query stringlengths 8 249 | answer stringlengths 45 7.8k |
|---|---|
How does cancer end up killing a person? | There are a lot of ways that it can play out. Cancer makes your blood more prone to clotting, so sometimes people develop fatal clots. As it spreads and invades through the body, it may pierce through boundaries that normally separate, say, your stool-filled colon from your bloodstream, causing a massive and very likel... |
How much time does it take for disposable plastic water bottles to become dangerous to refill/reuse? | Spend the 6-10 dollars to buy a basic water bottle form Nalgene or a a little more and get a steel one. They are washable, refillable, and cost effective in the long run. Problem solved, and you can hand wash or throw in the dishwasher to your heart's content to sterilize and reuse.A bit late, but I once used my plasti... |
Why do phone touchscreens react to skin and water but not to metal and other conductors? | [Here is a video which explains it fully.] It's basically anything which is big and conductive. |
How does the alarm for a passenger not wearing their seatbelt in a car NOT go off when you have a large amount of weight sitting in the passenger seat? | The car doesn't know unless you have some new model of car which I haven't heard of. It's just that there aren't many objects you put in the passenger seat which weigh nearly as much as a human. |
Why does the answer in a series of operations change when you don't follow the PEMDAS rule? | A mathematical operation is called [associative] when it doesn't matter what order it's done in. For example, addition is associative, so +4 = 2+. Not all operations are associative. For example -4 ≠ 2-. So you can't just assume an operation will be associative. And you're not talking about a single operation, you're t... |
why didnt hydrogen fuel cells take off? | I don't know the exact reason but I believe the answer has to do with a couple of things. First is the cost of producing a hydrogen fuel cell is still more expansive than producing an electric or gasoline engine. Second, the power output of a hydrogen fuel cell is far less than that of an electric or gasoline engine. I... |
When someone is sentenced to death, why does it take so long to carry out the sentence? Up to 25-30 years in some cases. | * you can't reverse an execution, those convicted of a capital offense are given every opportunity to appeal* many groups oppose the death penalty on moral grounds and will make significant legal resources available to those facing the death penalty, more so than someone merely facing life in prison* governor, judges, ... |
female voices are higher pitch than male voices, so why can you still hear the difference between a male and female voice when they sing the exact same note for example? | Because timbre is what determines the characteristics of an instrument. Think of each person as a monophonic synthesiser that has a very unique oscillator and filter settings, because the size and shape of each person's throat, chest and head are different, the sound produced by each will be different, and that's how t... |
Body makes cancer cells everyday, why don’t we have cancer? | Cancer happens when the body's immune system is compromised. There is a growing body of studies and knowledge from bio-regenerative sciences which show that improving the body's immune system destroys cancer much better than chemotherapy and radiation treatments. While not yet mainstream, boosting the immune system sev... |
What is economic left and right? I don't understand. | There is no straightforward answer to this question, but I'll try. The most basic difference between the left and right side of the economic debate is a question of a right to ownership of means of production. Under means of production, I understand the capital i.e. factories, utilities, education, health care and othe... |
What exactly is health insurance? | Premium: the amount you pay an insurance company per month Deductible: If something bad happens this is the amount that you have to pay before your insurance kicks in. Co pay: similar to a deductible, mostly used for regular medicines or check ups. You pay this amount for a check up or prescription while the insurance ... |
What's the difference between clinical depression and sadness? | Sadness is a reactive response to a situation or event Depression is a disorder which can happen for reasons not related to events etc. from the person's viewpoint it seems like it happens for no reason, scientifically there's some stuff happening with chemicals in your brain causing it. People can naturally get over s... |
Why can't we just do fission and fusion on the same atoms an unlimited amount of times? | Light element like hydrogen produce more energy during fusion than needed to create that fusion, but it would take it would take too much energy to create fission . Heavy element like Uranium produce more energy during fission than need to start that fission, but it would take more energy to create fusion with those el... |
why are loading bars inconsistent? | First, the programmers don't really care. But the other issue is that in many cases it isn't easy to determine how long the process will take to determine where the bar should be. Suppose for example that the program needs to download some data, run some processes on it, copy the resulting data to disk, then run some m... |
Why can potent corrosive acids be held in glass beakers? | Some acids will actually corrode glass. You can look up acid etching on glass. That's how they make patterns on some mirrors. These acids generally have to be stored in specific kinds of plastic that won't bond with the acid |
Why do car manufacturers keep making similar styles instead of rebooting a more vintage style that people would spend crazy amounts on, or even making a new car thats similar to those vintage styles? | There is 2 reasons I can think of, one finicial and one technical. Finically, the amount of people that would be interested in a retro style car is probably just not enough to warrant full production. Customs and small quantity shops are already established and can produce many classic cars vs 1 production model. A maj... |
What is so hard about calculus? | Calculus tends to be the first time student is expected to think in a more abstract way about math. It's not really that it's so hard per se, but that it's usually the first example of a new, higher level of math students encounter. So it's mostly just a question of why curriculum is structured as it is. You totally co... |
How is water digested? | It's absorbed from your large intestine, into your blood stream. Your kidneys filter that blood to make urine. If you have a lot of water in your bloodstream, they form dilute urine , if you have low water content in your blood, they form concentrated urine . So no matter how much water you consume, kidneys keep water ... |
Why ISS don't perform a constant movement to create G Force so astronauts can avoid bad results of the Zero G environment? | As impressive as the ISS is, by any objective standard it is the equivalent of a horse drawn carriage for space. A ship capable of creating gravity by rotating is significantly more advanced and is currently beyond our technological and economic capabilities. We will get there with time, I imagine whatever replaces the... |
what happens to your body during a drug overdose, and how can it be stopped immediately? | It completely depends on the drug. A heroin overdose and a meth overdose do completely different things. They're both bad but neither are good for you. An overdose just means that you've taken too much of a drug and it becomes harmful to your body, preventing it from operating normally. |
How could different human species reproduce to make fertile young? | That definition is a good starting point but actual nature is much more complicated. Some species can interbreed with a mismatched number of chromosomes and some can't . Various equine mixes are USUALLY sterile but sometimes not. Lions and tigers are clearly different species but can mix. Domestic cats and some Wildcat... |
Why do people start to feel sick when reading in cars? | It's hard for your eyes to focus on the words on the page. In nature, that's generally associated with food poisoning, so your brain tries to make you throw up to get rid of it. |
Why is talking about politics in the United States taboo, socially, when that is what the nation was founded upon? | Talking Politics is a fight in a box. It gets dicey even in Canada and places in Europe But in the USA? Where people are regularly told they're under attack and that anyone who disagrees with deregulating mining protections of national parks wants the terrorists to win? Talking politics with friends can be a quick and ... |
Why is it so dangerous to consume human meat? | For most part it's not dangerous to consume it. You won't choke up and die from eating a human meat steak. Acquiring fresh disease free supply is the issue. |
What is happening in our vocal cords/throat when we lose our voice | Not an expert, so don't take my word for it but my basic understanding from what I've heard from choir directors and such is that the vocal cords become inflamed/swollen, making them chafe against each other when they vibrate. If you tend to use your voice often, or like to scream a lot, even if they heal after a week ... |
why would a company owner/ CEO want to have a board of directors? | Generally you didn't just start a company with your own bare hands. You got other people's money to help you build it. Those people have a say in how the company gets run. If you can self fund the company and have no outside investor such that you can retain complete ownership then you won't have a board of directors t... |
Why do reproductive organs need to be covered in a hospital xray but not at the airport? | Metal detector.. I've never seen an actual x-ray at an airport that is aimed towards people and not luggage |
Why do companies like Verizon work so hard to limit customers internet usage? | What's the average limit on broadband plans in the USA? I mean, the one you can afford if you're a student or just started to live there with an average job, how much data can you afford? EDIT: Are the mobile data plans different or bundled with broadband? If different, how much mobile data can you get on average? |
Why is still there no viable male contraceptive aside from having yourself snipped? | The true answer is that there hasn't been nearly enough attention and proper research dedicated to this task compared to female contraceptives. |
How "voice training" affect larynx muscles and vocal cords biologically? | I'm a streamer and I use sound isolating headphones. I naturally talk louder as I dimply don't hear myself. After 6 hours of stream my vical cords do get tired still, but not as much as at the beginning. The difference isn't that great, I would say. So I assume it does help a little, but not enough to make it worth tra... |
Why rainbows are arched and what factors decide their dimensions? | You know those pictures that change as you move? They're made out of lots of little ridges and the picture you see when you look from one direction is different than the picture you see from another direction? A rainbow is like that. The raindrops are shooting multicolored light in all different directions, but you onl... |
Why aren't animals dinosaur sized anymore? | There are animals larger than any known dinosaur alive today. However, they live in the ocean. Animals that size on land today would run afoul of a significant disadvantage, humans. We don't like big, dangerous, disruptive animals. We don't leave many vast pristine environments for some large herd to feed itself off of... |
Where does the idea of breathing into a brown paper bag when panicking come from? | It's to increase the amount of carbon dioxide in the blood. I'd try to explain, but this does a better job! _URL_0_ |
I read that lightning produces enough energy to power a city. Why can't we harness the power of lightning as a form of clean energy? | There are problems. * lightning damages most things it comes into contact with, which would likely include any apparatus to catch it * you would need some way to store the energy that can charge up basically instantaneously with a tolerance for an excessively high current. These don't exist. |
How does defogging the windshield work? | The fog on the windows is primarily caused by differences in moisture rather than differences in temperature, though temperature plays a role too. Air that travels through your car's AC is also dehumidified, so if it blows on a humid windshield it will take some of that moisture away from the glass, which is what defog... |
why does our sun appear yellow/orange, while distant stars appear whiteish / blue? | Sunlight more or less defines our standard of white light. It only looks a little yellowish when viewed in contrast with the blue sky, because our eyes are much better at seeing differences in colour than absolute colours. As for the stars, there are red stars and blue up there, but their colours appear very washed out... |
What is it about Maths that makes it the most commonly disliked subject in school? | It's a new language that you have to learn in a specific order to get right and there is a single right answer that can't be bullshitted. Both hard things to deal with for kids. It's also pretty much entirely conceptual so most people won't get into it and end up bored to tears. Taxes are a lot like that too. Just a gu... |
How is the US able to get away with such a huge debt for so long? | in addition to what has already been stated. It's not just the US that is in debt. Other countries are also in debt to the US. The US owes about $21 trillion. At the same time, the rest of the world owes the US nearly the same amount. So if any one country tried to call in their IOU, the whole system would crash. |
How are brain surgeons able to remove a tumor inside the brain without damaging the brain? | They do damage the brain. They just damage the absolute minimum required to remove the tumor, if they're good. |
Why tranquilizer darts have a fluffy red tail thing? | It's called [fletching]. It's serves the same purpose as the feathers on the end of an arrow. It aerodynamically stabilizes the dart in flight, allowing it to fly straight and true. |
what’s the difference between a virus and a bacteria ? | First of all, size. Viruses are very very small, consisting of a string of genetic code, a protein sheath surrounding the genes, and occasionally a second layer comprised of fat to aid in infiltrating new cells. Bacteria are far larger, and consist of most of the same parts we would recognize in our own cells. Viruses ... |
If a human child was somehow raised up by animals, would the child be able to communicate with the animals? | I want to put my dick in you". And they use body language a lot. No verbal communication, other than some noises. Plus, humans can't do certain things animals can. We have no tails or flappy ears, we can't piss a little bit here and then a little bit there, we can't make most of the noises animals can, other stuff Nah.... |
Why do the same species of freshwater fish (like pike, musky, perch) show up in non-contiguous freshwater bodies- especially in the Wisconsin-Minnesota-boundary waters area? | Clarence River Cod". It is thought there was a flooding event about a million years ago that let fish from one river system spread to anotherSeperation of species takes hundreds of thousands if not millions of years, the fresh bodies of water havent even been their in their current forms that long. |
Why Windows still slows down after some time, and it's not fixed even when reinstalled. | It could be dust which is causing your CPU to heat up and throttle. Install a temperature sensor software to see what your CPU temps are. If they are high like 30C over ambient temperature while your computer is idle i.e. not running anything too demanding like a game then that means you need to clean up the CPU heatsi... |
Why do flies "like" us? What do they find interesting in our skin, so much so that they return to rest insistently even after being driven out? | One time a fly was bothering me when I was doing the dishes. I grabbed a knife and swatted at it. I shit you not I cut it's right wing off! I put it in the microwave for 8 minutes. Then I opened it and it jumped out at me. Thought for sure it would have exploded. Scared the shit out of me. Anyways, moral of the story i... |
What are the practical difference between apple phones and android phones? | Apple: it just works. It's high quality hardware, and the software is very easy to use. Certainly if you have other Apple devices, it's very easy to synchronize cloud data, music, calendars, On the downside it's expensive, and not that personal. Apart from the color and the apps you install, nearly all iPhones are iden... |
If white rice is so lacking in nutritional value, how come it's a staple for over half the human race? | I think it is lacking in nutrition if eaten by it's self. For example I have heard beans and rice together form full protien chains. So it makes a good filler/ supplement to other foods. |
If I pull a plug from an outlet does the electricity instantly disappear, if so why? | The simplest explanation I can think of is to pretend that the electricity are like water. When you turn the tap on the water flows through the pipe , when you turn the tap off the water is still there, it just doesn't move any more. Electricity works in pretty much the same way - the electrons are still there when you... |
Why are personality disorders so difficult to treat? | The brain has many self-defense mechanisms that prevent things from changing it. That's mighty handy to survive poisonous plants. These defense mechanisms also block most chemicals that might change the state of the brain in a desirable way. In addition, there is not real test for most such disorders. The person might ... |
Why eggs in Europe don't have to be refrigerated while in North America they do. | When eggs are laid, they have a protective coating on them that slows down possible contamination that would eventually cause the eggs to spoil. Chicken eggs tend to be exposed to waste material so in the US they are washed. A consequence of that washing is the protective coating is removed. For this reason the eggs no... |
How does a home central AC work? Does it use any water? | An air conditioner works by circulating a fluid between two heat exchangers. There is a cold one inside of your ductwork and a hot one outside. A heat exchanger is a coil of tubing with fins on it. It trades heat between the fluid inside with air until they are the same temperature. You can manipulate the fluid's tempe... |
How did humanity get this far with only recently having clean, filtered water to drink from ? | The source of clean water is a lot more abundant and clean in ancient times than now, naturally filtered. Fire was also discovered millenia ago and we've a record of people boiling water to drink from ancient time.Boiling their water maybe? I have family in Cuba and it’s common to boil their tap water . If not, you get... |
In animation, objects that are going to move in a scene (usually rocks) are a different color than anything around it. Why is this? | Three reasons: One is because the process used to make older shows is called 'cel animation' and involved layers upon layers of artwork that was combined into a single scene. Disney pioneered this [technique] and made use of it for his movies, which drastically increased the speed that animation could be produced. Howe... |
Q-tips have a warning not to use in the ear canal. So what are Q-tips for? | Along with the other answers, they are great for cleaning anything with a lot of nooks and crannies. I can go through an entire box when I'm cleaning rifles. |
What happens if you take a sleeping pill right after having a long sleep? | I accidentally took an ambien one morning, mistaking it for my thyroid pill. No choice to stay home - I was in the military and my office was on an inspection deadline. The first two hours of work were excruciating to power through. I felt like I was trying to function after an all-nighter. I eventually rebounded, but ... |
Why are most archaeological sites buried? Why would they get covered with that much earth? | in the case of cities it is because cities are in objectively good locations and civilizations don't just decide to leave their current city, move 5 miles away and rebuild everything. and they don't have garbage trucks and bulldozers. so garbage tends to get buried over time. it is a lot easier than excavating and then... |
Why it is said that how SSRIs work is unknow, when their name clearly suggests that they block re uptake of serotonin? | They do increase available serotonin nearly immediately but that's not how/why they help symptoms or they would provide relief immediately. The effects are downstream, meaning changing one thing changes something else. No one knows what that something else is. |
When a magnet moves things around, where is that energy coming from? | Electromagnetism is one of the four fundamental forces of the universe. To rephrase simply, it's always there and will always be there. More mechanically, some types of particles interact with the electromagnetic field and some do not. That's a property of the particle. When the particle is present in an electromagneti... |
How does a nose produce a seemingly infinite amount or snot? | I actually learned this recently in Anatomy and Phys. lecture: essentially, your blood is composed of liquid plasma and formed elements . When your nose runs seemingly endlessly, the plasma is filtered through and used to produce snot by the mucous membranes of the nasal passages. In other words, you're leaking plasma ... |
Why do American houses have such thin walls? | Well, it's a movie, so take it with a grain of salt. And second, standard American housing construction is comprised of wood frames, wood studs, and drywall. Assuming you don't hit a stud, drywall isn't terribly resistant . |
How do MRIs work? | If you close your eyes and tap different things with your fingernail you'll notice that they give off different sounds. If you practiced you probably could figure out what many things are made of just by the sound they makes when you tap them. If you kept your eyes closed and had a friend start tapping things you not o... |
What does pleading guilty mean? | Just to add one more reason why someone might plead guilty : sometimes people acknowledge that they've done something wrong and regret it. Part of the purpose of the justice system is meant to be to reform people, so it is good to encourage this kind of honesty.It essentially prevents his case from going to trial, maki... |
Why the hell do geese slowly walk across the road instead of fly? | Because we haven't gotten sick enough of the fuckers to run them down. I live where geese stopped migrating and moved in. 20 lb pigeons with poos the size of poodle's poo Edit. And because actual doing so is against the law. Damn.Why dont you sprint everywhere you go rather than walk? |
What actually happens to the body when someone dies of old age, and why? | Your cells die faster then they are made you essentially slowly turn to dust that's a huge simplification but this is an eli5 This generally starts in your 30s you slowly start dieing this is probably going to get removed for being to short but it's essentially just you start breaking faster then you're building |
Why is the sky Red, Orange, Yellow, and Blue, but never green? ROYgBIV tells me that the light wavelengths should go from yellow to green before they get blue. | You absolutely do see green in sunsets, regularly. It's faint, but at altitude it's almost always there. Source: airline pilot, I see a lot of sunsets, many are green. |
Why is compiled code impossible to access unless the uncompiled source code is available. Can’t game devs get a retail ROM and decompile the code from that? | [Decompilers] exist, but lots of information gets lost when compiling. For example, code comments and variable names can't be recovered. This makes it difficult to reverse engineer code from executables. |
Why are there no electric guitars with built in speakers or amplifiers | My dad has an old electric guitar with a built-in speaker. I'd have to check on the brand and model though, but they do exist. Just doesn't seem very practical versus having an actual amp.In addition to everything else everyone’s mentioned: the electric guitar is a lightweight, mobile instrument compared to its peers .... |
Why do litters of animals have a runt? Why is there always one offspring that happens to be weaker than the rest? | Multiple reasons birth defect or opportunity. lets say a mother has 6 nips but had 7 babies, if that extra baby can't get in cause of the first feeding you can assume the others are strong enough to push him out of the way and continue feeding. |
- What is Cerebral Palsy? | It is non-progressing brain damage which happened early in life which results in difficulty with movement. It has many causes: prematurity; oxygen starvation in the womb, or at birth; infections or other problems during pregnancy - are the common ones, but basically it can be any thing which causes brain damage Movemen... |
What exactly is "hacking" and is it like how it is in the movies? | Hacking as viewed by the media is breaching security. Hacking in the IT community is generally, learning how things work and getting them to do more things than they were originally intended, not necessarily for nefarious use. In the past, hackers would prefer to use different terms for the later. I don't know if that'... |
How does a chameleon know what color to change into? | I'm pretty sure it only changes colour to signal/attract mates or warn off competition. It's a common misconception that they do it to match their environment. |
What was/is the purpose of the LHC? | There was a long time ago that we thought that Atoms were the smallest particle in existence, and then we learned that Atoms actually had photons, electrons, and neutrons inside of them. Now we have learned that there are even smaller particles that make up the atoms, which we call quarks. The problem is that it's not ... |
How did Musicians used to make money when their songs got played on the radio or their videos got played on MTV back in the 90s? | Live shows, personal appearances, and license agreements with movies, tv, and even some other surprising partnerships can be lucrative. It's not always about selling a few records, but who is willing to pay for exclusive rights or a personalized experience.They made money because people back then would actually go out ... |
Why do many internet services require REGIONAL servers? Will we need them forever? | The speed of light is a harsh obstacle: the circumference of the earth divided by the speed of light in optical fiber comes out to equivalent to about 150-200 milliseconds for a packet of information to travel halfway around the world and back, under perfect circumstances . This alone makes global servers a pain, and o... |
32 bit processor vs 64 bit processor | Overly simplified: A 32-bit processor is able to deal with 32-bits of information per clock cycle. That's 32 individual 1 or 0 digits for every 'Hertz' the processor is rated for, so a 1 GHz CPU would theoretically be able to do that 1 billion times per second. A 64-bit processor can squeeze twice as much data into eac... |
The best way to get past fear of side effects from a flu shot? (Anxiety disorder doesn’t need to make sense to work..) | This is a subjective question, and that's not allowed on ELI5. You might try posting this in r/nostupidquestions. |
How ABS Braking system works as a safety mechanistic | really simply it pulses your brakes so your brakes don't lock up causing the tires to screech on pavement. any noise your tires make is loss of traction which increases stopping distance |
At what point do you stop floating in space and start falling? | I think this [from XKCD] is the best explanation I've seen of this. It also answers your question. It's not a question of a specific point - it's a question of a specific speed. As soon as you slow down to below orbital speed then you will start falling. But there's actually another answer to your question. If you get ... |
Why are some countries able to have free health care? What is the simplest explanation for why this hasn’t been implemented in the US? | The simplest explanation boils down to two things: Politics and greed. The US is very anti-socialist, and the people who currently control health care-related industries in the US don't want to give up that money and power to the government. |
Why do electronics need to turn themselves off and back on to update? | It's not the electronics as such. It's the software inside them. When you turn on the PS4, it loads various programs into its memory, in order to turn a bunch of chips into a working gaming system. By far the simplest way to update those programs is for the machine to download the new version, store it in place of the ... |
How do certain websites prevent you from backing out of them to the previous page no matter how many times you click on the back button | Sites get paid by the number of times they display. Each time you click back and land on that page again, they get paid for the ad content on that page. It's a sleazy trick. If you encounter this, after the 1st time, right click on the back button, and scroll down to a page that is 1 older than the offending page. It m... |
Why does the inside of International Space Station (ISS) have zero gravity despite ISS being pulled by Earth's gravity | Okay. Ignore all the nonsense about 'freefall', and falling towards the earth but somehow missing it because of sideways motion. That's not how gravity works. Gravity is always towards the earth in a continuous sphere. As you move sideways, it's still pulling you closer towards the earth. What's really happening is tha... |
- How do eggs and sperm merge and when, precisely, is the unique DNA coded? | This has always confused me too. I thought too that a child's DNA consisted of one 'string' of the father and the other of the mother to combine the double helix until someone pointed put that is not how it works because the base pairs would never line up properly. So, is it more like the child gets both sides of gene ... |
Would an airplane automatically fly after reaching a certain speed? | Yep, the airflow over the surface of the wing is what creates the lift so whether it's being pushed throuh the air by the thrust of an engine , towed by a larger craft like a glider or even has a strong enough wind blowing over the wing lift will be created. |
If condoms are still only 98% effective even when used perfectly, what is the “ineffective” 2% caused by? | > I’m not referring to the condom breaking because that would be an obvious failure. But that's what the 2% in the statistics are referring to. If a condom doesn't break *and* is used properly, then it is, by definition 100% effective. The most common causes of condoms being ineffective are from breaks and improper use... |
Why is a 4-digit code sufficient for banking purposes but not for most online accounts?ELI5: | Online, anyone can try to enter passwords all day long, so they need to be longer and more secure. If you manage to steal someone's debit card, you are only going to get 3 or 4 tries before the bank locks you out. |
Which component(s) primarily cause your phone to slow down over time? | The software. The hardware components that you Phone has don't really degrade much over time other than the battery and the battery will not slow the system down it will just mean you need to charge it more frequently. When components break they break for good. With a few exceptions it will either work as normal or not... |
how do deep sea creatures survive under the enormous pressure? | Think of it like this. If you used a sponge at the surface and then brought it to extreme depths. The high pressure moves in and out of the sponge and there's nothing to really crunch . Now you take a human. We have lungs full of air, something like 5 liters. 5 liters in volume and be compressed to very small . So ther... |
How have things like Magic:The Gathering card packs avoided the current gambling laws that game lootboxes are under fire for dispite being conceptually the same? | Because boosters always provide a physical product. You're not technically gambling. You're paying a fiver for 15 pieces of card and a metallized plastic wrapper. There's just a bonus chance that in addition to your 15 pieces of card, one of those cards will have a red mark on it, or be shiny. Gambling laws do not enco... |
Why can't we insert a giant set of parachutes and detach a plane's body of the rest in a case of a plane falling? | Firstly, it would not save many lives since many lives aren't lost to airplanes that fail sufficiently high in the sky to have a parachute do anything. Secondly, the wings of a plane _act like a parachute_. There are very few types of failures that result in plane not being able to glide or fly under reduced power. Thi... |
How are sites like ThePirateBay still up? | Honestly if content makers, especially film and music peeps just put stuff out at the same time globally and at a reasonable and realistic price, the need for piracy would drop. There's been numerous studies that show access to content is the chief reason for piracy. I'm not just talking current content either. Old fil... |
Why don’t we have free energy today if Tesla discovered the rotating magnetic field can provide free energy for the entire planet back in 1882? | Telsa discovered no such thing, but that doesn't stop crackpots and snake oil salesman from claiming they have rediscovered is secrets, and you will get rich off of a tiny investment in their product. When Telsa spoke of free energy, he didn't mean it in the economic sense, it would still cost money to produce. He mean... |
If earth has the perfect conditions for life to form, then why is all life the result of a single genesis event and not many? | We have a ~3-4 billion year fossil record and can only examine the genetics of the last few tens of thousands of years . It's true that all life in this window shares basic genes universally required for life. However, many processes are the result of convergent evolution, where the same evolutionary pressures give ris... |
Why do large, orbital structures such as accretion discs, spiral galaxies, planetary rings, etc, tend to form in a 2d disc instead of a 3d sphere/cloud? | They do start as large balls of stuff with random orbits, but as they orbit, things end up colliding with each other and get bumped into new orbits. Objects in similar orbits are much less likely to collide, and so most of the collisions are between objects with orbits that aren't along the main plane. The objects orbi... |
why does slouching feel comfortable if it is a bad position for our backs | Slouching tends to shift your weight off of your muscles and on to your skeleton and skin. It feels more comfortable because because you aren't doing anything active to stay sitting up. But it may ache later if your weight was on a joint, pulling your skin, cutting off circulation, or causing blood to pool in a particu... |
how electric vehicles are more environmentally friendly than combustion engine cars. | This is a somewhat tricky subject. There are currently many ongoing debates wheter an electric car actually is more environment friendly. It is true that an electric car produces no exhaust gases but unless you get the electricity for your car from a sustainable source, then it doesn't matter. Another aspect is the rel... |
Why do batteries charge faster than they deplete? | They don't, typically a battery *can * be discharged much faster than it can then be recharged - but many devices don't draw anywhere near as much power during regular use as their batteries *can * accept. As an example - your car battery *can * supply 1000 amps but it will flatten very quickly when doing that and woul... |
How do new currency counterfeit prevention measures work if we still accept old currency? Can't counterfeiters just make fakes of old currency? | They technically still could fake it, yes. That being said, the US Treasury regularly takes old bills out of circulation. As time goes on, those older bills become increasingly less common. When that happens, it can be a bit easier to tell when people are using fake money. Think about it, if someone hands you 5 really ... |
What actually is "Energy"? | r/physics may be more helpful, but I believe it can be explained as something's potential to do work.it's literally just a bookkeeping trick physicists use. Once you realise that if one thing hits another the motion transfers between objects, you need a way to keep track of the "amount" of motion getting transferred. B... |
Why do sports such as boxing and UFC win belts for being champion? When was this ever a thing and why belts? | Good luck getting that through the loops on your trousers. It's a cummerbund, not a belt. As far as I can tell from what I've read, the cummerbund was originally a sash such as what miss world contestants wear to show their affiliation to teams etc. The next step was to use the same means to show winnings and titles. |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.