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How/why does water put fire out? | There's four things you need to have a fire - a fuel, an oxidiser , heat, and the ability for the chemical reaction to proceed. Take away any one of those, and you stop the fire. Water works in two ways. One, it takes away heat - water takes a large amount of heat to heat up and turn into steam, so putting water on som... |
Depiction of Speed of Oversized Characters in Media? | They seem to be moving slower because we're comparing them to how quickly they would move at their normal size. This is particularly noticeable in enlarged versions of characters and creatures that we are already familiar with, like Giants and enlarged Ant-Man as you say. When Ant-Man gets huge, as he moves his body, t... |
How do gills work and can we make artificial ones to breath underwater? | Either we'll end up like Kevin Costner from Waterworld, or get those underwater breathing devices from phantom menace |
Why do some holidays (like Xmas and New Years) have separate super hyped “eves” while other holidays don’t? | For new years it's obvious, because everyone wants to stay up past midnight on New year's eve for the countdown.As for the other holidays, I'd assume it might have to do with the fact that they are 'more important' globally as they are Christian holidays. Easter doesn't really have an eve but it's a multi-day celebrati... |
Why do scratching sensitive areas (bruises, scabs, scars) fire other nerves in other parts of your body away from the area? | Undergone NUSS procedure and now it's the same for me. Scratch left shoulder, sting on my back etc. It happens with random locations. Happens more frequently before i had my bars in my chest removed", 'If im in the shower and have water running on the top of my left foot, I will feel a nerve in my right ear and vice ve... |
Why is there so much trash in the ocean? Are transport ships that sloppy? Or where does it all come from? And why haven't we figured out a way to stop it? | It's hard for things to get out of the ocean. The wrapper you drop on the floor keeps flying around until rains and the water takes it into a stream or creek. The stream and creek flows into a river, taking all the rubbish with them. The rivers end up in the ocean, taking all the rubbish with them. So more or less: Onc... |
How come there is only one measurement of time? | Because it's based on astronomical events A day is the time it takes for Earth to complete a full spin around it's axis A month is the time it takes for the moon to complete a full spin around Earth A year is the time it takes for Earth to complete a full spin around the sun And there is a lunar calendar BTW |
Why do doctors wear white coats instead of something like black coats that would mask blood and fluids better? | don't know about medicine doctors, but lab/research people wear white iirc because we want to know if our coat has been contaminated. It's also resistant to corrosive substances to a certain extent. |
what's the use of salt and pepper to season everything ? | Also salt is basically just a mineral that kind of amplifies the flavor in whatever you are eating so it won't really change the flavor of whatever you are eating", 'A long time ago, there was a French King. He only liked his food unseasoned, so that he could add salt and pepper to his taste. Before this, spices were r... |
If a surface that reflects all wavelengths of incoming light appears white, then why does a mirror not simply look white? | White surfaces scatter the light they reflect so they reflect a more or less equal amount of all wavelengths everywhere. Mirrors don't do that and only reflect the light that hits it in one direction which is defined by the angle of attack. So you can see a clear image because from every point on the mirror you only ge... |
why do periods hurt so much? | The cramping pain is caused because the uterus is contracting and releasing it's muscles in order to help detach the uterine lining. The squeezing causes sections of muscle to have their blood supply cut off temporarily; this causes pain due to lack of oxygen, as well as general pain of cramp. |
With the popularity of high powered telescopes, can't moon landing deniers be easily proven wrong by seeing leftovers from the landings? | > Or am I underestimating how hard that would be to see You are underestimating how difficult they are to see. While we can take good pictures of far more distant objects, those objects are also far, far larger than the artifacts left on the moon by the landings. It is like asking why if we can see mountains from miles... |
why is the sound quality of a song so much better when it’s played during a movie vs just listening to the song regularly? | Movie theaters have a calibrated sound system making the audio quality decent compared to nearly all car sound systems or home speakers . Also, the song played during a movie scene is mostly shorter than the full song. When you also hear it for the first time in a theater while watching a new movie, it's going to natur... |
How does Alzheimer's disease work? | The etiology of Alzheimer's is unknown. Anyone who says otherwise is selling something. The outcomes are well known. That seems to be what you are asking about. Just google it. Or go to [_URL_4_]. Or if you really want info well beyond a 5 year old's understanding, try [_URL_0_]. Or just go to [_URL_5_]. They have a li... |
Feels like under the measured Temperature of the Weather | Temperature isn't as obvious as it seems. If it is 80° F, it can be an awful day or a pleasant day based on the humidity. If it is 0° C, it can be a chilly day you would need a sweater for, or a freezing day you need to cover any exposed skin based on the wind speed. Feels like temperatures use some kind of algorithm t... |
Why is space black? Aren't the stars emitting light? | Stars do emit light, but there's nothing in space for the light to bounce off of. The light bulbs in your house light up the rooms because the light hits the walls and objects in the room. Space doesn't have any walls or objects. |
Will eating a multivitamin everyday keep me relatively healthy, even if my diet is not that great? | Get enough sleep. Your brain purges waste products from your neurons when you're asleep, and you can't cut corners there. |
How do scientists determine the possible habitability of exoplanets? | Lawrence Krauss has a lecture on YouTube somewhere outlining how this sort of estimation is done, it's more covering the likely number of habitable planets overall than whether a particular planet is inhabited, and not quite ELI5 but definitely for the layman like me. I tried to find the video with no luck; it's defini... |
why do digital clocks, like the ones on your stove or car, always lose time and fall behind, but never gain time and speed up? What mechanism controls their “time-keeping”? | The clocks in my last 2 cars regularly gain time and by the time we do daylight savings swaps every 6 months, They've generally been 4-5 minutes ahead. |
How do babies/toddlers run on their knees like it's no problem but adults can't? | Pounds per square inch. 20 lbs spread over a couple square inch contact patches feels a lot different than 175 over similar area. The surface area of a kneecap touching the ground doesn't change much. They also tend to have baby fat padding. |
What does aftershave even do and how? I get the same results whether I use aftershave or not so what does it do? | At this point, aftershave is pretty much a throwback to the days when shaving left you with a bunch of small cuts on your face. If you don't have that problem and don't want to mess with aftershave, don't do it. Entirely your choice.It wont impact your shave itself as you put it on after. But it has alcohol in it so it... |
Why is it socially unacceptable to speak to/get to know random strangers? | I'm grew up in Cali. It wasn't a common thing to have random conversation with unknown people.My wife grew up in the south and talks to everyone. Married 23 years, now living in texas and I still find it an odd behavior. |
Why can baked goods with eggs or milk in the recipe sit at room temperature for days and not spoil? | To my knowledge there are a few reasons. First is that the bacteria that causes the eggs and milk to spoil are dead so they cant do anything. And the other is that they are dry or dry'er then they used to be |
Why does the Earth (and other planets) spin? | Can you throw a ball without spinning it to some degree or the other? That's essentially what's happening on a planetary scale. They all spin to some extent or the other, and have been doing so since the beginning when they were formed, or captured by the star. |
why shouldn’t you sleep when you have a concussion? | This is a myth that lasted a very long time. But the truth is, it's actually beneficial for the victim to get rest, including sleep, as part of the recovery process. The myth was that a person who had a concussion would just fall asleep into a coma or worse if they fell asleep. Some doctors do recommend still waking up... |
If space is constantly expanding, are we expanding too due to all of the empty space there is in atoms? | Yes, but at the scale of the subatomic, this expansion is miniscule and more than overcome by the subatomic forces. You can think of the expansion of space as cumulative. It is practically non existent over atomic scales, but increases at an ever-increasing rate as distance increases. It basically doubles as distance d... |
How do tsunamis work? Like when they say to run when “the water is receding,” what do they mean? | Think of the ocean like a big bowl of pho . The bowl itself is the shore line. As you sweep your spoon across the soup , you'll notice the noodles/beef/garnish pilling up as it hits the side of the bowl. This is what's happening to the tidal wave as it hits shallow waters and the shore itself. So as you notice when you... |
How come rings that fit on one hand tend not to fit on the same finger on your other hand? | Generally speaking for the same reason a women's left breast i slight larger than her right. Corresponding in men, their left testicle is usually larger.Because your corresponding fingers are not identical.Your dominant hand is a bit more puffy. |
why do ants falling from large heights (like even up to 5m) not die? | ants do not have very much mass, so when they are dropped they do not hit the ground with very much force. We know from newton's third law that every action must have an equal and opposite reaction; this means that the ground can only hit exert as much force on the ant as the ant does on it, and this is not enough to c... |
How is the universe expanding if there is no centre? | If you draw two points on a balloon then start blowing the balloon up, it doesn't matter where they are, they'll still get farther away from each other. It doesn't matter what you call the center because every point is getting farther away from every other point. |
The Universe is expanding constantly but what is it expanding into? | Our universe doesn't need to have a place where it can grow. Our universe is this place. Sound weird but there's no space 'outside' the universe. It's hard to imagine. Example with balloon and ant on its surface is not good enough cause growing balloon still need space to increase its volume. You need to think that the... |
Since the police can't hold someone for too long without charging them, can they keep calling the person back to the station? | Honestly, you don't even have to go talk to police if you don't want to. You can be detained for a reasonable amount of time while an investigation is occuring. Typically a few minutes in most situations. Officers need to be able to articulate why they held you. Talking to law enforcement is not mandatory. You do have ... |
How can restaurants have so many different dishes available and ready in such a small time, while not wasting much food? | Know how taco bell is all the same thing mixed up differently? Restaurants work the same way. One ingredient can find it's way in twelve different dishes, now you only need to know how much of each ingredient to get without running out or the food going bad. Specials are often made to use up ingredients that are moving... |
Why we can't remember the memories of when we were a baby | In my child development class we learned that you don't form substantial memories until your language skills are more fully developed, essentially allowing you to be able to describe said memory. That's why it's not until about the age of 3 that the earliest memories form. |
Why do homing missile explode even though it hasn't hit the target? | Because planes are fragile and poorly armored so fragments can take them out When the missile is approaching from behind its only seeing a small profile of the plane. You can try to hit the tube that's less than 4 meters wide with a missile less than a meter wide but it'll be hard. If you put a proximity fuse in with a... |
How do you go about getting an apartment when you don't have any credit? | Find a landlord who is doesn't strictly require a solid credit history, and/or one who is willing to accept a larger deposit for those with less than perfect credit histories. |
If nuclear submarine fuel lasts 20+ years, why can't we use this technology to power cities? | To add to what others have said, the fuel used in nuclear reactors is enriched uranium and while it does last a very long time, there isn't an unlimited supply of it. Naturally occurring uranium is rare and it's difficult to enrich, some estimates say we only have a few hundred year supply of it left. On top of that, o... |
- how does the porn industry make money? | I can't find which one, but there was a podcast, I think from NPR, that talked about the new porn industry. There are people that for a fee, will do anything one person is willing to pay for. It kept going back to a mysterious man that paid porn models to destroy rare stamps he sent them and mock him while they did it.... |
What does it mean when it says music is "Remastered"? | Mastering in music is where the different elements of the mix are brought together and balanced. Remastered means that they have redone this process. Usually it's with older analog recordings and they have taken out the hissing and popping that is sometimes present.Remastered also means baaaad. At least in some cases.P... |
What makes something “sticky”? | That's a complex and broad topic to get to eli5 level. Generally speaking, sticky things have some kind of force that causes them to stay together. It can be mechanical: like Legos and Velcro; it could be chemical: like a solvent making a plastic goopy; or even physical like a weld. Here's a great, but lengthy, article... |
Why does Accutane make people who take it, suicidal? | My personal theory is that people with severe acne are already inherently sensitive/depressed about having the disease. Unlike many diseases, acne is right there on your face, visible to everyone you interact with. Now regular light to moderate acne that most people get isn't that huge a deal, but severe Grade IV acne ... |
Why can't we recycle toxic/nuclear waste to make more power? | After it's used, the element is considered depleted, as it does not have as many fissile atoms. Fissile means they are able to be split, which generates power - the uranium still has these atoms, it's just a lot weaker as a power source. Current studies are looking into how to further enrich the depleted uranium, retur... |
How is it that games become poorly optimized? | Sometimes the code that goes in is not as streamlined or as efficient as it can be, now expand this to a project with thousands and thousands of lines of code that form many inefficient operations for a processor to handle. Now lets say the program is only single threaded so those inefficient tasks completely bog a sin... |
Why can’t we just clone extinct or highly endangered species to increase their populations? | Because cloning isn't sticking dna in a glass tube and waiting. You need target cells with intact dna. You need host ovum, which require an invasive process in a living being to acquire. You require a valid surrogate mother. You require the gestation and birth to go without complication. And even then, the clone might ... |
police, sheriffs, state troopers, highway patrol. What’s the difference and why aren’t they the same organisation? | In my state the sheriffs run the jail and handle civil stuff like evictions whereas the police catch criminals. The idea being that everything that's really ripe for abuse is handled by the sheriff who has to stand for election every few years whereas the police chief is appointed by the city. |
What are the main differences between the different ways of Christianity? | Catholics believe that the Bishop of Rome is the rightful spiritual leader of Christianity in a lineage stretching back to Saint Peter and ultimately Christ himself. The Roman Catholic Church is by far the largest branch, but the Eastern Catholic Churches believe mostly the same things, they just have somewhat differen... |
How much of an effect do daily vitamins have on someone? Is it ever noticeable? | If winter brings you down because of the lack of sunshine, on the west coast from Oregon north, take vitaimin D. Some dairy products are enriched with vitamin D, but the pills are cheap. I take 2000 i.u. every day all year, and I'm trying an increase to 3000 for the winter. It boosted my enthusiasm a great deal. |
How do electronics keep memory after you take all power sources away? | There are two types of memory: volatile and non volatile. The volatile memory is the one used for calculations, processing and all stuff that doesn't require storing the data. For example, when you view a photo from your phone, that photo is decoded into an easier to display format and loaded into the RAM , from where ... |
What do the defendants on To Catch a Predator actually get charged with? | Police can bust you for soliciting a minor for sex, even if there's no real minor. It's no different from them busting you for attempting to buy illegal drugs from them, even if they don't have any illegal drugs. |
Why is it so much easier to fall asleep on the couch unintentionally than to fall asleep in bed intentionally? | The real answer is selection bias. You're thinking of all the times you were exhausted and fell asleep on the couch, while ignoring the times that you fell asleep easily in bed or laid on the couch without falling asleep. |
Why didn’t Disney just renew the copyright for Steamboat Willie in 1976 and 1998? | IIRC it's because you had to renew the copyright every so often as you said, but at 50 years it entered the public domain regardless and you could no longer claim copyrights. The ability to renew it expired. So Disney just got them to change the law so they could continue to claim it. |
Are students who attend university abroad only to return home immediately after graduating beneficial to the country they go to school in, or detrimental? Why? | The help the university by exposing students to their country, both culturally and personally. If they go back to their home country, they're still known to their college friends. If you need someone to coordinate your invention's manufacture in some Dongguan factory, your first call will be to that kid from Hong Kong ... |
how a hydraulic press/arm works | Take a very high diameter piston and put it in a cylinder filled with fluid. Connect a hose to that going to a much smaller diameter cylinder/piston. Then either manually or with a motor, compress the big piston. Since the fluid doesn't want to compress much at all, that force is passed on to the little piston, but it ... |
How do companies like "Publisher's Clearing House" and the like make money off of there contests like "Win $5,000 a week for LIFE!"? | They make their money selling magazine subscriptions. The sweepstakes is great publicity. A lot of people open the envelope to enter the sweepstakes, and end up subscribing to magazines. Maybe they think it will improve their odds in the sweepstakes. Maybe they just decide they want that magazine, once they see the off... |
Why is the room in which one is developing photographs red in colour? | Probably has something to do with red being the lowest wavelength of light. Maybe it doesn't cause a reaction in the developing film. |
with today's technology and all we know, how are there still places with civilizations that are seemingly untouched by modern day civilization? | Also frankly its just a big freaking planet and even though theres 7.5 billion people there are still many areas we generally dont go. We are creatures of habit. We forge our paths to get from point a to point b and for the most part we stick to them. There is much of the amazon rainforest that is still largely unexplo... |
Why does our body “snap, crackle, & pop” as we age? Mainly noticed when standing up. | I was almost killed on my motorcycle earlier this year and my left knee snaps and pops all the time, and I'm only 25. I suspect it's because of damage or wearing down over time. |
How does ion and plasma propulsion work? | Basically you ionise a gas And then use an electric current to fling it out the back of your vehicle very fast. Due to Newton's third law every action has an equal and opposite reaction so the force applied to fling the ion will also be applied to your vehicle and thus accelerate it. It has the advantage of being very ... |
How do one start to code advanced programs? | I'm not sure this is a good question for ELI5 but once you learn a language you keep practicing and making your own stuff until you decide to attempt a game. Normally tic tac toe first then card games and then onto more advanced games. |
How does nuclear radiation kill you exactly? | The radiation can either directly kill cells, or mutate the DNA in the cells; if the damage is not repaired, it can result in cancer forming . Here's a good article about how the radiation affects each part of the body specifically: _URL_0_ |
How exactly does GPS work? | The satellites transmit a time signal and details of their own position. By comparing the times received from two satellites, the receiver can work out that it's X miles further away from satellite A than from satellite B . Combining the results from more satellites lets the receiver work out the one place where those ... |
Why would anyone do a cash advance if they have a credit card? | Cash Advance targets people with poor credit. You are correct the middle class and up don't use it. |
What advantages does the QWERTY key setup have over an alphabetical order setup that makes QWERTY the superior choice for North American keyboards? | In the days of real typewriters, it was the best layout for the individual letter striking arms that pressed the letter into the ribbon and onto the paper. The keyboard layout was a function of the mechanical need. Why they didn't rearrange the order of the striker arms instead, I'll never know. |
What’s the difference between the old tampons that caused toxic shock syndrome, and the new ones that don’t? | Tampons do not cause Toxic Shock Syndrome. Staphylococcus aureus is the culprit. Using any tampons increases the risk of developing TSS in susceptible individuals. During a large outbreak in 1979-80, women who'd developed TSS were found to be *more likely* to use super absorbant tampons, . Proctor and Gamble had come o... |
Why over the past 15 years, the typical CPU clock speed still remains around 2.8 to 3.2 GHz? | > What makes 3.0Ghz so perfect? It's not perfect, it's just hard to go past that. At those clockspeeds, you're getting to the point where fundamental limitations m/s can travel across a cm wide chip) matter. When you were going slow, Mhz speed, it didn't really matter, it was easy to just go faster You also start runni... |
How does supply-side economics work *when it is considered successful compared to alternatives*? | You're familiar with the basic law of supply and demand, right? Well, supply side economics says that taxes and regulation increase the cost of a product. So, if you remove those things then they will be cheaper and people will buy more. This increase in purchasing will cause more economic growth and help the whole eco... |
How does the tax cut benefit "1%" families over middle class families? | Here's what people mean when they say that the tax cut benefits the 1%. I'm going to make up some numbers to make the explanation simpler. The richest families pay a larger percentage of their income on taxes so when taxes are cut they tend to see the most benefit. Let's say that the tax cut reduces the government's re... |
What are actinides and lanthanides and what makes them special? | Actinides are radioactive and contain man made elements.some can be used in nuclear reactors to create energy. & #x200B; lanthanides have lots of niche uses, they're used as catalysts, magnets, superconductors and many other technical uses. |
Why do exterior doors of houses always open inwards? | Don't forget storm doors. Hard to put on a storm door when your main door opens outward. |
Why does the UK have peak and off-peak train tickets? | Probably to spread out the amount of people during peak hours. Those that can start later will take a later train to work and thus pay less. So it's to ease rush hour.Supply and demand, and an attempt to spread load over the day. Typically people want to travel during peak hours as these coincide with the start and end... |
why does the past tense of some verbs end in "ed" (reach/reached), while others do not (teach/taught; fight/fought)? Why not reach/raught? Or fight/fighted; teach/teached? | There's a great podcast that goes into this: [The History of English]. The individual episodes are relatively short, and are very accessible. |
Why does flushing the toilet regulate the temperature of the shower (as seen in movies) | Your shower water is a mixture of hot and cold water, with you setting the temperature you like by using the knobs to determine how much of the water is hot and how much is cold. Your hot water is generally stored in a tank. Cold water comes into the tank and then it's heated. Cold water, on the other hand, comes in co... |
Why do four-wheel drive trucks operate in rear-wheel drive instead of front-wheel drive when 4x4 is disengaged? | It's for traction. With 1000 lbs of rocks in your truck bed, the rear wheels have a lot more weight on them than the front wheels, same if you're towing anything. More weight = less slipping = driving up steeper hills.To really simplify this for you, the engine and transmission point towards the rear of the vehicle, so... |
Why does alcohol cause memory loss? | So humans have different types of memory. 3 of the main categories are short, intermediate, and long-term memory. Short-term lasts for a couple of seconds, and it's the memory you use to make immediate decisions about what's happening. Intermediate memory last a couple of hours, and it's how to keep context of what's h... |
What causes a PSU that blows up to also sometimes take other PC parts with it? | My friend had a novel one - the fan in his PSU broke, but the thing was a trooper and kept running without a wobble. Unfortunately it also got extremely hot - hot enough to warp the motherboard next to it, which promptly shorted across the metal case and killed both the cpu and ram as well as the board itself. Even tha... |
Why do gamers use two monitors? | TVs may be bigger, but the pixel density is a lot smaller than a computer monitor. Sure, the picture may be bigger, but 1080 really big pixels on a TV is still 1080 pixels. You don't get more visual information out of TVs. & #x200B; The game only plays on one of the screens, the other monitors have things like your ste... |
If the natural temperature of the human body is around 37 celsius, how come an outside temperature of 35 celsius *feels* like hot hell? Shouldn't it feel normal? | Because the human body is always generating heat and needs to get rid of that excess heat. If the surrounding area is the same temperature as your body, there is no heat transfer. Eventually your body temperature goes up and there is a difference, but not enough to transfer all that excess heat. So you feel you're sitt... |
Why is it so hard for antibiotics to stop bacterial sepsis? | Sepsis is caused by the body's response to infection and the chemicals released, which in sepsis is out of control, rather than directly due to the effects of the bacteria. Antibiotics can only kill bacteria, not block your body's reaction to it. If you give the right antibiotics early enough and manage to kill the bac... |
How exactly does DNA knows where and when to stop growing a body part? | Celss signal to each other to regulate growth. For example it could receieve a signal telling it to divide once in the presence of a certain growth factor. Once it's reached a certain length the concentration of this growth factor has either been diluted by the recurring divisions or is now too low due to the distance ... |
Why cant/dont spacecrafts re-enter our atmosphere slowly? | If you are talking about reducing speed to the point where you have virtually no orbital velocity and therefore fall straight down, in that case that requires a lot of fuel, something that would be really expensive to get into space in the first place. As for taking a very shallow angle of re-entry, you run the possibi... |
For patients that have metastatic cancer, how do oncologists determine what organ the cancer started in? | That's more a job for pathologists rather than oncology. When a tumor is taken out or biopsied, it will be processed, then cut to look at under a microscope. There are defining characteristics of different tumors that can be seen microscopically. There are also special stains that selectively stain different tissues in... |
Why can we see Ultima Thule which is only 21 miles across, but can't seem to find a giant missing 9th planet? | If we assume the 9th planet does exist, the answer becomes that we weren't looking for Ultima Thule when we found it. We just pointed the Hubble Telescope into the Kuiper belt and sent a probe to the first interesting thing we saw. When it comes to the search for a missing 9th planet, we are looking for something very ... |
why can’t a doctor take a new patient? | New patients require a more extensive background before you can treat them. That's something that the doctor schedules special appointments for, and apparently your doctor is popular and all those appointments are taken for a month. If you just drop in, without that background, the doctor can't treat you without guessi... |
why do online or open world games tend to more “buggy” than other genres of games? | Because there's more they need to create. When there's more to create, there's more that can go wrong. |
How do these images work? | First you have to understand how we perceive depth. Your brain processes the differences between the images seen by each of your eyes to determine how far away something something is . These images, when you're not shaking your head, create an optical illusion where your brain is confused, since it can't tell whether a... |
Why do dead batteries come back to life? | Mostly the same reason you can suck all the milkshake out with a straw, but then a few minutes later there's a tiny bit more, only with chemical reactions, not cream running down the sides of a cup |
How do filmmakers ethically make an infant cry/elicit negative emotional responses? | Just wait 20 minutes. The infant will cry. Infants don't have any effective means of communication, so crying is the default way of expressing almost any emotion besides glee. TLDR infants cry all the time |
Why does a tunnel of mirrored mirrors turn "green"? | It is possible to make a very colorless glass sheet. I don't have the link, but I remember seeing something related to telescope building using blocks of very clear glass. Remove the iron compounds and /or neutralize it to colorless ones. This is just notviable to do in comercial scale, and generally it's not necessary... |
Why is some abstract art like a Jackson Pollock is considered a masterpiece by experts, but to most people is just splashy paint on a sheet? | Because they look really nice and he stood out from other people. It still takes skill to coordinate colors that match together. It's also exciting when someone makes something difficult look easy. Sure many people think they can do it but they never actually try to. So they pat themselves on the back instead of actual... |
If things in orbit in space are moving extremely fast, how do they counter random space debris hitting things like the ISS? | One thing that helps is that most of the material in orbit is going in the same direction. It's only the relative speed that counts, so two objects in similar orbits won't collide with as much force as those in opposing orbits. It's easier to get to orbit if you launch in the same direction as the rotation of the Earth... |
Why can you only feel your pulse in specific places throughout your body even though you have veins and arteries all over? | Most of the large ones aren't close enough to the surface to feel the pressure. For reasons that are hopefully obvious, most of the critical large veins and arteries are well protected beneath layers of muscle and fat tissue. There are only a few places where blood flow is routed close to the surface to avoid joints. T... |
How can the same side of the moon always face earth? Doesn't it rotate? | You know when you pick up a kid by the arms and spin around really fast to swing them around you? They are always facing you. It's like that.The Moon rotates just like most other objects in space. However, the time it takes to rotate is exactly the same as it takes to go around the Earth. From our perspective, the same... |
Why are our eyes colored? | Depending on your genes the concentration of melanin in your eyes affects how light is scattered and reflected due to Tyndall scattering. Longer version, different colours have different densities of melanin . When light that has entered the eye is reflected back out it is scattered via the melanin present in the Strom... |
How do hashing and password security work? | I don't think you need to go into detail about how hashing works with your boss. Just tell him the possible repercussions of how they store passwords. For example, an employee of the credit reporting agency could potentially get your boss's password, then log in to the system as your boss, and do anything your boss can... |
If our cars are in park with parking brake on, how are tow truck drivers still able to take cars? | Putting a car in park doesn't make it impossible to move the car - it just locks a set of wheels. As others have pointed out, there are ways of unlocking the wheels, but if necessary a flat bed tow truck can drag a car with locked wheels onto the bed.I believe the brakes only work on one set of wheels. Lift that side o... |
Why we cant just launch all our garbage into space? | It's _really_ expensive per kilo to put something into space and get it to escape orbit. So financial considerations aside .. I guess there is nothing stopping us! Fire that trash into the sun! |
How did package tracking work before the internet? | You could always try calling the carrier that's delivering your package and hope they could find where the package was last scanned or sent out from. Other than that you just had to wait til it go to you, so yes in a sense you did have to wait around all day if you were expecting a package. |
When any type of electromagnetic radiation is absorbed by a surface, will it be converted into thermal energy and then released as infrared radiation? | This is true as long as this absorbed enery isn't going somewhere else, for example a solar water heater will emit less energy than it absorbs as it transfers some of it to the water through direct contact. Also as already stated the emitted radiation won't be only infrared, it covers the whole spectrum. The proportion... |
how do PC games work? | PCs do a lot to abstract programmers from the hardware. Consoles due this too actually. There are essentially middle men between you and the hardware that handle these issues for you. As a programmer of games you just need to think conceptually about hardware. How much total memory do you need? How fast are you going t... |
How come In the period of 24h, half the earth is always lit by the sunlight is true. when some regions of the earth get only six months nights and six months days? | The rotation of the earth is not directly perpendicular to the direction of the sun. imagine if the axis of rotation was up and down, like this: | now if the sun were to the side: ---- > 0 then as the earth rotates around | everywhere would get an equal amount of light, sure. But if the axis were 'horizontal' like this... |
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