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What happens to a bullet if it's fired from a gun and doesn't collide with anything? | A- still depends on the gun and round. Eventually, the bullet will decline until it hits the ground. B- no. It would be the same as dropping something from really high. If you shoot a bullet into the air, it will reach critical altitude at some point. From that point forward, it's just like dropping something. Gravity takes over and it free falls to earth. |
How come when you write on a page and the pen stops working it won't work again on that spot after fixing it | Perhaps in the process of trying to get the pen to write, you made a series of squiggly compressions in the paper. These compressions of the paper limits its ability to absorb initial amounts of ink, which in turn prevents further ink from flowing from the pen. The pen isn't the problem; it's the paper. |
Why do store brand products have very simple designs. | Store brands don't waste money on fancy designs and advertising - that's part of why they can offer at it a deep discount. |
Why is there oversupply in Oil right now? | Production has gone up. Mainly this is because of fracking. Fracking, within the past 10 years, has gone from virtually unknown to a major oil production method. Lots of places in the US have oil but it's locked in my gelogicial formations that prevent us from using standard drilling pratices. Now, with fracking we can get at some of this oil and those methods have started yelding results. Secondly many oil producing countries are upset by the new US oil production. Those countries know that fracking is only profitable when oil is above $60 or $70 a barrel. So those countries have decided to drill for MORE oil in hopes that it drives the price below the threshold where fracking is profitable. Thus driving the fracking companies out of businesses. No word yet on if this is working, and these countries historically have problems working together. The oversupply exists because production is up, it's not about the demand side. |
How does buying a house "build equity"? | It's a function of contrast vs. rent. You have to live someplace, and generally it's going to cost you money -- if you choose to rent, you build no equity, you're just paying after-tax dollars. If you can buy, you might have similar cash outflows per month, but you get some of it back in the form of equity. It's also more tax efficient. There are lots of calculators online for this sort of thing, though the actual decisions are usually a function of prices for rent and housing purchases locally. |
How long will it take the world to run out of oil? | [I guess some estimates say in about 40 years.] Though I don't now how accurate that is. |
Why would the U.S. want to spy on Germany? | It is a safe bet to assume that Germany is also spying on us. Or really any country. Countries keep tabs on each other. I actually kind of wonder if other countries call us out on it to bolster their own populations approval rating. Or if they are saying no fair you're spending more on spying than anyone else.the intelligence business is impartial. the goal is to provide knowledge. any and all knowledge. the problem with finding a needle in a haystack is that you have to look at all of the haystack. when you need to find the needle NOW, you need to have already inspected the entire haystack in order to provide a timely response. when situations arise that the president needs to know "the military and economic capabilities of Germany and how much trade and what kind they 've been having with Iran and N Korea over the past 5,10 and 20 years". well you 'd need to have been collecting data on Germany for 20 years to know that.Countries do not have friends; they have interests. Spying of allies isn't exactly abnormal in terms on international relations either, just look at France or Israel. The United States and Germany may be allies but they still compete with one another not just economically but also in terms of diplomacy. Also allies of today could be enemies of tomorrow. However, I am not saying that tapping the phone of a head of state ultimately the best move for the US. Obama will push for American interests and Merkel for Germany's. Their interests are more different think you think they are. tl;dr : Countries act on their own selfish interests. |
When people thought that the Earth was the center of the solar system, how did they explain planets moving behind the sun? | The Ptolemaic geo-centric model of planetary motion, developed to explain and predict planetary motion based on a geocentric view of the universe, was very complex, which is why Copernicus' model was so attractive to scientists. Wikipedia has an explanation of the Ptolemaic model.They believed the Sun was very small and was the closest thing to Earth aside from the Moon, so that would seem to explain why planets moved behind the sun. |
how do countries import or export electricity ? | There's a sort of secondary way to do this. If a country can generate more electricity than it needs, it can use the excess to smelt aluminum and then export the aluminum.As a technical matter, there are two main ways in which countries can import or export electricity: * They can join their AC grids together, which means synchronising them so that they run at the exact same frequency and phase. The voltages have to match at the point of interconnection too. * They can use a DC interconnector, a technology that became practical more recently. For reasons relating to efficiency, this also works much better on underwater links e.g. the UK and Ireland are connected this way. |
If the media and people know that Sepp Blatter is a corrupt crook, how is he still out there and in a position of responsibility? | I don't think the media and people do *know* Blatter is a corrupt crook. Both may think so but without actual proof that he's committed a crime, there is no reason to charge him with anything. He remains head of FIFA largely because he redistributes money from wealthy countries to poorer ones. Each country gets 1 vote in FIFA and poorer countries continue to vote for him because they need the money he distributes to them. |
How did Japan develop its "kawaii" culture that's very specific to Japan. | 1. The concept appeared in a well-known essay 'Makura no Soushi' written around 1,000 years ago.2. It would have been inspired from animism and Shinto-ism in my opinion.3. The concept was expressed in the first Manga drawn around 800 years ago.4. Most westerners such as Lafcadio Hearn, etc who arrived at Japan from the end of Edo era to the beginning of Meiji era stated Japanese kids were the most cherished in the world.5. Such tradition took shape as Kawaii culture by high-school girls beginning with Lolita fashion and Japanese adults didn't interfere the novel movement. |
If the baby boomers are retiring from the job market. Why aren't there more jobs available? | 1. They're not actually retiring. Poor saving habits or increasing retirement ages keep a lot of them in work, at the same jobs they've held for years, clogging the job progression ladder. 2. Outsourcing/automation of jobs, eliminating a lot of steps in that job progression ladder. |
If minimum wage is increased, why won't wages increase across the board? | If an employer's not forced to, why would they? A minimum wage increase doesn't obligate them to increase other wages. |
How did reddit get so popular and why there is no other competitior? | I disagree with competitors, you're just not familiar with them. But there is stuff like 9gag, chive, funnyjunk, and even imgur itself. There was a few factors that popularized Reddit. Prior to Reddit's boom, _URL_1_ and slashdot were pretty much kings. Don't forget about _URL_0_, which at one point was the most popular site on the web in the mid-2000's. The biggest push to Reddit was when Digg released a new version in 2010. Prior to this, Digg had a much larger community than Reddit. The release had bugs, terrible rating system implemented, and it just overall sucked. Couple that with the collapse of _URL_0_ about the same time and you have an explosion of Reddit. DAE remember the constant downtime and pressing F5 like a fiend? Good old days. Another thing to keep in mind is that Reddit has pretty much remained consistent. Sure, they added some fancy new features and advertisements on the right side, but it's consistency and simplicity is what makes it special. On a side note, I actually really enjoy Digg again since Betaworks took over. The Reddit community is becoming more like the Digg community before the whole collapse.I came here when Digg turned to garbage and force fed you bullshit instead of allowing user submitted content. Stayed for gonewild and cat picturesreddit left justifies. I forgot how rare that was until saw a few other sites recently. Centered content is painful to readI 'd say their community and flexibility for topics. But that would be oversimplifying it. Here in Spain we have Menéame, which is pretty popular here, but the community is more toxic/serious, also, "subreddits" aren't used by the majority, and the front page is mostly about links about politics or just some random facts, most of the stuff gets down voted because it isn't "news", it's kind of a mess.Keep in mind that reddit is not yet making any money, at least not as of a few months ago. From a business perspective, it's a loser. Why would anyone compete with that? |
Why did men play women's roles in Shakespearean times? | Acting at the time was considered to be a form of prostitution, and actors were very low on the social order. Actors were selling their body to perform tasks for someone. Instead of sex, they were acting. They wouldn't allow women to openly prostitute themselves. Edit: grammar |
Why are exotic cars so unreliable? | I'm no expert, but I think that regular day to day repairs that you make in your Honda Civic can potentially be exponentially more expensive in exotic cars. I really don't know what I'm talking about, but I've heard that an oil change on a Ferrari can cost north of a thousand bucks. Imagine having to replace the alternator on your Lamborghini? Buy new tires?", 'Because most exotic cars are made in Italy or sheds. |
Why isn't the UN doing anything significant about the bill passed in Uganda to imprison homosexuals for life? | What do you want them to do? They can look down at them and make that very clear but what if Uganda goes hostile? What if all of a sudden they want war? Now UN countries are at war with a country they don't need to be. Now soldiers from these countries are shipped off to a country they may die in for somebody they don't want to die for. Now citizens in UN countries are protesting, saying their own government is making wrong decisions. You see? It's sad, I agree, and I'm 100 percent against what Uganda is doing but we're talking about war, this effects everybody involved. Its not so simple. Are you willing to give up a lot of your tax money and possibly your fellow countrymen's life for this when you have a lot of problems in your country already? Politics, eh. UN is more of a symbol then anything else. If the UN stepped in in every major atrocity in the world, western economy would take a hit. |
Why do we cry? What is the connection of tears coming out of our eyes with sadness or even happiness. | When we're extremely stressed or laughing hard our lung muscles tighten up. We cry because sometimes when under extreme emotion we can't communicate it with sound so our body communicates it from ejecting water from our eyes and making it really obvious, so everyone else knows something is up even if we can't communicate it. A huge part of human survival roots in compassion and empathy. If something is wrong, you **have** to communicate it to others. Also, as some people have said, crying releases stress hormones through the tear duct so we can calm ourselves down. |
Why is orange juice stored in the refrigerated section of the grocery store, while apple juice is not? | I've always thought that it was because everyone almost always drinks OJ cold, whereas it's not uncommon to drink apple juice at room temp. |
How do tv shows and movies that have tattooed characters make sure the tattoo is identical and in the same spots every time they are reapplied? | I had the joy of playing Agent 47 in a recent promo for Hitman , so had to have the iconic barcode tattoo on the back of my head. We got loads of them printed as temporary tattoos, and they applied loads until they got it perfect , then took a super high-res picture of it. Using the picture, they could position it in pretty much exactly the same spot every time with no problems. It was ridiculously durable too, I had to scrub crazy hard to get it off at the end of each day on set |
Piss shivers. Why do they happen? | It's been explained many times on this site. The most accepted explanation is a shift from the parasympathetic nervous system to the sympathetic nervous system. |
Why do military transport planes fly with an inboard/outboard seating configuration, rather than having rows with 6-11 seats per row? | [They can be configured in rows.] But if you're hauling more than just troops , it makes sense to line the seats along the walls and leave space to easily move cargo in and out. It's also much easier to load and unload troops carrying their gear into side-facing seats. |
Where do herbivores get their proteins? | Plant cells contain proteins, it's just that the cells themselves are very difficult to digest so creatures like us can't easily digest the cells and extract the proteins. Buffalo and other grazing animals have specialized digestive systems that are specifically designed to break down plant cells, thus providing the animal with all of its nutritional requirements. |
Why does meat from pigs and cows have specific names while meat from poultry/fish/lamb don't | I believe when the French-speaking aristocratic Normans ruled England a thousand years ago, they introduced the french words for animals. The Saxon/English farmers continued to use the words Pig, Cow, Chicken, Sheep, Chicken to refer to the animal while the french ruling class that ate the food used words like Porc, Buef, Poul, Mutton, Poul I think it evolved so that today chicken and poultry can be used interchangeably for the animal or the meat. I'm not sure what happened with Fish! |
Why / How Linux Is More Secure Than Windows | There is about 80% of Windows users among the world. Windows is the most common operating system of all times. Therefore it is normal that it become a major target for majority of hackers and thefts among the glob.AntiViruses software is also being developed mainly for Windows platform in order to try to seal the holes in security. It doesn't matter how good the WindowsOs will be there will always be people who are smarter and they will be able to penetrate the holes. |
Are the different toothpastes actually different or is it all just a marketing trick? | A *huge* difference is that most mainstream toothpastes contain a chemical called Sodium Lauryl Sulfate . This makes them all nice and foamy when you brush. Which doesn't make a damn bit of difference as far as cleaning goes, but DOES make it far more likely to get canker sores. Years ago I started using Toms of Maine, which didn't have SLS at the time. Then Colgate-Palmolive bought them and promptly added the SLS back in, without bothering to tell anyone. I discovered this situation when I started getting canker sores again. Bastards. Now I use Biotene which is SLS-free. FWIW. |
Why did Gandalf barely use any magic in both the Hobbit and LotR? Isn't he supposedly a very powerful wizard? | Wizards in the Hobbit universe are essentially Angels sent to guide the peoples of Middle Earth, not directly assist. The higher powers who created that world and it's inhabitants view the ring, the hordes of treasure , and the battles that resulted as a problem created by the inhabitants themselves and therefor left it to them to resolve on their own. Gandalf is bound by orders to not directly take action, but unlike the others of his kind he is much more loose with the rules.This video is ace at explaining the LOTR set up _URL_3_', "What did you expect him to do? Rain fire and lightning on the orcs, trolls, and goblins? That's not who he is. True courage is about knowing not when to take a life, but when to spare one. -Gandalf |
How do military personnel on covert missions (i.e. snipers, etc.), keep their noisy bodily sounds under control (i.e. sneezing, stomach rumbles, etc.)? | For the most part, when you're out on a three day patrol through hostile territory, you don't feel the urge to even poop . You could go a very long time without your body doing anything. I think it's the nerves of the situation that keep your body in check.To be honest, Not many departments will teach "how to be silent". It is usually taught in boot camp. For 3 Months constantly standing at attention, Where Sneezing, shifting, farting, etc. is not allowed, and if happen to let one go, there is generally harsh punishment. Its called Discipline, It takes a long time to learn it, and there is no easy way. For example, While during our Graduation Ceremony, at that time I had bronchitis. I got it a few weeks back, and I didn't bring it up, since we where so close to the end, I didn't want to get held back. So for a little over an hour I had to hold in my coughing. Only clearing my throat as quietly and with as little motion as possible, then swallowing the mucus. tl;dr- Deal with it.I'm not sure there is anything that you can do about stomach rumbles, but if you're *that* close that someone can hear you grumble or fart then you're pretty damn close. They actually make silencers for hunters that [muffle coughs] and it might even work with sneezes. I would imagine that the military would use something similar if they really needed to. You can suppress a cough or sneeze if you try hard enough and believe in yourself. |
How does the infamous NYSE "pit" depicted in many movies actually function? How can hundreds of people screaming and waving tickets actually work? | It's closed. It's all electronically now. The thing that was really funny is when they 'occupy wallstreet' was going to take down trading, they protested, closed down streets, but trading was done with computers with the biggest center in a bunker in New Jersey. There were 0 trades missed. I mean, common, you are protesting against something, do your research!", 'I would suggest listening to the portion of Radiolab's "Speed" episode on the NYSE. Most stocks are traded electronically, especially on the NYSE, though as others have said, the commodities market in Chicago/other worldwide exchanges retain that model to a degree. Here's a link to the Radiolab episode, it's super interesting: _URL_3_Wow, I posted this just before bed expecting maybe one or two responses. Thank you all so much for the time you spent thoroughly explaining this to me. I now have a lot of reading to catch up on after I finish my homework and my paper!There used to be a decent doc on Netflix called "The Pit" that explores the careers/lifestyles of commodities traders.If it's still there it's worth checking outDo you do podcasts? Radiolab has a really good podcast about this in their archivesGet yourself Pit. Will explain it all. And its a bloody hoot. _URL_4_Funny trivia: The only pit that is left is in Chicago, I think.There is no pit. It's all electronic now.It only works for 1% of its contributors |
why do we sweat when we sleep. We are supposed to be inactive. | Usually because we get hot. Sweat is meant to cool us off, which usually happens when we are active but if you have ever sat in a hot car in the summer then you've experienced sweat without any activity. The same thing sometimes happens when you're bundled up under the covers. |
What actually causes such drastic changes in people's appearances when they do meth / other drugs? | Also, keep in mind that it doesn't happen to everybody. I come from an area horribly afflicted with meth, where several of my classmates would smoke it with their parents, you could buy it on street corners, and it was common for fast food employees to be on it. Several girls in my high school smoked it to lose weight. It worked, but in a horrifying way that resembled starvation. Their boobs and asses first shrank, probably permanently. The people who look by far the worst are those who use it too much to hold down a job or a home. Those who are still functional tend to look healthier, except for malnutrition and borderline-starvation because they're never hungry enough. Ironically, the people I know who used it and maintained the best appearance were those who also used marijuana to be able to sleep and eat. Even then, many people simply don't get the meth face, even after years. |
Why do older people suffering from dementia etc. often get violent or aggressive, even when they are normally very gentle? | It's also a mix of frustration and in some cases certain areas of the brain which moderate behaviour are damaged by the disease. |
Why after a night of extremely heavy drinking do I wake up at a reasonable time contrary to if I was to go to bed without drinking? | Alcohol makes you sleepy, your body counteracts by producing chemicals to keep you awake. You go to sleep and your liver removes the alcohol, when it's gone what's left is the chemicals your body made to keep you awake, so you wake up. On a side note, 5 year olds shouldn't be drinking until 3am, take it down a notch next Saturday. |
What percentage of Mexico - > US illegal immigrants would a hypothetical 100% successful Border Wall prevent? | Most estimates of the current undocumented population in the United States say that roughly half of them arrived by illegal border crossing while the other half arrived with visas and overstayed. If we pretend a wall stops 100% of all new arrivals then it could theoretically cut the new immigrant rate by around 50%. |
What's the difference between Emergency Care and Urgent Care, and why is EC so much more expensive? | Emergency rooms have lots of equipment and can do way more stuff. Urgent care centers have more standard stuff like in a regular doctor's office. All that extra equipment in the ER is expensive. |
What's so bad about scalping tickets? You own the tickets, why shouldn't you be able to sell them for what people are willing to pay? | The scalper is an unnecessary middleman who forces his way into the system and provides no value add at all. He buys up large numbers of tickets for the sole purpose of selling them at a higher price, when you could have just as easily bought the tickets directly yourself. If there were an unlimited number of tickets this wouldn't be a problem, but of course there aren't. |
Why do American folks always go on about 'freeom' and 'American freedom' when they consistantly come outside the top 10 in the world freedom rankings? | It's the freedom to do very specific things like have guns and deny people abortions and not have fries from France. It's not the freedom to do other things that people generally care about like the freedom not be tortured, not to have all your privacy infringed on, to have your rape baby aborted, not to have to live in a place where people walk around with guns in full display, not to arrest and hold people for decades without trial because a guy you paid to find terrorists said this farmer was a terrorist. It's like how the US redefined torture so that their torture wasn't torture, they redefined free so that they were the freest people in the world despite being top in imprisoning people. edit: And most Americans feel the way I just said, because most American's don't go around saying freedom. |
Will we be able to make giant robots (like the ones in pacific rim or gundam) with the technology we have today? | This hasn't been touched on that I can see. There is no material we construct with that has the structural integrity to support bipedal movement at those sizes and weight. It's not just impractical, it's impossible. The metal would deform under the pressure. You couldn't have knees or ankles, and you couldn't stand on the legs unless they were perfectly straight at all times. Unless space robots. Have at it. Possible, and presuming space robot construction becomes commercially viable, probable. |
Why do kids seem to have so much more energy than adults? | 1. Childrens' bodies are working near perfectly, while adults' have suffered wear. 2. Children have less responsibility, leading to less stress. 3. Children don't hold in their emotions. |
If truffles are so rare why don't we just farm them? | One factoid I'm not seeing here is the fact that France used to cultivate truffles, but most of the farms were destroyed by the world wars.TIL that truffles are mushrooms too. I only knew if the chocolate treat kind. Edit:I admit I got a little exciting at the idea of chocolate truffles growing out of the ground.My family has a truffle farm in East TN. They very well can be farmed, its just a large undertaking. It takes anywhere from 4-6 years to even find out if the trees were inoculated correctly to produce truffles. At $25 a seedling, with over 3000 trees, its a huge risk with maybe an enormous reward. I think that's the main reason they aren't farmed widely commercial. The soil requirements are also very minimal, no real work there. The soil in East TN is about as good as you can get for the trees to thrive. |
How are rivers freshwater when they run from oceans and seas which are composed of saltwater? | Rivers don't run from the sea, they run to it, often starting in the mountains which accumulate snow in the winter. The snow melts, and streams and rivers form.You have been misinformed. Rivers run *to* oceans and seas from higher elevations, typically from up in the hills -- not *from* oceans and seas. |
Why doesn't the US have no limit interstate highways? | While I'm no expert on this, I did see a documentary on the autobahn. It was fascinating all of the technology and money put into it. It costs a lot, and you have to pay to use it. I think the biggest reason we don't have one is because we can't afford to make one that would be safe. Parts of it anyway are very high technology. Someone from Europe could explain better. |
Why are parts of our bodies bone and others cartilage? | Cartilage is more flexible than bone. When you're born, you have more cartilage than bone because you need to be bendy to get out of your mom. As you age, you need something hard and stiff to do things like walk and run, so your body replaces cartilage with bone. Not all of the cartilage is replaced because there are some parts of your body that need to be bendy , or just don't need to be stiff , so your body doesn't bother with those places. |
Why is traveling in outer space so difficult? Specifically, why can't we shield our frail bodies from radiation? | Lead is usually the best shield but it's very dense and heavy. And weight is at a premium when you are talking rocket launches. Because you only have so much fuel, you can only launch so much pay load. And everything like structure or shielding takes away from the science part of the payload. Which also means no fat astronauts. |
Why aren't bidets common in the US? | As an American, after reading this thread I really feel like I'm missing out.Once you get a Toto toilet lid you never go back.Because they're not common in the UK and our culture mostly derives from them. They associated the bidet with the snooty French. So the bidet never made it across the pond. Even today, we associate the bidet with only rich people who can afford to have one installed.As an American, what is a bidet?? i assume a urinal? |
What causes the urge to dance when music is heard? | They might not explain it like you're five, but I bet you get some better answers to this in r/AskScience. |
If a brain is faster and more efficient than a computer, why is it so hard for most ordinary people to perform mental calculations such as multiplying a three-digit number by a three-digit number? | Two reasons really. One, the computer is just a math machine. It performs no function other than math. A 3 digit problem? If you got an iPhone 6 you're looking at millions to billions of calculations every second, more with most Android phones. Second, our brain is performing a lot all the time. The best supercomputers on Earth have a hard time differentiating between a chair and a table without being told which is which in advance, while you can process what a table is and what a chair is before you're even aware you've processed it. You're also constantly having to operate an extremely complex system of nerves and organs at all times, from womb to grave.Because in our history, there were very few instances were multiplying two numbers in a split second would save your life. There was no reason for brains to get good at that. Picking out an intruder hiding in a bush, that is what we are good at, and where computers struggle. |
Why nowadays up to 60% of the people in developed countries have some kind of vision impairment? | I don't believe there is a 'right' answer to this. My opinion is that much more work is being done on computer screens that are incredibly bright and a close distance from your face. This can be reduced by some simple things like taking 'eye breaks' from a screen, turning down the computer monitor's brightness, or even just sitting a little farther back from the screen. It's not technically considered ergonomics, but I believe it falls within that realm. |
other than sounding good, why do musicians count down (1,2,3 2,2,3) before a song? | It's so they know where they are in their rests. If I have eight measures of rest I can count 1,2,3 eight times, but it's easy to lose track. If I go, 1,2,3,2,2,3,3,2,3 it's much easier to keep track of how many rests I've already had. |
What happens when a power company generates too much power? | The generator pays for the excess fuel used and no one has paid them for the excess energy from the normal market, so directly only the generator pays. Beyond that, there are certain costs/benefits to the system of the generator generating more than was originally contracted, depending on how short/long the market was coming into delivery. Each power market deals with real time imbalance costs differently. In the UK we have imbalance charges , which are essentially secondary rates for power to power market participants who do not match their physical delivery/off-take position against their contracted position . Essentially the day is divvied up into half hour periods, and the costs of balancing the energy demand of system are tallied up into an average £/MWh for each period, which is then charged to people who are short, and given to people who are long. This can either be drastically more or less than the traded market price, depending on whether the system needed to buy or sell energy to balance demand and generation. If the system needed a lot of power to balance itself, the generator might actually get more money - but if the system needed to turn of lots of generation, the generator might get nothing for it's excess power. |
Why aren't leading zeroes significant figures? | imagine there's a measurable value that's exactly 0.00000982643 units. due to the uncertainty of your measuring tool, you report it as 0.00001 units. now let's say that you want to convert that measurement to another unit, that's exactly one onehundredthousandth of the original unit. if there were 5 significant figures, the one and the 4 zeroes after the decimal point , the value would be reported in the second unit as 1.0000. this is obviously incorrect; the actual answer is 0.982643. doing the problem with one significant figure, without the leading zeroes, gives 1. units., which, while imprecise, is not factually inaccurate. also, addition/subtraction uses position, not number, of significant figures.The zeros in your example are significant. Leading zeros are to the left of decimal point. Thus in 0001, all three zeros are literally nothing, and so are not significant. |
how MMA fighters can cut over 20 pounds in a day | You're body is something like 60% water. If you significantly dehydrate yourself, then shed as much weight as possible, shit, piss, sweat etc, you can lose a significant amount of weight |
Amps, Volts, Ohms, Watts. | Imagine you're dropping bricks off a roof, because you want to smash something down below. Volts = the height of the roof. More volts = higher roof. Amps = how fast you are dropping the bricks. Watts = how much damage you're doing on the ground. Ohms are a little hard to fit into this analogy I guess a good one would be the viscousness of the material the bricks are falling through. A normal wire would be air. Increasing the resistance would be like making the bricks fall through water , or jelly . Things falling through a vacuum = superconducting :)", 'Amps are the amount of electrons going through the wire. Volts is the amount of force pushing the electrons. Ohms is the amount of resistance limiting the electrons flowing through the wire. Watts is the amount of energy per second being used by all the flowing electrons. |
Can we really clean pesticide off fruit by just rinsing them off? Wouldn't that mean rain would rinse it off all the time? | Actually, pesticides aren't really the reason we rinse fruit. The biggest danger are actually bacteria and virus like E. Coli, Salmonella and Norovirus. Contrary to popular belief there's actually a bigger risk of these things in organic products than conventional. |
Why/How did early civilizations build the same things when neither had contact with one another. | Pyramids are a little different, but if you're thinking about things like Ziguratts and temples, the collective unconscious agrees that all religious beings are up somewhere higher than us. Be it a plane of existence, or altitude, this opinion seems to ring true throughout. This being the case, all religious buildings were built high, reaching to the sky, the belief being that the higher the building, the closer to God. There actually used to be a law that no building could be higher than the highest cathedral nearby, because no building can be closer to God than a church. Pyramids are different because they're very expensive graves as opposed to religious structures. I know Pharaoh was considered near god, so that might have something to do with it |
why the US seems to be more Christian than the UK.....? | No one can answer this for sure, and there are probably multiple causes. One that's been suggested is that the fact that the US has no official religion has lead to competition. The most effective religions gain more converts, and the overall populace gets more zealous. |
Why does my computer always need to restart or close the app I'm using to install an update? | This is one of the more commonly asked questions here, so I'm going to remove it. Please use the search bar and you'll find several answers to it. There's no rule against reposting questions, but please be sure to indicate that you've searched and haven't found your question listed. Thanks a lot. |
How was wrestlemania 1 shown on closed circuit TV? | I was at a closed circuit viewing for WM1. It was a clusterfuck, with something going wrong with the main theater screen so that they had to bring in a basic pull-down projector screen like they have in schools. People weren't happy, especially us in the nosebleeds. It was like watching a 10-inch television through a living room window while you're standing on the street. But by the end, no one really cared, as we all got caught up in the mania. |
Why are us humans naturally afraid of the dark? | It takes a really, really long time for evolution to do it's thang. Our ancestors before electricity would associate it with danger and the unknown. And their danger and unknown was way more fucked than ours. We still have hair and clothing has been around even longer. Also wisdom teeth, man-nips and appendixs. |
why is my beard hair so scraggly when my head hair is pretty straight. | Thanks everyone for the answers. You've answered a question that's been on my mind for a while now! Marking this explained now. |
How are people able to cliff dive from extremely high places and not die or get injured from impact on the water? | People who do regular high dives don't go completely unharmed. During the olympics I read several redditors talking about how their skin on their legs is fucked from repeated shearing impacts. I'm sure cliff divers have it worse. I'd typically not respond with hearsay but since there are only 2 top level comments, I thought I'd chip in. |
If a pipe was pushed through the earth from one end to the other and I jumped in it, would I stop mid-way and...float? | I think you'd be crushed and cooked before your compressed ashes got a chance to float.You would be harassed by the TSA firstSo did you watch Total Recall earlier today???', "Yes, you would stop half-way, and here is why. Skydivers generally reach what is called Terminal Velocity, TV for short. For a spread eagle position TV is about 120 miles per hour. For a head/foot first dive position it is about 180 MPH. This gives a trip time of 50-75 hours, not the 45 minute estimate given below . Now because TV is such a low value you won't get very far past the center of the Earth and reach a self-damping oscillation of the center of the Earth. On the upside, you would be weightless. |
Why people with hazel eyes appear to change color from blue to green or vice versa. | My eyes are blue and often change to green, so I don't think it's just people with hazel eyes.Lighting differences and color reflection off your clothing will bring out the colors matching it within your iris. Moods sometimes change how dark or light they are which with hazel eyes may bring out certain colors more than others. |
Why are they trying to remove Earth monitoring from NASA's budget? | Because they don't want to pay for climate change regulations but can't argue with the facts. So what do they do? Hide the facts. Goddamn disgusting. |
How can the game "Flappybird" get away with using the exact green pipe art from Super Mario bros with seemingly no legal problem? | They may end up embracing it, as it reminds people they haven't played Mario in a while. Also, flappy birds isn't necessarily a replacement for Mario games so it doesn't really step on anyone's toes. |
Why does the smell of my own fecal matter not bother me, but the smell of someone else' makes me want to vomit? | Funny thing is the smell of my own poop doesn't bother me, the smell of my kid's poop doesn't bother me, and the smell of my dog's poop doesn't even bother me. But my wife's poop makes me wanna puke. |
What is it about audio from the 50s-60s that makes it so unique? | More often than not, the audio you hear has to do with the quality of the recording and playback equipment from the same time period. It's that same reason why many audiophiles will go great lengths to purchase equipment like amplifiers that still run on electron tube circuitry. That uniqueness and high fidelity often cannot be fully reproduced with new age digital to analog converters. They are very close, but any audio nut can attest that true sound reproduction from electron tubes is better than any DAC. |
What is meant by Balkanisation of a nation? | The Balkans are that region of Europe Southeast of Germany and north of Greece. They have a history of being very heavily divided on cultural, religious, and ethnic grounds. For a while, many of the countries in the Balkans were united into a state called Yugoslavia, however, in the 90s, Yugoslavia broke up into many different states, often along ethnic, cultural, and religious lines. What was once one country was now many. When people talk about the Balkanisation of the US, they worry about the US going the direction of Yugoslavia. That the country would 'break up' along internal cultural divisions. |
Why is it racist to say black people like KFC & Watermelon? | Look at it this way. Tell us what country you are from and we'll tell you you must conform to the stereotype of people from that country. Irish? You must be stupid. Italian? You must like pinching women's bottoms . Swedish? You must be blond, dress like ABBA and spend all day in the sauna. Not true, right? Do you see now why this is racist?", 'Everybody love KFC and Watermelon. When you say black people love it, its hitting on the stereotype that all black people are poor and come from the south, where fried chicken and watermelon are a prominent food staple. |
How does the concept of "cooties" circulate amongst children? | I think your question is assuming a false premise: That the children are spreading the cooties. Children don't spontaneously manifest knowledge in cooties any more than they spontaneously manifest knowledge in Santa Claus. It is the adults that introduce the concept to the kids. I would imagine the childlike curious 'what makes boys different from girls' thought is fairly common, and they hear a teacher or parent joke about the other having cooties and then they pick up on it. It doesn't have to be much, just one or two kids in a class who have parents who joke about it with them and then the knowledge spreads like wildfire. NOTE: This is all shamelessly random and unfounded guessing, but it seems like it could be true.Well when i was five, i always just said it, i guess because kids say things just to get a positive reaction from others. I just said goofy shit like that to be funnyI never actually believed in cooties or knew any kids who did. It was just something dumb the people said Mostly adultsCooties were originally lice, IIRC. Calling it cooties made it cute, and easier to understand as bugs.It's Cooties when you're a kid, Herpes when you're a young adult |
How do people in China put things in alphabetical order? | Chinese can be organized based first on stroke number, then next on radical ordering. Radicals are the pictographical part of the Chinese language. In simpler characters one part tends to be associated with the meaning, while another will be associated with the phonetics. However, this is not always the case with more complex characters but there tends to always be some way of conveying meaning in a character. Sometimes this is lost in the simplified version, my favorite example of this is the character for 'love' in simplified Chinese no longer has the radical for 'heart' in it, while the traditional version does. Here is a list of Chinese radicals based on stroke order. _URL_0_ For more complex characters I believe the ordering system follows first follows the radical based on the number of strokes in that radical, moving from top to bottom, and left to right, outside to inside for the character. So each character is essentially broken down into smaller parts that distinguish the meaning and pronunciation. Other than this pictographical ordering system, Pinyin is the standard for most dictionaries and will follow alphabetical order. It then would follow the tone next and then follow stroke/radical number/ordering after that. I'd have to look at a dictionary again myself to be 100% sure, but I know these are common organization practices now. |
Why are people not bothered by being forced to get car insurance, but are bothered by the whole health care mandate thing? | I think people understand the car insurance more because it could hurt them. If I hit someone else and don't have insurance then who is going to cover that victim's car? Thus people can understand why insurance to cover damage you cause is required. |
Why cannot we fold paper (symmetrically) more than 7 times? | Each time you fold it, you're doubling its thickness. Let's say you start with a standard piece of A4, that's near enough to 0.05mm thick. Fold it in half, and it's 0.1mm after 1 fold. Let's extrapolate that per fold: 2) 0.2 3) 0.4 4) 0.8 5) 1.6 6) 3.2 7) 6.4 8) 12.8 9) 25.6 10) 51.2 11) 102.4 12) 204.8 13) 405.6 14) 811.2 15) 1622.4 16) 3244.8 17) 6489.6 29) 26,581.4016 m 40) 54,438.71 km 103) The paper is now thicker than the size of the known Universe But that's all just a bit of fun. Practically, the record for a piece of 'paper' is 12, though it was toilet paper. Thing about 'paper' you might use at home or school or work, is that it isn't just cellulose wood fibres, it contains other minerals, like calcium carbonate. Even in a hydraulic press, the paper will explode before it lets you get passed 7 folds. This is because the pressure required to create the last fold, is a greater force than the minerals in the paper can actually withstand - so they practically pulverise and explode into dust. [Zees iz vot heppens vit it]", 'It depends on the tensile strength and elasticity of the paper. Every time you fold it the outer layers of paper have to stretch to wrap around the corner of the stack, which is increasing in thickness. Eventually it stretches too much and the paper ripsBecause paper is thin, but it still has 3 dimensions. Eventually it will be thick enough that it is wider than it is long, and the two ends will not touch. |
Why do people find the dark so fearful? | Yeah there is probably some lengthy psychological discussions out there. However: People don't like the dark because they can't see. |
On avrage 400 police killings/year in the US. Why are American police involved in so many killings while it's so uncommon in Europe? | 1) there are a lot of people here and significantly more guns. Situations where a officer will act in self defense or the defence of others will happen more > Wouldn't shooting the suspect in the leg be enough? No, if you are going to shoot your gun then you have reached a point where there is no other option and the suspect has to be stopped immediately the chances of a non fatal shot failing is too high to risk. |
What are the consequences of getting a medical marijuana prescription? Would I be in a database? Could it affect me getting a job? | There are plenty of other natural and pharmaceutical sleep aids that don't have the same associated costs that medical cannabis has. |
Why can't we send a satellite to orbit other planets? | We've been doing that since the 1960s. We have or have had orbiters around the Moon, Venus, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, and Saturn. |
Why some people suffer from fear of flying when it is the most safest way to travel long distance? ? | i probably can find irrational fear in your life too. everyone is scared of something. and yes, flying is safe, but planes sometimes fall. like many here said: you're high, you're going fast and you're not in control and probably don't even know what is happening with pilots. probably you don't even know about malfunctions until they told you and if something goes wrong it will go wrong all the way. if something happens to engine in car/bus, driver just stops and it's not a problem, just inconvenience. in plane it's problem. |
Do people with 'crazy' or 'lazy' eyes see more, less or differently to other people? Or exactly the same? [serious] | I have strabismus, which causes my right eye to be drifted towards my nose when I have my eyes focused. When I'm not focusing my eyes, they are both straight, so I can do this thing where I only move one eye by focusing and unfocusing my vision. Everyone seems to assume that I can see out of both eyes and that I'm seeing 2 different things, but since I've had it since birth I can't even notice it if I try. To me, my right eye acts entirely as peripheral vision, it is very weak compared to my left eye, I can't do any reading out of it and the sun hurts it a lot so I typically I'm squinting my right eye whenever I'm outside. I used to have to wear glasses, and probably should again, but when the eye doctors examined me there results were weird because my left eye somehow learned to compensate so that I have pretty damn clear vision out of it. They told me because of that, I didn't really have to wear glasses. Now I just walk rand with my damn right eye looking in another direction. It's been years since I've been to an eye doctor, but I should probly go soon to see if I can get glasses, just to see what my vision wod be like with them. I read just fine, but sometimes my eyes hurt from strain so I think I need them, atleast some times. So really, I can see about the same as other people, just imagine it with only 1 eye. Oh yeah, and I can't see 3d movies or anything like that, I'm not even sure how well I can perceive depth. I seem to have a hard time when things aren't on the ground to judge depth/distance |
How do stampedes occur and what are solutions to stop it? | Well sometimes a predator such a a hyena well spook a few animals in a heard such as a water buffalo, and once one water buffalo starts running the rest do as well to avoid getting caught by whatever prompted the first water buffaloes to start running. Once they're all running none of them want to stop and be the slowest one in the heard for fear they'll get caught by whatever predator. Even if those predators stopped chasing a while ago, because they weren't really trying to catch one, they were just starting the stampede as part of a plot to assassinate the king and his son, putting in power his brother who will be more sympathetic to their cause. _URL_2_", 'This [summary of an analysis of the Love Parade stampede] shows that once you reach a certain density, the crowd is a wave and you as a particle in that wave are subject to the forces of physics. > And this is what kills: not the overall density of the crowd but the transmission of lethal force through the crowd in ways that are almost random. This causes people to fall, creating a domino effect that crushes people to deathHere is a long and gripping essay in The New Yorker on the topic: **Crush point: When large crowds assemble, is there a way to keep them safe?** _URL_4_', "It can be spooky in a dense crowd. I was in a crowd at the L.A. Street Scene, we were all waiting for Stevie Wonder to get on stage. We were so crowded that everyone was touching on all sides. Then Stevie's Mercedes came, very slowly through the crowd, going towards the stage. He was about 10 feet away at one point. As the people moved to get out of his way they had to push into the crowd and the crowd pushed outward. There was no where for me to move, but I felt the pressure increasing, just like pumping up a tire. |
Can firearms be computerized? | The generic term for this sort of thing is a [Directed-energy weapon] The navy is testing laser systems, and they are upgrading the power systems on their new ships to allow energy based weapons. The military also has an [Active Denial System] that uses microwaves to heat up the water in a person's skin, causing debilitating pain. [Sound can also be used as a weapon] in some situations. |
Why do people in their mid-30s generally start to crave less partying in their lives (bars, clubs, etc)? | I've craved less partying since I was 22. It's just boring to me to drive somewhere, park the car, pay for overpriced drinks, then worry if your car hasn't had car doors slammed into or been broken into and hope your dd didn't have a few drinks. Even worse, someone has to BE the dd. Don't get me wrong, I don't hate drinking. I'm 30 and I can somehow handle up to 3/4 of a bottle of bourbon, I'd just rather sit on my porch with pretty wife, friends, my puppies play some records and sit/talk by the fire. Plus, getting to mix my own drinks means I can play around with ingredients. Maybe it's just a guy thing with expensive drinks and hilarious cover prices, but the first time I heard about a cover charge to get into a bar , I laughed my head off and went home. |
What is so bad about Norton Anti-Virus? | It costs a large amount of money, does most of the same things that cheaper or free AV software does, and it's very difficult to remove from your computer if you don't know what you're doing. Source: Sold Norton Antivirus in an electronics store. |
Why can't you train cats like you can train dogs? | You know why? Because a cat doesn't give a shit about your approval. Also, they're not food motivated because they know that if they get hungry they can just eat you. |
Why is suicide stigmatized so much by society as opposed to a natural death? | People with suicide ideations seldom understand the impact their action may have on family and friends. I'm not speaking about the terminally I'll, infirmed or those enduring physical anguish. Many others however resolve their situations by seeking and end to their life as a solution without regard to the collateral damage. |
What is the advantage of reloadable public transit payment cards, either to riders or the operator? | It's more convenient for the customers. First, because it's regional, I only have to carry one thing to ride two ferries, three buses and a train. I will _never_ have the correct change in my pocket and I will often not have time to buy each of those tickets at a different machine. Second, because it's reloadable, I don't have to keep replacing the thing, and I don't have to deal remembering which of two tickets is almost-consumed or almost-expired ticket every month or every twenty dollars or every ten rides. Finally, I can get a youth/disabled/senior regional card once, and automatically get the discount on everything. Ticket kiosks can't sell tickets that require personal ID. |
What is happening when time appears to be passing slowly, or faster than usual? | Part of it has quite a bit to do with endocrine system and the release of hormones. Adrenaline enhances our rate of time perception to assist in fight or flight scenarios, so our mental 'clocks' would be going faster than actual, giving us the experience of 'adrenaline dilation'. Commonly experienced in skydiving, where the diver would always overestimate the duration of the jump when in actual timing it would have only lasted minutes.There are a few "answers" here, but you should know that they're actually just theories and we don't really know for sure. Time and perception are concepts that aren't very well understood. |
How do deserts form? Where are those sands coming from? | As the others have said, it's erosion due to wind. A modern example of this happening, and happening fast, would be the US Dust Bowl of the 30s. Farmers overplowed the prairie soil and paid for it. An ensuing heat wave and drought dried out the soil, making it looser, and the prairie winds did the rest, creating desert conditions practically overnight. What once was farmland became fine grain sand and proceeded to wreak havoc as the wind carried it almost cross-country sometimes. |
How is suspended WITH pay a punishment? | It's not a punishment. Just a step in the investigative process. The career that some people have is not ALL about the money either.For civil servants , the purpose of a suspension with pay is to get these people off the streets while simultaneously eliminating the risk of a lawsuit by the suspended employee for wrongfully suspending them . It is cheaper just to pay the suspended employee their wages until the investigation is complete than to have to pay legal fees and penalties in the event it is determined that the suspended employee actually did nothing wrong and having the suspended employee sue the city for the lost wages.Suspended with pay basically says you may have done something wrong but we can't prove it and need to investigate it. Whereas suspended without pay says you done fucked up.Suspended with pay is "we're not sure if we're firing you yet, and we can't stop paying you until the investigation is over." |
why people put up with Democrats and Republicans redrawing voter district lines to skew elections? | Because districts do, on occasion, need to be changed as populations shift. So normally when gerrymandering occurs, it's under the guise of a necessary redistricting. |
If salt is so bad for cars, why do we use it on the roads? | Not everyone uses salt; where I am, we use sand and dirt - not because of the refreezing issue, but because it's a semi-desert environment and I think the salt is ecologically problematic. Having lived in New England where they do use salt, I can say that it is REALLY much better at dealing with ice than sand is. It's a little bit of a pain to have to wash your car's undercarriage, sure, but it's better than sliding all over the road, wrecking and/or dying. |
If R=(V/P)+G How do we find P? | You can add, subtract, multiply or divide by the same thing on both sides of the = at the same time . If you do that the equation will still be true. So first you subtract G on both sides. giving you: R- G = V/P then multiply P on both sides: * P = V divide with on both sides: P = V / Hopes that makes sense. edit: a small clarification.1) subtract G from both sides. Leaving you with R-G=V/P+G-G. Since is equal to 0, we can remove it. So now we have R-G=V/P. 2) multiply P to both sides. Leaving you with * P= * P. But since P/P is equal to 1. The equation becomes * P=V. 3) divide both sides by . Since a number divided by itself is 1 , this means that we get the final equation of P=V/Basic algebra, whatever you do to one side you must do to the other. your goal is to get p on one side by itselfYou do the opposite function to remove a letter from the side it is on R=+g Subtract G from both sides R-G=v/p Multiply P on both sides R-G =V You can take both R and G together and divide them away from P to get P=V/R=+GSo subtract g from both sides to getR-G=V/PThen multiply by 1/V to remove itfrom the P side/V=1/PNow you want to take the inverse of both sides so that you can get P which naively means flipping each side SO )=PI hope That helped', "The people at /r/learnmath are really helpful for these types of questions! I'm very happy that you are making an effort on self improvement :) |
The uncontrollable quiver you get in your voice when public speaking | This is really weird to me to hear because I've been involved in theatre since I was 6 and thus have never been nervous about public speaking. Makes no difference to me if I'm standing up in front of 6000 people or my best friend at the dinner table. I'm just talking. To people who are saying they get nervous, might I suggest taking some community theatre classes as a way to get used to speaking in public? Theatre is also a great way to get over that general self-consciousness. You learn that it's ok to be silly and make mistakes . It a) helps you get over the fear of 'messing up' in public and b) helps you recover if you do make a gaff. It's very freeing once you get to the point where you're just totally comfortable in your skin, no matter what happens. It's a very lovely zen way of going through life. |
.. Why can i mimic someone elses voice perfectly in my head but cannot make that same voice out loud? | Why can you imagine yourself throwing the game-winning touchdown in the Superbowl but cannot even make it to the big game in real life. ", 'Same reason I play guitar like Slash in my head but play like Abu Hamza in real life. |
Would training under increased gravity, be it strength or otherwise, be beneficial to humans once they returned to normal gravity? | This question would probably fare better in an askscience thread. That being said, I would have to say that any training done in a specific environment would also constitute acclimating to that environment. Your body will be training in heavier gravity and so you will adapt to heavy gravity, and I'm not sure how well that would translate to Earth-like conditions. That is, if your body can even survive strenuous exercise in heavier gravity. At some point it would become a struggle just to sit upright.10 times Earths gravity? *I dont even feel it.* |
can organs be strengthened through trauma (e.g., if an obese person lost a ton of weight, would his/her heart be stronger than average)? | This will be somewhat long but hopefully answers some part of your question. Organs are different from muscles in that unlike muscles, damage doesn't lead to an increase strength. For example, the heart serves a specific function and that is to circulate deoxygenated blood to the lungs and oxygenated blood to the rest of the body. In order to do this it has to work at a certain efficiency. We call this the cardiac output . Which is how much blood the heart pumps per minute. Two things decide this. The stroke volume which is the amount of blood pumped from the left ventricle per beat. And the heart rate which is self explanatory. So CO = SV x HR. Your will try to maintain CO as to properly perfuse the rest of the body. So if SV changes then so does HR to compensate and so forth. Now if you suffer a heart attack, have a bad valve the heart can hypertrophy and make the ventricle stiffer. A stiffer ventricle means less blood can enter the ventricle and decreases SV. To maintain this you would need an increase in HR. Overtime this high heart rate has detrimental effects. It's like your heart is constantly running a marathon. Now on the other side say you are an avid runner. People who run so much have low resting heart rates. This will cause an increase in SV. Overtime this increased amount causes dilation of the ventricle and can have bad effects as well. This is also similar for people with heart failure. So in all trauma doesn't always strengthen an organ. This differs for every organ. But in general trauma is bad. In fact even muscle trauma is bad which is why there are certain proper lifting techniques for body building etc. |
Why In the Christmas song "it's the most wonderful time of the year" do they talk about telling " scary ghost Stories?" | During Victorian times, it was a tradition. This [article] links it to the fact that the timing of Christmas for Christians is tied to pagan winter solstice celebrations. We don't really know an exact date for the biblical stories, and the early Christian church tied it's major celebrations to the major celebrations of the religions that Europeans already had to make it more familiar. To pagans, this time of year was spooky because the nights are so long and the days are so short. [The Turn of the Screw], my favorite book and the one I think is scariest is a ghost story told on Christmas. Here's another [article] that lists some more Christmas ghost stories. |
how it is possible to infect your pc by just visiting a website? | In addition to downloaded executable code, there is possibility that virus spread by downloading of a picture. Data isn't just data, it has to be loaded into a program to display it. |
In the NFL, why are quarterbacks primarily white, whereas most other plays are primarily black? | A lot of it has to do with role models. If you are a 22 year old entering the NFL in 2015, you likely started getting serious about football in 2005, and were more likely to model yourself after someone of the same race. That year, the top 12 passers were white, while the top player at just about every other position was black. Similarly, those players coming into the league in 2005 started out looking at players in 1995, and those players watched 1985 players, and so on, going to a time when racist views let people to believe blacks wouldn't make good QB. |
If speakers vibrate to make a sound, how can they produce two or more pitches at once? | _URL_3_ Look at the last soundwave in the illustration. Your speakers aren't producing a single sound wave for every sound. Instead they all get added together and the sound wave produced looks like the last one. |
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