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Why are butts attractive? | It can be a sign of fertility, good health, and back when humans were hunter gatherers, it was usually a sign of a person's ability to run as humans can run the longest times out of mammal which is why theirs a form of hunting in which humans chase down prey until they literally die of exhaustion |
How do regular building crews on big infrastructure projects and buildings know what to build where, and how do they get everything so accurate when it all begins as a pile of dirt and rocks? | An Architect or Civil Engineer will make plans showing where the building or road will go. And what it will look like. They will include on the plans both surface items and any underground utilities that need built. Surveyors will take those plans and use their tools to mark the ground where, or near to where the featu... |
Why are ceiling's spackled or whatever it's called. Why aren't they just flat like walls? | It's mostly about labor costs and appearance. It's not all that easy from a modern craftsmanship standpoint to get flat, smooth ceilings that hide the seams in the drywall. In old houses that haven't been renovated you'll often see smooth ceilings. As I understand it, this is because they were plaster and the plasterer... |
what prevents someone from ordering/printing new checks with my details, sign it, and withdraw funds? | Nothing other than the law. It's called check cloning, and unlike using a debit card, you're not legally entitled to reimbursement. If you don't trust someone, do not give them a check. Go to the bank and get a money order instead |
Why does my mouth love cold beverages but my skin hates cold water? | Apart form everything else that's been mentioned.when we are dehydrated , we drink water and we feel like our thirst has been quenched. but this is not because that the instant the water goes through our mouths, does the body get hydrated again. What happens is the temperature felt in the mouth by nerve endings, get ro... |
Is there a proven limit to computation power? | **Yes.** [Bremermann's limit] says that you can only do so much computation in a system of a given mass in a given amount of time. If you like, you can extend this to a bound on volume, because the universe has a maximum density — the density of a black hole. So in principle, you can take the size of the observable uni... |
Why all the hubbub about Hurricane Sandy when all the weather sites say its not going to be more than a category 1 hurricane? | 1. It is hitting an area that does not get a lot of hurricanes2. It will hit areas like NYC which are very vulnerable to storm surge at the worst possible time with storm surge, causing massive flooding3. It will then combine with a nasty cold front and the jet stream, which will turn it from a nasty hurricane to a nas... |
since perpetual motion is not possible, does having extra electronics in your vehicle make it less economical? | 1 horsepower = 700 watts of power. phone = 20 watts screens = 40 watts subs and amp = what are they rated at, 200 watts? The sound system is the only thing that may make a difference that's noticeable, but you'll only see it if you reset your trip mileage counter to 0 when you fill up the gas tank, and then look at how... |
Why would anyone get a credit card with an annual fee when so many cards have no annual fee? | I pay $450 a year for my AmEx Platinum card. I like the benefits and to me, it's worth the fees. Follow r/churning and you'll see that there are annual fees you will want to pay for cards you want. 4/14 of my cards have annual fees.Cards with fees tend to have perks. I travel for work, and rack up tens of thousands of ... |
how do surgeons keep your eye from moving during eye surgery? | So during cataract surgery most people are given just numbing eye drops to prevent pain but nothing is actually given to prevent you from looking around. However, one can't see much while the strong light of the microscope is shining during surgery, so most people are able to to stay still for the short period without ... |
When I see a spark of electricity, what am I seeing? Is it the air boiling? | To clarify a bit: yes, you're seeing plasma. What's happening is that when there's enough buildup of charge to overcome the insulative properties of air, all of a sudden a huge rush of electrons surges through the cloud of air molecules. It does this so hard it basically rips a bunch of other electrons off of those air... |
Where did some of the more common anime tropes, such as naming attacks or having blood shoot out of a person's nose to show arousal, originate and how did they develop over time? | Thank you guys for taking such an interest in this topic! I wasn't sure I'd get any answers but I have to say I definitely feel like I've learned a lot about the culture of our world. |
If I go to bed at 2:00am and wake up at 6:00am, I feel great! If I go to bed at 11:00pm and wake up at 6:00am, I feel awful. Why? | Sleep momentum is a thing, the more you sleep the more tired you will feel in the morning. Humans have also been know to naturally switch to a biphasic sleep schedule when they are under conditions where they don't see the light of day for a while.I’m certainly not an expert on the topic, but I’ve done a lot to regulat... |
Why has college tuition outpaced inflation by such an exorbitant rate? | Inflation is actually a bad barometer to base your other price increases on. And the major issue in going to college for many isn't the tuition it's the books. They've gone up over 500% in the past 20 years. Don't get me wrong. College isn't cheap. But if you find a decent in state school it can be affordable. |
Why is drinking distilled water good or bad for you? | It's definitely not bad for you. Water is water. It's just not as good as tap water because that has stuff like fluoride. |
why are some people multi-sneezers (3-8 times) and some people only sneeze once? | I, and my dad and his father before him, are multi-sneezers. I can provide you a description of the sensation of the multiple sneezes and a conjecture as to why this occurs. The sneeze comes and 'achoo' the urge to sneeze goes away. Except for me the urge stays. It is as if the act of sneezing does not expel the sensat... |
Why aren't women required to sign up for Selective Service in the US? | I've always thought it was in case we lost most of our soldiers in a particularly awful war, we'd still have healthy women of childbearing age to keep the nation going |
How did Isis gain so much momentum and how did it sweep so abruptly through Iraq? | To help answer the second part of your question consider these two pictures. _URL_1_ _URL_0_ IS is a Sunni group so when they invaded Iraq the Sunni members of the Iraqi army would rather surrender than help the Shia Iraqi government fight Sunni Muslims. Likewise the Shia members of the Iraqi army weren't willing to de... |
Dollar is up, Gold is down but goods are still getting more expensive? | A stronger dollar does mean cheaper *imported* goods. Say a Volkswagen Golf is €20,000 and $1 = €1; the cost before shipping and taxes of the car would be $20,000. If the dollar goes up, it means that americans could now buy that same car cheaper: it could be that now $1 = €1.2, and you could now buy the car for $16,66... |
If you take a multivitamin when you've already had your daily recommended amount of one or more vitamins or minerals, does your body get rid of the excess or can this hurt you? | One time when I was young I ate a whole bottle of vitamin C and my mom called poison control and they said I'd be fine. I just peed bright orange for a week. |
Why are some words in English considered "rude" or "obscene" but their synonyms are not? | coarse" things to talk about. Still back 200 years ago, scientists and doctors used big, 50-cent euphemisms such as "sexual intercourse" or "excretion" to discuss fucking and shitting in medical journals and the like. Not because they expected women and children to read their papers at the dinner table, but for the sam... |
How does an electricity company know how much electricity you use? | The old-fashioned kind of electric meter with all the little clock dials: There are certain classes of motors whose rate of rotation is proportional to the voltage that's fed into them. Load and other considerations have very little effect. So the main power line into your house passes through the electric meter. The m... |
Why is 2,147,483,647 the highest 32-bit integer? Why so specific? | Because that's the decimal representation of the binary number 1111111111111111111111111111111. That's 31 1's. The final, 32nd digit is used to indicate negative numbers. |
How does Obamacare work and how will it affect me personally? | On the whole, what I'm interested in from Obamacare is the fact that insurance companies must spend 80% of what they take in from the people to treat patients and earn only 20%. If they have more than 20%, it comes back to the people as a rebate. This is great initial step to changing healthcare because you change the ... |
is there a reason why cable TV hasn't won out over satellite? | Satellite is easier for the end-user to install and use; point and it works. IIRC it's also easier for the TV producers to transmit. Burying kilometers of cable is expensive and sat gives you instand coverage over a large area for less cost. Like the Internet satellite is an old technology, but it is relatively cheap a... |
How can speed be relative but still have a maximum? (the speed of light) | I'm just gonna recommend this game here: _URL_0_ It allows you to play in a world where speed of light, instead of being 300,000 kilometers per second, is something more akin to 10 meters per second, or even slower than that. World starts looking wonky. |
what happens to people in Colorado who were already convicted of marijuana - related offenses? | Several counties here dropped all the cases on the books when the vote passed , some of the more conservative counties did not. So it was a mixed bag. |
Voyager 1 was launched in 1977 and is almost 12,000,000,000 miles away from Earth, yet we still receive data transmissions from it. HOW? | There are many techniques for communicating in a noisy environment. Understanding them fully requires knowing information theory and engineering, but there are good ELI5 analogies with the problem of talking with somebody in a very loud place. One easy technique is to talk very loud. The louder you talk, the better the... |
How we can cool things down to close to absolute zero. | It's all a matter of time. If you leave something in the freezer long enough, it'll keep cooling down. |
What is the purpose of a private drive? | Usually a private drive isn't owned or maintained by the city. Instead the people who use it pay for it. |
Why does my poop smell fine to me, but it smells terrible to other people? | I read once that the reason someone else's poo smells so badly is that it's because you would know that it is 'unsafe' eg not to eat it.It's basically a way of your brain to tell you that it is 'unsafe', some sort of warning.The reason that your own poo doens't smell so bad to you is because you know that it is in fact... |
Why do banks not allow more than a 4 digit PIN ? | Over here, it can be between 4-6 digits. You're crazy not to opt for a 6 digit pin.Because it's two-factor authentication. You might be able to guess the right PIN in one out of 3000 cards , but guessing the right PIN **and** getting 3000 cards in the first place is fairly difficultThey do allow it, or at least some do... |
Why is there so little or no meaningful reaction or consequence to the US after the Snowden leaks? [FIXED] | Because the ones that you probably think SHOULD have reacted more are the ones that we generally have lukewarm to good relations with, and who happen to benefit from the information that we no doubt bribe to share with them what we collected by the means in question and the other ones are shit-holes that you wouldn't r... |
Why do most Americans despise jurry duty? | When I was young and didn't have family and work responsibilities I wanted the duty as well. Now it is simply way too disruptive. My work waits for me and the hassle to reschedule my family would be horrible. |
Why doesn't OPEC cut their drilling targets? | Unconventional oil drilling in the US and increased production elsewhere, coupled with falling demand has led to oversupply. If OPEC had constrained output to prop up the price, it would have lost market share and the price increase would have benefited the cartel's competition. Most OPEC members have large reserves of... |
Building a computer (instead of buying one) | A bit of advice: Building a computer is fun, but depending on what you'll be using it for it can be either cheaper or more expensive than purchasing it pre-built. Generally, if you're buying a mass-market email and web-surfing machine, it's actually cheaper to buy a premade from a big company. They have huge economies ... |
Why most social media apps/platforms are moving away from chronological feeds | money like some have said already.also, you're more likely to be interested in what all your friends are seeing/talking about/commenting on than another post. |
Why a company like Nestlè can take water out of a State/Province for $2.25 per million litres, only to sell it back at a profit. Who is letting this happen? | Now you get how capitalism works. Someone decides that if they can get something cheap enough they can make a pile of money. They convince politicians and whatever else works) to give them a monopoly on the commodity in question at a ridiculously low price. Another water example is that some states prevent you from col... |
- Why i cant remember most dreams after i wake up | As someone who frequently remembers my dreams, I can say I need two things to actually remember them: a full-night's sleep, and I need to wake up on my own terms. An alarm clock doesn't ruin it, but getting up and *needing* to do something immediately does. |
How are smoking accessory shops legal in states that still consider Marijuana illegal? | You can't really ban things just because people use them to smoke weed. You can make a bong out of an apple. Will they ban apples? It is impossible to define a line between legal and illegal that is well defined and not completely arbitrary. Since all of these items have a use that isn't smoking weed , there is a legal... |
Why do people dislike white lighters? | Apparently, people use the butt of their lighters to tamp down the bowl when you pack a bong. White lighters would show traces of burnt cannabis and thus show to police or other authorities that you smoke marijuana. On a personal basis, I just use my thumb to pack the bowl tight instead. I don't wanna dirty the lighter... |
How are males and females born at such an equal rate? | [Minute Earth] Did a pretty solid video a few years back explaining this rather well but also [It’s Ok to be Smart] did one to explain the animal kingdom balance and why it's the way it is |
Why do small animals and birds seem compelled to dart right in front of moving vehicles at the last possible moment, barely avoiding impact (if at all)? | Most small animal's avoidance technique involves the random motion to perceived safety in the face of perceived danger. The worst case of this I have to deal with in my life is every spring all the new baby lizards around my house. When you come walking up the sidewalk they finally decide to run a short distance to a s... |
Why are humans getting faster? | We aren't getting faster. Here's an explanation that would be better than my own, plus some other info that you probably are interested in since your asking this. _URL_0_ |
If I need to drink 8 glasses of water a day...does it matter if I drink them throughout the day or if I pound 8 glasses at once? | You don't need 8 glasses a day. You need as much water is you expel based on your body size. A small person does not need as much as a large person, and someone who doesn't sweat won't need as much as someone who is constantly working. Not to mention the differences between pure water and hard water . Drinking too much... |
Why do Americans call white undershirt 'wife beater' ? | Not all white undershirts qualify. Only the sleeveless ones with the straps over the shoulder. They're called that because they always seem to be worn by people that look as if they can/do beat their wife Kind of like this. _URL_0_", 'For all those answering with COPS, the wifebeater has been stereotypically associated... |
What's stopping us from drilling to the center of the Earth (other than economical reasons) | Well once you get through the mantle, the inside of the planet is molten magma. You can't drill through a liquid. Plus I think there's also an issue of lots of pressure |
Does drinking water neutralise stomach acid? I f I drink water after I eat will it take longer to digest my food? | Very little. Water does not 'buffer' very much. Essentially, something pH 2.5 mixed with equal volumes of water would still likely have a pH below 3.0 . It all depends on the 'strength' of the acid, but generally water is really bad at neutralizing acids and bases. To neutralize an acid, you really need to use somethin... |
Memory leaks in computer programs. | Well java basically does this with its garbage collector. When an object basically becomes unreachable when the gc does its sweep it deletes said object and fees up the space. Problem with that is that though is that the gc has a cost in terms of overhead. There's also an issue of control manually grabbing and releasin... |
How do martial arts routines translate to ability to defend/attack against an actual opponent | Stage fighting is very different from actual fighting, and most of the combat scenes you see in movies would be wildly impractical in an actual fight. For choreographed sequences in demonstrations, it's often more of a practiced dance than it is practical fighting techniques. Looking at each individual sequence though ... |
What is the difference between short-term and long-term interest rates? | It's often down to the level of risk involved. Short term loans present less risk, as the value of the money is likely to remain fairly constant, so have lower interest rates. Higher risk gives higher interest rates, as there's greater risk involved, so the banks want more in return. The higher risk, as you said about ... |
If J.K. Rowling is a billionaire, then why on Earth, is Stan Lee not a billionaire?! | The industry sees it, which is why he is seen as god to all who read comics, but the ones who hold the copyrights and the royalties and so on don't see it that way unfortunately.Rowling is a better negotiator, and got a bigger chunk of the profits from her books. |
Why do people say eBay is so much worse than it used to be? | When eBay started, it grew quickly because it offered ordinary people a convenient service for selling items. This organic growth could only happen for a little while. Once it reached a certain size, they needed to make changes to continue to grow. They way they have continued to grow is two-fold. First, they offer inc... |
Why are researchers trying to emulate the flawed human brain (I.e Neural Networks) for A.I.? Would it not be better to create A.I. that can't be wrong? | The world isn't black and white. We are surrounded by ambiguities and paradoxes that don't have ideal solutions, if any. So there is no perfect brain, no perfect neural net. There are even heuristic algorithms that can come up with false positives and false negatives; it's just the nature of the beast. And depending on... |
The impact of Fukushima - how concerned should I be as a West Coast resident who eats a lot of fish? Some questions! | > Should I worry about Fukushima radiation reaching the West Coast? Not even a little > If so, what can I do about it other than moving further away? NA > Is it safe to eat Atlantic fish? Yup > How much of a threat is it to people living in Japan? Very minimal > Is it more or less severe than Chernobyl? Far less. > Wha... |
Why do people hate lawyers, or why is it an accepted stereotype that people hate lawyers? | When people come to us, they are usually dealing with a negative situation. Some people are also not ready to accept that their case just cannot go their way. There are a host of reasons and some I agree with. Sometimes throwing lawyers into the mix gets people even more contentious. Sometimes lawyers don't act ethical... |
Why do animals instinctively know how to swim whereas humans generally just drown without the proper training? | Well, the best way I can put it is that there are no marine primates. Our species branch has been land based for as long as it has existed. So in comparison to other mammals we are kind of the odd ball, but it should be noted that though many animals you wouldn't think can swim by instinct, very few land mammals can sw... |
The answer to the 100 monk riddle | I feel like the answer to this problem should be 12, not 13. The puzzle states that the doctor informed the monks of their situation in the afternoon. Later on, it says that on day 13, the monks have breakfast in the morning. The solution states that if one monk were infected, he would realize it on day zero. But how c... |
Why are 2D-animated movies so rare nowadays? | Watch old movies and you realize some things just can't be done in 3d but look amazing in frame by frame drawings. I really miss them I prefer it to 3d. Especially now that they attempt to make everything as realistic as possible except the characters and a few art syle elements. Take monsters inc for example. The new ... |
If there are reports of concentration/death camps in North Korea, why doesn't anybody do anything about them? | North Korea has the bomb. The rules that go with dealing with a non-nuclear power are a lot different from how you deal with a nuclear power. The shit we've gotten away with against Lybia, Iraq, and Iran? We wouldn't have tried it if they'd successfully tested a nuclear weapon. Shit, half the reason why we've bombed th... |
What's Wrong With Performance Enhancing Drugs? Why Can't We All Use Them To Be Better? | * many have very serious side effects and long term consequences* sports should be about who is the best athlete, not who has the best pharmacist* ordinary people don't need to shave 0.1s off of their 100m time The British Journal of Sports Medicine surveyed elite athletes, asking if there was a pill that guaranteed th... |
Were the rich really taxed 90% under Eisenhower? | [Yes] for people earning over $1.7M/yr the marginal tax rate was 91%. Now, that's 91% of the money over $1.7M, not all of their money. Today in the US, the top tax rate is 39.6% for over ~$400,000. If you adjust for inflation, that would be ~$50,000 in Eisenhower's day which was a 75% marginal tax bracket. |
If house prices are so high, why aren't people building more houses? | Cost of building high-density housing is expensive. High house prices see land owners increasing the cost of land. The construction market varies from place to place. In south florida the market is booming, so construction costs are also high as demand way exceeds supply. Financing is still hard to come by following th... |
Why do planes need to be pressurized when flying at ~15,000 ft, yet hikers/backpackers routinely climb up to that elevation without any problems? | There's less air the higher up you go. When hiking on foot, and taking breaks, you move gradually enough that your body can acclimate to the conditions without causing many issues. A plane goes up so fast that your body has no chance to get used to the pressure change, and those changes can cause very serious health pr... |
I can hear sounds but can't feel the vibrations in the air; how come wind, which i can feel, doesn't make an enormous amount of sound? | oh, and think about it - we evolved to survive in this environment - if we were able to hear wind, we wouldn't be able to hear communication from others - and therefore, it would be more difficult to survive.Wind is not capable of resonating with your eardrums. It’s not a strong enough vibration. |
Why does it seem like banks (and most places with cashiers like grocery stores for that matter) are always understaffed? | If their customers don't walk out or stop doing business with them, why employ someone to improve their happiness? The customers clearly don't value it, so why spend money on it?", 'Labor cost are the biggest cost that is easily controled so when it comes to hotting your bottom line, cutting labor is the easiest to do.... |
Why are there different events in gymnastics for men and women? | Men and women have different centers of gravity. Men's are near the middle of the chest, women's are lower near the hips. This difference is key to certain gender specific events like the rings and pommel horse. |
Why can't we do something like a "semi optional" tax system in the US to appease everyone? | We already have this, it's called charitable donations. As a bonus, they are already tax-advantaged! Specifically what that means is that if you choose to donate to a charitable organization, you don't pay taxes on the money you donate. A charitable organization can be set up for almost anything. |
What is the smelliest substance in the world and how bad is it? | Aside from ethyl mercaptane, a lot of people would probably say durian fruit. It's illegal to consune in public places in Singapore because it smells so bad and so far away. |
- Light, in terms of being a part of the electromagnetic (radioactive?!) spectrum... ? | You've got your ionizing radiation, and your non-ionizing radiation. The former is the stuff, somewhat mythologized, that is scary and damages your cells and hangs around reactors. The latter, is stuff like light, microwaves, infrared. They warm your skin. Some materials are radioactive, in that they emit particles of ... |
Why do we generally feel like shit when we first wake up? Other then getting adequate hours of sleep, what are some things we can do to avoid this feeling upon waking up? | I feel great when I wake up. It's the remembering that I have to go to work that makes me feel shitty. |
Why do lawyers defend people like Anders Breivik (Norway killer)? | It's important for people to have someone who knows the law on their side regardless of what they've done. Because if no one were to defend them, they could file a mistrial claiming to not have known the legality of the case. Misrepresentation. Etc. |
How do people get caught for illegal downloads and prosecuted? | They look at your IP address, subpoena your ISP and get your personal information and address. The fact that your IP was downloading or uploading is used as evidence against you. Note that recently many courts have ruled that an IP address alone isn't sufficient evidence against an individual.First of all, nobody gets ... |
Why I can memorize complicated formulas, but I struggle with knowing what letter comes next in the alphabet without singing it? | Because you didn't learn the alphabet, you memorized a song containing it. So you can only recall it based on that memorization. You're using the most basic levels of learning from Bloom's Taxonomy in order to create a base understanding. _URL_0_ Manipulating the song in your head will allow you to create a new, deeper... |
How do chemical sunscreens work? | As a fun thought, your skin is also a chemical sunscreen. Your cells don't stop UV damage, melanin does. |
Why do the armed forces generally require men to wear a short haircut but allow the women to have a long haircut? | they control the appearance of recruits as a training method. it removes individuality and so on. *what* the standard is doesn't matter so much as *that* there is a standard. |
Why are there so many MtF transgenders, but not many FtM transgenders? | I don't know about societal trends, but I definitely know way more FtMs than MtFs -- in fact, I think I've only met one MtF who was consistently living as female.there are so many ftm trans people out there. SO MANY. |
Libertarianism (U.S. Politics) | Basically, a Libertarian tends to value individual liberty over all else, including health, safety, etc. this is not to say they don't care about those things, they just care about individual liberty more.Think of liberty as a separate axis from conservative/liberal. On one end you have folks who are authoritarian, and... |
How do we know when we complete a loop around the sun? What's our reference point? | Also Foucault pendulums. So a Foucault pendulum responds to the effect of the revolving around the sun along with the earth's rotating around its pole.The ancients watched the skies like we watch TV. You can line up two permanent objects in your back yard on a sight line with a star you recognize and record the exact t... |
In a plane crash into water, what actually kills you? | If you've ever been cliff jumping or dived off a high five you know that water can feel more like concrete. So imagine a plane hitting water at a few hundred miles an hour. |
How a nuclear war would destroy the planet | It wouldn't destroy the planet. The planet has taken far worse in the past and survived. Human civilization would certainly be knocked back pretty far and even people on isolate islands would be affected, but it wouldn't snuff out all life.Interesting read after going through this reddit is _URL_4_ |
What does shorting something in finance actually mean? | Keeping it in the gambling world, if you've ever played craps you'll know that your first bet is on the pass line. That means that you're betting FOR the rolled number to come up. There's also a Don't Pass Line That's where you bet against the pass line, the number that the rest of the table wants to come up. That's sh... |
Why is a carbonated drink so excruciatingly painful to drink for more than 3 seconds? (Why does carbonation hurt) | I find it really interesting that some people think this is normal and some people don't. I wouldn't call it excruciatingly painful, but I sure know the burning feeling. Do some people not feel this?", 'Man, I sure see a lot of questions about "excruciating pain" regarding sensations that are really merely mildly uncom... |
Why is Reddit a .com if it's not related to commerce? | It has ads and you can buy membership. It's a business; just one that doesn't make much money. |
Why is string theory such a widely known (possibly believed) theory if there's no evidence for it? | String theory is popular at princeton, princeton is prestigious so other people feel they need to discuss it. But it's a lot less loved in the scientific community than the media would have you believe. Now you could ask the serious question: well if it's not string theory what is it? And the answer is that we don't kn... |
Why are SSDs sold in 240 GB, 480 GB, etc. whereas HDDs are sold in 250 GB, 500 GB, etc.? | SSDs are composed of multiple flash chips, which are produced in sizes power of two. Why? These chips come with a number of pins called an address bus, naturally allowing for 2^N different addresses. When combining chips to form a bigger chip, you'd prefer it if these address busses combined to form one contiguous adre... |
why are some states completely paralyzed by 1-2 inches of snow? Is their infrastructure really that unprepared for it? | A lot of the infrastructure needed to battle snow are very expensive, so a state government isn't going to buy them if they're only going to use them once or twice in the span of 5 years. Combine that with the fact that people in these areas have little to no experience driving in snowy/icy conditions, and you have qui... |
Why was an iceberg able to break through the steel of the Titanic? | take an ice cube. take a sheet of tin foil. that's the scale of iceberg vs titanic hull |
Why everyone is so scared of a terrorist attack at the olympics? | On top of all the good reasons already mentioned, terrorists thrive on attention - they're basically Internet trolls in real life. The Olympics have media from many countries, and because the crowds also have people from many countries, coverage of any attack is certain to be broadcast around the world. From the perspe... |
Why can't laptops convert waste heat into electricity instead of using even more power to run a fan? | The ability of any device to convert heat into useful work depends on the temperature difference between the source and it's surroundings. The maximum possible efficiency of any energy conversion process is: efficiency = / source temp If, for example, the processor was 70 °C and the surroundings were 20°C that makes 34... |
What is Pussy Riot, and what is going on that concerns it? | The arrested weren't thrown in jail. They were sent to Siberian work camps, the harshest in all of Russia. |
how milk becomes so many different types of cheese. | To start off the process, it isn't just milk. It might be cow's milk, goat's milk, sheep's milk, or even something more exotic like for example yak's milk. To finish the process, cheese is allowed to mature. A young cheese will have a milder flavour than one that has been left to develop through longer ageing. Of cours... |
How does double jeopardy work? | Double jeopardy is supposed to protect citizens from overzealous prosecution . So once you've been found not guilty of a crime, they can't keep trying you again and again for it until they get a guilty verdict. |
Why is US election day not a holiday to increase voter turnout? | Because you can't force companies to stop commerce for a day so everyone can go vote. You might see an uptick, but if the typical person working could work it out in the schedule if they really wanted to.. Most don't care and would just use the time off to stay at home.probably because of this one question: who would p... |
Why is it that people who are woken up in the middle of a nap seem panicked and confused? | When waking from sleep the person's mind is absolved from the reality of their situation, whether they be dreaming or just in some sort of sleep state. When woken at all, or abruptly like you mentioned, a person becomes startled and their senses slowly tell them where they are, what they were doing, etc. When woken in ... |
If weight gain/loss is just a matter of calories in and out, why is it so hard to keep weight off? | To give you an idea of what the others are saying, a 6ft, 25 year old male would need ~2370 kcal a day if he currently weights 250lbs, but ~1900 kcal a day if he gets down to 175lbs. That's a difference of a McDouble burger and a bit every day. |
how computers can produce such rich variety of output through only "on"/"off" ? | The other people here aren't generally wrong, but you'll probably get a better understanding of how a computer works using only binary states if you look into logic gates, which ELI5 has covered a great deal. Once you know logic gates it's not that hard to learn how to make an adder circuit that will give you a basic i... |
Why don't Americans incinerate more of our garbage? Wouldn't it create energy and eliminate waste? | There's a few things here. First is that we recycle a *ton* of our garbage; but that wouldn't really be the incinerating type. Most of the landfills are becoming over burdened with waste that wouldn't really be good for incineration. Plastics, metals, etc. Compostable things that would be good for incineration biodegra... |
What is the reasoning behind giving a prisoner multiple life sentences when you could just give them one without the posibility of parole? | based on ym very limited understanding it's generally because they are sentenced for each individual crime. So someone that raped and murdered a 10 year old will probably get life for the rape, life for the murder, life for many other things, etc. Someone who murdered someone in a horrific way but only murdered might g... |
What would happen if global warming was reversed, and the Earth was dropping in temperature? | They are called Ice Ages. It happens every 20K years or so. It's no big deal, unless your buildings get crushed by glaciers. Sorry Norway. |
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