on boats round? (The interior and decor.) | Not sure what type of boat you're talking about, but usually it's so you don't injure yourself on a sharp corner if you get thrown around by choppy waters.Not *everything* is, depending on the boat. But for most boats with better decor, the simplest reason for it is safety. Boats go on water, and sometimes wind and sto... |
How can Chinese sellers on eBay afford to sell me an item for 89 cents with free shipping? Do they not pay to send the item? | Are they not often simply just scams too? I'd never trust buying anything from China on eBay. |
why the majority of cars are made to go faster than the higher speed limits? | Doesn't explain much, but Germany has roads without speed limits. This fact alone disproves the need to limit a car's speed. |
- What's the difference between GMT and UTC? | It is mostly a difference in nomenclature. UTC is the standard and GMT is the timezone. Timezones are based on UTC plus an offset. GMT is the timezone with an offset of zero. It is the same thing practically but in theory somebody might decided to change the GMT timezone without affecting UTC or all the other timezones... |
How do videogame companies copy-protect their games (physical discs)? | CD data should normally be written with a perfect spiral. But disc tend to deform a bit, so lasers are designed to bounce around a bit to track perfectly. If they could not do this, the slightest deformation of a CD would make it unplayable. When making a PS1 disc Sony intentionally wrote the first sectors with a bit o... |
Why do credit cards have a verification code? Why not just make them 3-4 figures longer and treat the last few digits as a verification code with the rest of the card number? | If someone managed to get your entire CC number, they'd be able to make all kinds of online purchases. With the current system, even if they knew your CC number, they wouldn't be able to make purchases without the CVV as well. It's like a very light form of 2 step verification. Also online vendors cannot save any data ... |
What are the physics involved in a crash of two identical cars moving with identical force towards each other? | They wouldn't receive the force of 60mph. They would receive a force similar to if they had crashed into a solid wall at 30mph. The impact energy is double what you would experience hitting a wall, but it is spread over two cars instead of, in the case of our sturdy wall, being spread over one. |
Why is it that sometimes even after sleeping for a decent amount of hours, i still wake up feeling exhausted? | As others have said, it depends on what part of your ~100 minute sleep cycle you wake up during. If you wake up at 7am at the end of a cycle you may feel great, where if you had stayed in bed for another 30-45 minutes you would wake up feeling awful. It is worth the effort to attempt to wake up at the end of a cycle. T... |
what makes general anesthesia safe? | Also follow the advice they give. They'll likely tell you not to eat for some period of time before the process. If they do that, listen to them. |
Why do photos of highschool kids prior to 1990 look much older than the kids today? | Sun screen, maybe you would wear that if you were going to Mexico and staying out in the sun all day, but not on a day to day basis. Much less money spend on beauty products/services. No one was getting their hair cut at luxury salons when I was in school, girls weren't getting their eyebrows done professionally in the... |
why does the body only produce vit D from the sun and not from another light sources like candles or lamps? | And it absolutely works with artificial sources of UV light. Light therapy is used to treat vitamin D deficiency in very northern places where sun isn't around for months at a time |
Why are video-game fan art commissions sold for money not affected by copyright issues? | Unless the fan artist has express permission, which is crazy rare, then they're in violation of copyright. Its up to the copyrights holder to spend money to file legal action against the fan artist. Most holders don't becauss they want to culture their fanbase. Disney does with a vengeance. |
What causes loading bars to get stuck or slow way down near completion? Is it that developers put the hardest things to load at the end of the progress so impatient users stick around? | The rate progress bars change depend on whether the programmer was able to put in progress reports in the thing that's being done. If what the program is doing happens small steps , they can add a line of code to update the progress bar, but if it's say calling a function that isn't in their program that takes a long t... |
What's a dirty hedge? | 'hedging' against an investment refers to taking on a contrary second investment, to offset the risk of the original one. So if an event will have either A or B outcomes, and you've invested heavily in assets that will do well if A happens, you might choose to also invest in some that will do well if B happens. You don... |
A lightbulb flickers 50/60 times per second, but we see it as being constantly on. How is it then possible for the human eye to see differences between 60 and 144Hz monitors? | A light bulb's filament stays hot enough to make it seem to be constant. But there is a bit of a wave. That's why light bulbs glow for about 3 seconds after turning off. EDIT : LED bulbs contain a circuit to convert AC to DC by using diodes so that electricity can only come out in one polarity. They also have a capacit... |
How does Adblock work, does it alter something in your browser? | Think of your computer as like a country and the internet is the rest of the world. Your browser is the border entry for the country. It's what allows the rest of the world into your country. Adblock is like a border guard that has been given a list of things that are not allowed in the country. Before the visitors can... |
How do they remaster old tv shows in HD? | If the master tracks are in bad quality, they're read with a computer and enhanced digitaly - > Digitaly Remastered. Masters from some anime series and movies of the 80s have been so incredible high quality, they could burn them directly to blueray without touching anything, in part since they've been produced for high... |
Why can our eyes only focus on one thing at a time? | Your retina covers a large part of the back of your eyeball, but there is only a limited zone of sharp vision where the cone cells are tightly packed, called the _fovea centralis_. This gives a limited area of high-resolution vision along with low resolution peripheral vision. As to why the eye is like this, I believe ... |
Why do older vehicles have a blue stripe across the top of the front windshield, but newer vehicles don't? | My 2015 car still has the blue stripe on top of the windshield, so I'd think it's dependant on the manufacturer.Did you know that some old cars from the thirties and forties used to have an external metal visor to help prevent glare from the sun, but it made it hard to see traffic lights at a stop. A way around that wa... |
Can defense lawyers ask a client if they're guilty before taking a case? | It's potentially a very bad idea because it severely limits their options. The ethical rules require [Candor Toward the Tribunal]. Notably, > A lawyer shall not knowingly: make a false statement of fact or law to a tribunal or fail to correct a false statement of material fact or law previously made to the tribunal by ... |
How are glitches/exploits/secrets found in video games, surely people don't spend hours and hours trying to find them with only a small chance there's actually something to find? | Speed runners call it mapping I think. They basically try to break the game to expedite finishing it they find bugs and exploit them. You should see the [Skyrim speedruns on youtube], they actually hold annual events for this, fastest I think I saw was under 50min. So that's one way. |
Can someone explains what happens to meteors and meterorites? | You basically got it right, most small ones burn up and become dust in the atmosphere, some of which does aerosolize. I always recommend _URL_0_ if you want to see how PM2.5 spreads out across the planet. The larger ones that actually make it to the ground are mostly recovered in this day and age, they don't dig themse... |
why don’t people’s yards sink as the grass grows? (Or DO they?) | You know how can load your fireplace full of wood, and later take out only a handful of ash? The ash is mostly potassium and calcium and other trace elements. Those are the only things a plant take from the soil. The rest is made up of thin air. Plants take the carbon out of carbon dioxide, and combines it with water, ... |
Why do one-hit wonder music artists have one song that becomes wildly popular while the artist's other songs go unheard of by most people? | Let's look at Chumbawamba. They were an Australian anarchist punk band who decided to write a hit song. So they did. Then they became famous for this one song and the average person didn't care about their music. Basically it happens when a talented artist gets lucky. |
How does an ice cream maker work? | Ice cream is frozen custard . However it's frozen in a special way. It's churned or starred constantly while it freezes. This process creates lots of tiny bubbles for the special texture of ice cream. To do that you need a way to constantly stir ice cream, and freeze it very quickly. Home ice cream makers usually have ... |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.