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Why is Russia not so rich? | How? Resources. They provide the power and raw materials to fuel those larger economies. They have been buying up mineral rights all over. . As to why look at the population prior to the world wars and that they were an industrial power house. Germany in WW1 and 2 rightly knew that russia military could not be ignored ... |
What would happen to a dead body floating in space? | If the dead body is in a fully functioning spacesuit, the microorganisms on and in our body will probably find themselves in a life supporting environment for some time and proceed to digest the organic matter of the corpse somewhat similarly than on Earth, given that there is air in the suit and the body is 'fresh', e... |
With technology generally moving pretty fast, why aren't [rechargable] batteries improving accordingly? Or are they and we're still pushing their limits? | In addition to the other responses here specifically regarding batteries, with improvements in storage, processors , developers have lost some incentive to really streamline their code. 20 years ago, it was important that programs took up very little space and were as efficient as possible because computing power was e... |
Why Does it seem like every single country sells arms to Saudi Arabia, and why does Saudi Arabia need so many in the first place? | Saudi Arabia distributes those weapons, both officially and unofficially. They're roll is to destabilize the region. Assad, Gaddafi, and most of the political leaders we've been opposing were working on fixing the regional instabilities. That's not to say everything would be peaceful without US intervention. Just thing... |
how does a gif or a jpeg lose pixels as it gets shared more and more? When you copy it doesn’t it copy the whole file? | If you just copy the file to someone else or a different storage location, then no, it doesn't lose anything. However if you do something like opening in an image editor and resaving it then it goes through another cycle of encoding, possibly losing image information depending on the compression factor applied. |
Could the wildfires in California have been prevented by raking? | No. It's impractical to clear entire forests of ground debris by hand. Raking could help homeowners who use it to clear brush and ground debris from around their properties. The combination of regular or controlled burns is what regenerates forests and clears out the undergrowth. It also has the benefits of making the ... |
How does liquid turn into ice instantly? | It's called super cooled liquid. Normally it happens with very pure bottled water. Take it outta the freezer as liquid, knock it and it turns to ice instantly. Look on YouTube for super cooled water", 'Crystals usually need a nucleus to start growing on. If you cool particle free liquid you can get to a "supercooled" s... |
What’s actually happening to your throat when you lose your voice? How does this happen? | Another similar question I've had is, why is our voice deeper when wake up? And why doesn't that always happen?", 'What about when you shouted too much during the previous evening? |
How big are electric car batteries? | The batteries are huge, and take up either the whole tunnel and back seat area, or, as in Tesla's system, the whole floor between wheel wells. Replacing them takes time, due to their size and weight. What you suggest about robots has been considered, by Tesla of all companies . Long story short, it's technically feasib... |
Why do guns recoil upward rather than downward? | As already mentioned it's because the barrel of a handgun is above your wrist. Handgun recoil back, and then, since the force isn't in line with your wrist it causes rotation. There is one handgun I know of that is designed more in line with your wrist. Chiappa Rhino. _URL_0_ |
How do scientists know what dinosaurs sound like? | We don't. We can only hypothesize based on the current information known to us. Saying that, I'm sure a complete set of dinosaur bones with intact ossicles can be used to digitize how sound moves through an organism. Birds are modern dinosaurs so maybe there's an evolutionary correlation in the structures used to produ... |
Why does the US have such a small amount of train routes compared to Europe? | Large parts of the US didn't reach population densities high enough for widespread passenger rail to be economical until after the invention of the automobile. On the East coast, especially in the Northeast, the density of train routes is much more comparable to Europe.Major American cities are much further spread out,... |
Why do trials for new drugs need placebo patients? | They want to know how much the drug helps vs how much a person's brain thinks it's going to help. The placebo effect means that there is almost always some improvement because the human brain is weird. The placebo group just gives them a baseline, a control, to compare the real results with. |
How do deep ocean creatures survive under so much atmospheric pressure? | Our bodies are designed for the pressure of our environment. Evolutionary forces create life forms that are prepared for different parts of the world. Just like some critters live in only hot and some live in only cold and some need water constantly and some need water only every once and a while. When astronauts spend... |
What gives paint its color? And what is happening when two differently colored paints are mixed together to get a new color altogether? | They're often mixed with different things. If they're oil based, they can be taken from related plants and sometimes flowers. If you want a more specific answer, there are elements that show certain colors. Iron is often red as seen in rubies and rust. Copper is often green like the statue of liberty. Cobalt is blue, s... |
what exactly are stem cells and why are they so important and controversial? | Stem cells are non-specialised cells which can be induced to turn into any kind of cells . They can be used to heal difficult to heal injuries or diseases. But adults have limited type/quantity of these cells. It's controversial cos one of the best ways of obtaining stem cells are from fetuses. And the problem is, is i... |
Why does water make things slippery, but licking my finger helps me pull out a cigarette or turn a page? | You know how when you sweat or go for a swim, your clothes are hard to take off? But when you get water on your wood or tile floor, it's slippery? It's because the water reacts differently with the substance. Water clings to your skin to a certain extent, and water also soaks through your paper and sticks to it too now... |
If you cut something on the atomic level will it cause a nuclear explosion? | This is my own opinion but hasn't the atom already been split by Rutherford like waaaaay back in the 1900's ? They're now smashing atoms together . I think that would be more dangerous |
What makes waterboarding so terrible? | It tricks your brain into thinking it's dying. Your brain doesn't like to think that it's dying, so it panics. Death-induced panic over a long period of time not only weakens you physically, but it is seriously damaging to your mind. |
If 95% of the ocean hasn’t been explored, how do we know where the deepest point is ? | Sonar and Deep Radar for the most part. We don't know what's down there, but we know to within a few millimeters where down there is. The Ocean floor is quite comprehensively mapped, although soft features would be ignored by a deep radar scan, solid rock sure is not. |
Why does the USA have a passenger rail system of a third world country? | Alot of our infrastructure is based around highways and roads, not rail. It's the other way around in Europe, many of the large cities and hubs are built around the railway system. This makes it far more convenient to use rail for transportation rather than car. The fact that the countries are smaller helps as well. It... |
How come we can`t consciously control adrenaline? | Because the response adrenaline elicits depends on the situation, it can't wait for you to consciously release adrenaline, that might take too long. Also adrenaline is only really good in short bursts, the effect of adrenaline over a long period of time is bad for your body. |
Why aren’t babies born immune to every illness their mother is immune to? | Basically just because that's not how it works. Everyone else so far has given good answers about the science of how we actually do develop our immune system, but the answer to your actual title is that we as a species just never mutated to have that trait", 'I guess a more general answer is that the immune system is n... |
How can a half built, completely open plywood house frame be fine after sitting open during terrible weather? | Well, if you're talking about rain with strong winds, then a large part is simply surface area. The way I understand it is that the walls are not yet there, correct? If there are walls, the wind would have a lot more area to push against. If it's just the frame though, there is very little surface area to push against.... |
Why is AIDS almost impossible to cure? | Cause it's not the actual thing that kills you. HIV is the virus that you contract. AIDS is the state your body is in when your immune system is depleted. Your body can't fight off new illnesses. This leads to pnumonia, flu, really any highly contagious desiese to hit you hard.On top of what others have already said, H... |
Where does the wax in candles go? I understand that it melts, but as a candle works down does the wax just turn into gas and evaporate? | Other people are more correct than this is going to be. I'll try to make an actual LY5 answer. We'll see how that goes. Paraffin wax, which is what most candles are made out of, is basically a solid, meltable flammable oil. Made from coal or oil products. So they work exactly the same as a lantern with a wick in some o... |
I’m ADHD, why do energy drinks and coffee calm me down as opposed to hype me up? | Same thing happens to me I think it has something to do with having a really fast metabolism whenever I feel like I need energy I drink a monster or what have you and I feel full and calm it's strange and I was born in '95 labeled positive lol", 'I’m ADD so other than feeling more awake I don’t get much of a rush anymo... |
What is happening differently in the mind of someone with schizophrenia when they hear a real noise v.s an auditory hallucination? | The brain clears itself up, but it clears itself up too much, and loses some important stuff , causing schizophrenia. This means that it sometimes can't tell if it's thinking to itself, or hearing something else, so you have the hallucinations.I’ve had auditory hallucinations induced by sleep deprivation many a time . ... |
can anyone help me understand this article a little better? [Dads, Too, Can Pass on Mitochondrial] | I'm not sure what you're asking exactly and I'm no expert but my sister works in genetics, Basically, at one time, it was believed that the mitochondrial DNA was only passed to the child through the mother. Now this article states it is also passed from the father. See, the DNA is passed down from mom to both son's and... |
Why do space craft landers need parachutes if there's no atmosphere? | There's no atmosphere in space but there is around planets Parachutes aren't helpful on the moon but they're kinda helpful on Mars and really helpful for places with thick atmospheres like Titan For Mars, parachutes can only slow you down so much as the atmosphere is thin but it can bring a spacecraft from a thousand k... |
Why was Stalin's USSR not considered Fascist? | action for action's sake" and "disagreement as treason" - all truth has been exposed by religion/tradition, therefore no new learning is possible, only further interpretations of the given truth, and it's refinement. All rationalism and advancements achieved post-Enlightenment is a gross depravity . Action is meritorio... |
Is wearing sunglasses in professional poker illegal/against the rules? If so, why do players in televised poker sometimes wear them? [Sports] | First off, despite how movies and tv like to depict it, most reading is not about looking for some facial tic or obvious tell. It is about using your knowledge about that player and their betting style to inform decisions. For instance, let's say your opponent raises pre-flop, you call with 10-10, and the flop is 8, 10... |
Germany currently contribute the most in European Union budget, giving directly more money than they receive. How is it profitable for them? | Because Germany is a country that manufactures things and sells it to other European countries. So while they might pay more in dues, they gain access to many customers for German businesses. Those businesses sell things and make money and pay employees who then pay taxes in Germany. Basically, there's benefit to being... |
If the Earth's average temperature is rising, why has winter gotten colder in some places? | What we do know is that the polar vortex has been weakening of late. This typically keeps the polar cold contained. What's hypothesised is that climate change is destabilising it, making it go wonky. This has caused the severe winters some places in the nothern hemisphere have seen over the last few years; as the polar... |
Why do people who usually wear glasses look very different without them even though you can see through their glasses? | Frames. You can't see through the frame. And your face will look different if you were to wear the frame with no optics. Then it's like in optical illusions. Adding lines over a shape can make the brain interpret the shape differently. |
Why does the world seem so quiet when it’s snowing outside? | Others have raised good points. Also note that snow has very high surface area per flake, which means a lot of points of contact for sound vibrations to hit first and thus be dampened before reaching your ear. Sound, to you, is just vibrational waves hitting things like air molecules or the ground, which continue like ... |
What is "Mansplaining" and how do you identify it? | It's a man explaining a subject to a woman when that subject is something the woman is an expert on and the man is not. The term has broaden over time and can now generally be used whenever a man simply assumes a woman doesn't know something and explains it to her. Usually in a condescending manner and/or without the w... |
why does eating too much sugar cause diabetes? How does this happen? | The first symptom of Type II Diabetes is the body's cells become less responsive to insulin. If a cell already has more than enough sugar or fat stored inside of it, it will reject available sugar in the blood so that other, more energy demanding cells have a chance to absorb the sugar. This isn't a problem unless ther... |
Why can't we explain what water tastes like? | Because it's flavorless, what you taste it's electrolytes, minerals, sediments and particles that you find locally in your area. |
The Lymph System kills dangerous cells, so why doesn´t it kill cancer cells? | The lymphatic system identifies, attacks and kills foreign hostile organisms. The problem is because cancer is rogue over active human cells the lymphatic system doesn't identify it as a foreign hostile organism so doesn't attempt to attack it in the normal way. - _URL_1_ |
Why does water feel colder than air if they're the same temperature? | When you feel cold, it's because your body is losing heat to the surrounding air as each molecule in the air bumps into you and steals some of your heat. Air is a gas, so the molecules are spread out and there are fewer of them bumping into you. Water is a liquid, so the molecules are much closer, meaning more of them ... |
The riddle on the image I'm leaving in the comments. | It's a logic puzzle which uses the process of elimination and the concept of ambiguity to determine the correct box. The trick is, when an elf says they don't know which box it is, you can eliminate the unambiguous boxes . Eg. If Holly knows the colour of the box, but she can't tell which box it is, you know that the b... |
How does saved data not weigh anything? | It *does * get heavier, or at least change weight, but the amount is so infinitesimal that it's going to be remarkably difficult to detect the weight difference. As calculated in [_URL_0_], the weight of a single bit is: mf ≈ 3.4 x 10^ kg So for a 1TB drive that's 3.7 x 10^ g, which is about the same as just 40 atoms o... |
What keeps movies unreleased? What stops any movie studio employee from just downloading a movie that hasn’t come out and leaking it to the internet? | As mentioned most people don't want to throw away their careers and personal finances to give away a free movie. But beyond that it simply isn't available to very many people. If a graphic artist is working on a shot they only have access to those files, they can't just download the whole movie because there is no reas... |
How is Russia able to do all the naughty things they do without much international intervention? | > Of course nobody wants full-on war, This is basically the reason. Really, the most countries can do is stuff like sanctions, which are limited if Russia *really* wants to do something. They'll take the economic hit. , and nukes. > meddling with US elections There has been some confirmation that they did meddle . But ... |
How does traffic on the freeway happen if we are all going the same speed? | You'd think that if everyone was travelling at the same speed, they would all move at the same speed, evenly. But, of course, they do not travel at the same speed. Sooner or later, someone will slow down. Maybe someone changed lanes in front of them and they had to give them room. If the people behind them are close, t... |
How does electricity pass through a metal heating element without discharging into the water? | Some heating elements are insulated. The ones that aren't insulated do leak current into the water. They are supposed to have a ground screen on the outlet. They are also for use on water which is not too conductive. [Video teardown and explanation of a dangerous one.] |
Why do neighboring states “look” and “feel” different from each other? | There are changes in vegetation, predominant crops, the types of trees, etc. There are also changes in architecture; it's possible to actually differentiate the major cities by their skylines, and smaller towns/villages may have houses with predominantly different architectural styles. And there are differences in weat... |
how do atoms bond, what are valence electrons, and can atoms bond when their valence shell is full? | The atoms become more stable when they have certain numbers of electrons associated with them. Hydrogen is more stable with 2 electrons than 1. Not unlike you carrying a grocery bag in each hand, rather than 1 in one hand. There are other stable numbers of electrons and those numbers are the reason for the shape of the... |
Why do drug stores have tons of reading glasses in varying intensities (for farsighted people), but no pre-made glasses for nearsighted people? | A pair of bad reading glasses don't have the kind of serious implications that a pair of shitty all-day glasses would, So we leave it to people who are educated in the matter.Because the ocular correction industry is on a quest to let natural selection take its course against nearsighted people.Those glasses at drug st... |
Why men pee after ejaculation often ? | 🤷🏻\u200d♂️, I'm no doctor but I think it's to get any leftover semen out so it doesn't cause pain or infection. |
Why are electric cars more eco-friendly if electricity is still fossil-fuel powered? | Bigger generators are more efficient than little generators. Coal burned in a big power plant is about the only fuel that has worse emissions per kWh than gasoline burned in a small engine. Your car engine has an efficiency of ~35%, the absolute best coal plant using the perfect coal can hit 43% but still has all the i... |
Is water never produced, only recycled? | lots of things make water. every campfire, charcoal grill, candle, car engine, diesel generator, coal/natural gas powerplant makes water molecules by combining a hydrocarbon with atmospheric oxygen to make H2O. when people talk about water being recycled, it means the water cycle from rain to river to lake to ocean, an... |
Why do car batteries drain so easily if you leave a light on but can be recharged easily after a jump? | The primary purpose of the battery in a car is to power the starter motor which takes a lot of power for a very short time. It's not designed to store large amounts of energy so it can power things for a long time, once up and running the alternator powers everything so the battery doesn't need to", 'Lights use power a... |
how do self checkout machines ensure that customers aren't stealing items or taking things by mistake when scanned incorrectly? | A bunch of ways. First, the bagging area is actually a scale so if the weight doesn't match what was entered/scanned, it will not let you continue. In the UK, scammers worked around this by [buying avocados but entering the code for carrots]. Presumably the used traditional monitoring and enforcement methods to determi... |
Why do space travel vehicles usually get launched from static vertical positions? Would it be more energy efficient to take off like an airplane then accelerate while gaining altitude? | There are concepts for small payloads where a small rocket is launched from a plane, giving it a head start in terms of altitude and speed. But for launches with several tons to get to orbit, you'd need a highly sophisticated engine and the problems get more and more the longer you think about it. Skylon researches an ... |
Why is the core of the earth hot and why does it not cool down? | Decay of radioactive elements is the main ongoing heat source. The core is cooling down, but the crust and mantle act as EXCELLENT insulation, so very little heat is lost. Additionally the core is around the same size as Mars, so there's an awful lot of heat and radioactive fuel to keep it going. Estimates are that the... |
How is it possible, with almost all cars having keyless entry, we don't occasionally unlock someone else's car? | Each car has a different RFID fingerprint in the key, so you can't unlock a different car with the same key |
Why is it that YouTube never struggles to stream an ad whether it be 5 seconds or 3 minutes when there is bad connection, yet my videos struggle to stream. | I'm OK with them advertising, what I hate is how the volume all of the sudden gets cranked during an ad. No I don't want to dl your meditation app when you just made me jump from the sudden explosion from my speakers!", 'I finally installed an adblocker when I got one of those "skip in five seconds" ads and it froze wh... |
In America on tv they are uslng shoes indoors, is this true? And if its true how cant the floors be dirty all the time? | I take my shoes off at home and at both of my in laws homes, I keep my socks on but I don't like shoes so I only wear them wheb I have to, my wife is the same way, but I have known people that would look at you weird if you took your shoes off before bed.. I have rarely been asked to take my shoes off as I entered some... |
How do we know what names mean? E.g. Hercules wife was called deinara, which means husband destroyer. In ancient greece was this woman literally called husband-destroyer? | It sounds more like an epithet/nickname than an actual name, like The Rock or He Who Must Not Be Named or The Ring-Bearer. Not their real name, but another way to refer to them based on a unique characteristic or a thing they're known for.Most Greek names are still like this today. Nicholas means victory of/over the pe... |
How do we know there aren't more planets in the solar system with orbits that keep them on the opposite side of the sun from us at all times? | Fyi, there actually is a theory that there is another planet in our solar system, but it's very distant right now. I think the theory goes that it is in an elliptical orbit and actually gets closer to the solar system at times,while at other times being quite far away. We think this because there are strange movements ... |
What is the difference between Bandwidth vs Latency? | Think of it like bees and them getting nectar. The bandwidth is how many bees there are out there going to get the nectar. The latency is how close those flowers are. So, you could have 5000 bees but yet the flowers are 5 km away, that's high bandwidth, high latency. Similarly, you can have 5 bees and flowers 10 meters... |
Why are the front and back cameras on smartphones not the same to begin with? Why do they need to differ in quality? | The bette the camera the more it costs to make. So the phone markers chooses cameras that are just good enough for what they are used for. The back page camera is often used for big scenes with many details and need more data. The front camera is often used for selfies or similar, where details are not as needed or nec... |
How do we know the centre core of the earth is hot, filled with lava? Wouldn't it make more sense that things get colder the deeper towards the centre you go? | If you're cold and wrap yourself up in a blanket, it heats you up because there's a solid layer trapping your body heat inside. The more layers and the thicker they are, the more heat you can trap. The center of the planet is effectively wrapped up in the biggest, rockiest blanket imaginable. |
Everyone is up in arms about the Republicans in Wisconsin limiting the incoming Democrats power. But can’t they just reverse what the Republicans did once they are in office? | I read the Republicans will still control the state legislature there, and are trying to limit the incoming Democratic governor and attorney general's powers. If they enact these laws, those laws probably will stick unless the Wisconsin voters change the makeup of the state legislature in a future election and the laws... |
Why are emotions tied to certain facial expressions? Like, why do people smile when they're happy? | Cross cultural research show that some basic emotions are expressed in the same way in very different parts of the world, suggesting they're genetically programmed.Those emotions are happiness, sadness, disgust, and anger. See the works of Eckman in the 70's. |
how does polymorphic code work? | add the contents of register *a* to register *b* and store the result in register *c* |
How does water get from the stomach to the kidneys? | Water is absorbed by osmosis in the small intestine - if there's more water in the intestine than in the cells lining the intestine, it will move through the cell membrane into the cell. Then it gets absorbed into your bloodstream along with nutrients. Once your body has absorbed all the nutrients it needs, and transfe... |
Why do diesel locomotives use their Diesel engines to produce electric to drive electric motors rather than just use the power from the diesel engine to move the train? | The engines don't have the same ability to make things move with the same 'power'/torque. As others mentioned for mechanical engines this requires large transmission , electrical engines do not need a transmission at all . & #x200B; So the electrical engine usually has slightly above two or three moving parts while the... |
Why does applying lotion to very dry skin hurt? | You could just try putting straight coconut oil on your skin. It's a really thin oil so it absorbs well", 'On really dry skin you would want a fatty lotion, not a moisturizing one. ', "I had chronic eczema and I was covered in bloody scabs that my parents would bathe in Cetaphil. Then they would cover my entire legs, a... |
With how many satellites we have in space with different orbits, how do they avoid crashing into each other while in orbit? | A part of it is that many satellites are *geostationary*. That means, in short, that they are supposed to stay in one place relative to the earth. Rotate with us so that they seem to be in the same place all the time. For those, it's only a matter of placing them reasonably far from each other, so that they don't risk ... |
How are firefighters able to identify the cause of a fire after its end? | Not all fires burn the same. Some fire burns hotter and faster than normal. This leaves physical evidence behind and can be proof of arson. This, plus, patterns of fire spread is what arson investigators look for when they're examining the ruins of a fire. |
It seems like we’ve had telephones for decades, but the sound quality of phone calls has remained the same. Why is this? | Phone call quality depends heavily on frequency bandwidth. Human hearing goes up to about 16-20kHz, but phone calls are typically allotted only 3kHz. This cuts off any frequency higher than about 3.5kHz and lower than 500 Hz and makes the audio quality terrible. Frequency bandwidth is increasingly very limited in cellu... |
How do people believe in ghosts? | Why don't you believe in ghosts? You haven't seen one. Why do some people believe in ghosts? They believe they have or can. |
Why are humans generally afraid of smaller creatures (mice, for example), even though we know that they are afraid of us, too? | I think it has to do with the possibility that something small will crawl onto us in a way that we cannot stop it. Like, if that spider just fell onto my bed, where did it go!?!? Mice are usually just startling because we don't expect to find them, or see them skitter across our kitchen counter. |
I found this post and I have absolutely no idea what it says. Can someone please explain? | It's the quantum immortality hypothesis. Basically, since you can't observe yourself being dead, you are immortal from your own perspective. Anything that causes you to die will only happen in parallel universes. |
Why aren't caves hotter in temperature? | Beyond what the other two have said, near the Earth's surface the only difference between the cave and outside is that the outside world is warmed by the sun and the cave is not. |
Why can't we feel the earth's rotation? | The same thing when you're inside moving car/train/bus/etc. You only feel the movement when the car starts to move , after that, you didn't notice it. Say, you're inside a moving airplane. And then you gave a birth. That baby didn't knew he/she was inside a moving object! |
Why isn't the whole night sky brightly lit? | The universe isn't infinite, it's unbounded. Different There is a finite number of stars in the universe, this means that most sight lines don't lead to a star but instead lead off into the abyss. Henrich Olber contemplated the same thing back around 1800. If there were infinite stars then every sight line leads to a s... |
Why do humans and other creatures need sleep and not just rest? | organize" everything that happened in your day. We have constant input and during sleep our brain gets a "break" where it can process everything that happened today. Its also thought its a key to long term memory which is why sleep during exam time is as important as studying. Sleep is also incredibly important to brai... |
Why are cars created that can go 200 mph+, when the maximum they’ll ever face is maybe 80 mph? | Cars which can achieve 200 mph+ perform quite well at lower speeds. If a car could only go to 80 mph and no more it would be incredibly weak and take forever to reach that top speed. Engines also don't last long being redlined at absolute peak output so you wouldn't be able to drive for hours at such highway speeds. Bu... |
If each atom has its own center-of-gravity, why would an object have one center-of-gravity instead of spread out gravity for each atom? | You're technically correct, but in most cases it's just an average. For most day to day things, you can just treat it as a weighted average ie, in a simple case, if you have an atom at x=2, and another identical one at x=6, the center of mass would be x=4. There are exceptions -this approximation is good for rigid bodi... |
How do people end up with tens of thousands of dollars worth of credit card debt? | The biggest thing that causes credit debt is spending more money than you have. With dredit cards, it's really easy to just swipe your card and not think about how much money you're really spending. You don't really see the cash, just some numbers, and they're easy to ignore. It's also not insanely hard to get a lot of... |
Where did the political terms “The Left” and “The Right” originate? | Is there any association to the fact that democrats sit together on the left side of the House and Senate buildings, while those other guys congregate on the right? Of course it depends on where you're looking from, but I'm talking about from the back, looking toward the podium.In the French Revolution, they held a big... |
why do pills need to be taken with water? | They don't need to be, but it's far easier to. Especially when the pill is on the larger side. And some people just struggling to take pills in general, big or small. You could take it with anything that will help you get it down, honestly. That's why a lot of hospitals and nursing homes use things like apple sauce to ... |
Why can’t hockey teams just use a morbidly obese person— someone whose body blocks most of the net— as goalie? | So, if one sumo wrestler couldn't cover the net by just sitting there, could 2 sumo wrestlers side by side in a trenchcoat work to block the goal? |
what does shutting down the government achieve? | Actually, exactly for issues like the wall issue we have now. In the past, if congress didn't sign a budget in time, they wouldn't shut down, instead people would keep doing what they do. The problem is that sometimes the president would do something congress didn't like. An example would be the President would spend $... |
Why do car windshields not shatter like regular glass? | Side windows and rear windows are tempered so if it breaks you don't get stabbed by large pieces, and the most you will get is sratches or cuts. The windshield is laminated because any rock or other debris that could break it would other wise cause the glass be flown into the cabin, if the vehicle is moving fast when i... |
What is 'gaslighting' and some examples? | I was once gaslighted by a coworker, I didn't realize until it was too late. I delivered pizza and me and my coworker Patrick were both trying to get on the schedule for the morning shift when all the catering deliveries were. At first we were both working the AM shift but I kept failing to get to my deliveries on time... |
Why can humans throw objects with certain accuracy without having to know about physics nor mathematics? | One of the ways we do learn is by feedback. The first thing we ever threw was probably not terribly accurate. We didn't wind up, or we released too late, or we didn't keep move the hand fast enough. When we make an action, we are constantly being fed back information. Whether it's taking a step, sipping a drink or thro... |
Why do things bend easily, but have difficulty unbending them? | When it's in one form and you change it you alter its atomic structure. Pretty much impossible to put it back once you've changed it. |
Why are pillows considered good for sleeping when they bend your neck so that it's not parallel to your spine? | Your spine isn't a straight line when viewed from the side, it has [natural curves]. The pillow is there to support your neck's natural curve forwards so it doesn't have to support the weigth of the head. |
Why does brown not appear in a rainbow (or on a color wheel)? | Top comment by u/jollyrogerninja has it explained, but I figure I'd give you an artist's tip on how to make brown when mixing paints. Given the three primaries - red, blue, yellow - you can mix these to also get purple, green, and orange. Color wheel complete. To make brown, mix 3 parts red, 2 parts yellow, and 1 part ... |
When doing surgery, how are surgeons able to see what they are doing? How is there not bleeding obstructing their view? I.e. surgery to remove a fibromatosis from a finger. | I'm not a surgeon, but an anatomist . I don't have to deal with blood obscuring my vision, but we learn to have really good mental images of where everything is supposed to be, and I know what different types of organs/skin/vessels/nerves/etc. feel like, so I can usually feel my way around if need be. For example, that... |
Why do bands play songs at a higher tempo when performing live? | Most rock musicians seem to enjoy active audience, listeners that show their love by moving, waving hands, banging heads, dancing, getting crazy. It's a visible sign of appreciation and a way to exchange emotions between the artist and the audience. Playing songs faster makes them more energetic and suitable to move to... |
Why do PC and monitors/TV still have a VGA port? | Newer ones are starting to drop it. My 1080 Ti doesn't have a VGA port, nor does the DVI port support analog in order to convert it to VGA. My latest TV also doesn't have a VGA port, nor does it have any other analog inputs like composite or component. |
What is the point of "laugh tracks" on sitcoms? | I think also it's a legacy from theater where shows were performed before a live audience. You even hear one of the actors say that during the intro or closing credits of old sitcoms. Now the subtext to the question is that this is lame and unartistic. But actually not all laugh tracks are the same. Sure there are the ... |
Why do humans find the sound of rain calming/relaxing? | The other answers are close. Rain signifies danger . When you're at home under your blanket hearing the danger outside but knowing you're completely safe, it helps you feel peaceful. It's just an instinct thing. |
What causes sudden random brief pains in healthy people? | This is the source of my hypochondria. Oh I have a random pain in my chest and my legs are warm! I must have DVT that's broken off and caused a pulmonary embolism. But in all seriousness there are many triggers for random pain. Pulled muscles and muscle recovery, gas buildup, and even anxiety can cause random bouts of ... |
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