query stringlengths 8 249 | answer stringlengths 45 7.8k |
|---|---|
Why do cords get tangled despite not having moved them? | If they didnt move then they wouldnt get tangled. They just move a lot within your pockets in ways you dont notice |
Why is it usually advised that you wait 10-15 seconds before plugging something back in? What happens in those 10-15 seconds? | Ensures all the components are powered down fully and no excess charge remains in the cable essentiallyYour router has "tables" which it stores, data on flash memory. Unplugging it stops power to the device, but flash memory can last as long as there is power in the capacitors. 10-15 seconds is usually enough to clear ... |
Why do clothes sizes; XS, S, M, L, all cost the same and larger sizes cost more? How come they don't make each sizes different prices? | The main cost of manufacturing comes from time using/setting up a factory, rather than extra materials. The difference between an XS and 2XL shirt in material is maybe $0.02 to the distributor. The reason that the XS to L all cost the same is because they can use the same basic pattern on the assembly line: cut out the... |
What do SWAT and Bomb Squad officers do when they are not needed? | In Canada, the RCMP has the ERT which is functionally the same as a SWAT team. From their website: "ERT training is continuous, and is very demanding in terms of the time and effort a member must dedicate to it in order to remain proficient in the many skills required. Full-time ERTs are always training when they are n... |
What is time dilation, why/how does it occur? | First some basics: Speed is distance over time. . Light travels at the same exact speed no matter what. Its just a property of our universe. So say im standing in an empty train and I throw a ball across the carriage, lets say it goes 50 miles per hour. But what if the train is moving at 10 mph? Well if im on the train... |
How do truckers live and what do they usually spend money on? | I drove over the road for almost 2 years so here's the gist of it: For someone who works for a company, and doesn't own his own truck, he would buy things like toiletries, food, probably pay rent on a house to go to when he wants a break the occasional hotel room when he wants to get out of the confines of the truck ev... |
How does Li-fi actually work? How do we transmit signals and how do devices receive signals? | There is an LED which is focused through an array of lenses so that it shines on a light detector . Data can be transmitted by rapidly turning the LED on and off, which would translate into an electrical signal on the other end. Basically, it works almost exactly like a directed data transmission via radio or microwave... |
Why don't the migrants from places Syria, Iraq and other war torn countries go to stable Middle Eastern nations, specifically the Gulf countries instead of Europe? | Most refugees do go to other Middle Eastern countries. For example, out of the 4 million Syrian refugees, over 90% have gone to Turkey, Lebanon, and Jordan [source]. And Iraqi refugees have mostly gone into neighboring countries like Lebanon, Syria , and Jordan [source]The answer is, they do. Turkey, Iran, Jordan, and ... |
Why do popcorn bags say to not use the popcorn button? | Different microwaves have different power levels. If you use the popcorn button, you might get burned or unpopped kernels, depending on the size of the popcorn bag. |
- why does smoke and fire come out the end of the new electromagnetic rail gun the US military announced. | It's the armature and surface layer of the rails ablating into a plasma as the armature travels down the barrel. Fundamentally, the two rails and armature complete and electric circuit. The armature is the part you see falling away from the projectile once it leaves the barrel. The back of the armature is horseshoe sha... |
Why don't celebrities, companies, etc. give Wikipedia free high quality photos to put on their site? | If they start accepting most likely photoshopped pics, they could start accepting edits to the details of their life. Pretty soon the article will be too biasedSending in "official" pics would imply that the company/person/political or other group somehow endorses what the wiki page says; this can be an issue simply be... |
How & what is actually happening as the fruit transitions from being raw to being ripe? | I ain’t no scientist but here is my two cents Fruit is designed to ferment as part of its ability to seed. When fruit falls from a tree the fruit starts to ferment which releases natural sugars making it sweet and juicy - eventually you’ll see the pips, seeds or stones becoming easier to remove like in the case of a pe... |
What is causing this, "screechy" sound when I have my earbuds plugged into my laptop, even though there is nothing being played? | Most likely it's internal crosstalk generated by other internal components in the laptop getting into the on-board sound curcuit. Basically it's very difficult to completely isolate the internal sound that's built into a motherboard due to the fact that every other component is drawing power from the same source and al... |
Why do countries donate foreign aid as a part of their budget? | Because you want foreign countries to be friendly, and amenable to your agenda. So, for example, when a company in your country is trying to get, say, mining or drilling rights that will bring a lot of money in to your country, it might help them to remember your country as the one that paved a lot of roads or donated ... |
Why does al-Qaida kill people in their own countries? | They believe the only valid government would be inside a pan-islamic state, so they are fundamentally opposed to the national borders they operate inside. Also, they are often not inside their own countries, it is a very international movement. Additionally they follow the ideas of modern Islamism which state that almo... |
Why is going to the DMV always such a clusterfuck? | They don't have enough staff, the staff they do have works slow and it's a government agency so they have no incentive to work faster or harder because they'd have to rape a baby in front of the President to lose their job. |
Why does the content I actually want to watch constantly buffer but the ads play perfectly? | I'm not an expert, but I always figured that the video ads where essentially queued up, like ready to go regardless of what video you chose the and was prepared to play before you clicked it |
The difference between Bitcoin, Litecoin and Peercoin | Bitcoin: The original Peer to Peer currency. If you are thinking about a digital currency it is probably this one. Bitcoin is created by a process called mining. computers around the world perform complex calculations to discover a new *block*. Each *block* has a coin value associated to it and then belongs to the comp... |
What's the h3h3productions/SoFloAntonio debacle? | SoFloAntonio is a guy that owns a popular Facebook page and Youtube channel, with each one having a good amount of subscribers/fans. First, let's touch on SoFlo's facebook content. SoFlo's "content" is ripping a video from another person, adding a watermark over it that says something along the lines of "this is totall... |
Why do I wake up from a nap sweaty and hot but when I sleep at night I wake up normally? | There are about a thousand different reasons why someone might sweat while they are asleep. i.e. the answer is going to vary from person to person.I want this answered because I have only met a couple of people that have this same situation. Some people think I'm crazy when I mention it. Whenever I take a nap I wake up... |
If a person spent their life at sea, would they get something equivalent to sea sickness if they walked on land? | It's called *sea legs*. It's a well-known phenomenon among sailors. It can happen even after just a few hours at sea on a small boat. [_URL_0_]", 'Run on a tredmill before? I love the float back to the locker roomEven spending extended periods on water then walking on land can throw you off. Your balance takes awhile t... |
why is female circumcision (female genital mutilation) such a cause for outrage whereas male circumcision is passé (....and not considered male genital mutilation)? | There is a big difference on the effect "circumcision" has on a woman vs circumcision on a man. Apart from the occasional botched male circumcision, the vast majority of circumcised men don't experienced any negative effects and are quite happy with the result. It doesn't significantly impare sexual function. Some woul... |
If Facebook is vigilant about spam, why do we still see that Ray Ban sunglasses spam after years of reporting it? | [deleted - this isn't about advertising as I'd thought, it's about fake users friending people with a ray-ban related request, so my answer wasn't right.] Found this for you though, may be something helpful here: _URL_0_ |
What exactly happens when i feel my heart beating in random parts of my body? | You're not feeling your heart, you're feeling your blood pumping . I'm guessing that this generally happens to you most at night, or other really quiet/calm parts of the day? In those cases, it's likely you just feel/hear it because it's quiet and your brain isn't doing a whole lot else. If it happens at other times it... |
Why do all sci-fi space helmets now have ambient lights on the inside? | It's most likely just for cinematography's sake, it keeps the actors/actresses photogenic and easy to visually identify. It would unlikely ever be practical for the same reasons driving with your interior lights on is not practical. |
Why is it that one persons brain will be really good at understanding knowledge in one subject that someone else really struggles with but is able to understand other subjects really well? | If you are doing a CS degree you might have heard of Neural Networks in Computational Intelligence. Our brain works kind of like a neural network . Depending on the design of the neural network, it will be better at learning some functions than other functions. Our brains are similar: depending on how your neurons are ... |
Ad Blockers / Ad Impressions | Nope, it's not counted. One way ad blockers work is by modifying your hosts file. That's a file that your computer goes to first to find the location of an address. Without an ad blocker that file might well be empty. When you load a web page there are multiple elements loading from _URL_2_ and the ads are loaded from ... |
Why should I never put sharp knives in the dishwasher? | The edges of sharp knives are very thin. Any banging on other things in the dishwasher will damage them. Steel, no matter how "stainless," will corrode if exposed to high heat, high humidity, and harsh chemicals, all of which exist inside your dishwasher. Better knives are made of steel which is less resistant to corro... |
What does it mean to "play devil's advocate"? | It means to take a position you don't necessarily hold, for the sake of argument, that opposes the majority or more popular position. The term comes from the Catholic Church's canonization process. When someone argued that an individual should be made a saint, someone else would play "devil's advocate," arguing that th... |
How does the USA have a military base in Cuba? | Basically, 100 years ago we took it, and Cuba let us keep it. "The United States seized Guantanamo Bay and established a naval base there in 1898 during the Spanish-American War. Five years later, the U.S. and Cuba signed a lease giving Guantanamo Bay to the U.S. as a "coaling and Naval station." The lease was required... |
Why spanking your children is becoming less accepted by society. | It's illegal to beat anyone, why would it be legal to beat your child? Also it's a bad tool to actually instruct your child with. Think about it like this, 2 children join their parents for a birthday party. Both kids misbehave, so the parents of kid A spanks him, but parents of kid B explains to him why what he did wa... |
Why do soldiers bother taking POWs? | In addition to laws and conventions, it's also a tactical decision. If you're a soldier, and you know the enemy are about to overwhelm you, you have two options. Surrender, or go down fighting and take a few more of the enemy with you. If you know the enemy is likely to accept your surrender and take you prisoner, you'... |
RTF or Rich Text Format | Rich Text Format, as compared to Plain Text, is a way of formatting text to include style attributes, such as color, font size, font face, positioning and bold/italics/underline. Plain Text, on the other hand, contains only the text and no elements of formatting> for cross-platform document interchange with Microsoft p... |
How does an Anti-Virus program work? | some antivirus programs simply use file hash matching which can be problematic especially if they use MD5 which can be subject to hash collisions. Some antivirus applications use "Heuristics" which is a fancy way of saying behavioral fingerprints. They look at registry keys that are changed, files that are accessed, po... |
TIL that Snickers have egg whites in them; why don't snickers go bad when left at room temperature? | Probably because there is so much sugar in it. You can leave meringue oit for a while and it won't change. Same thing. |
Does pain increase linearly? | No pain doesn't work that way. Your brain can only process so much information from the nerves. To simplify your brain will tell you to feel the part that is experiencing the most intense pain. If you have a paper cut and you suddenly hit your funny bone. The brain will likely ignore the impulse from the paper cut as t... |
Why does a significant amount of oil build up in jars of peanut butter when you don't open them for awhile after you've taken off the seal? | The oil seperates from the other ingrediants, this is most obvious with natural peanut butter. I believe natural peanut butter has the oil seperate out quicker because it does not contain emulsifiers. If you don't mix in the oil and a lot of it seperates, the bottom of the jar has peanut butter that is drier. Putting p... |
What is the lifecycle of a star? | Stars begin as enormous clouds of dust and gas. Gravity pulls it together into bigger and bigger clumps. If there's enough stuff in the cloud, the middle gets hot enough that hydrogen atoms can fuse together. If there's still enough stuff, the fusion reactions become self-sustaining, with the mass of the cloud balancin... |
Why does laying down help with nausea? | This isn't universal. When I'm nauseous laying down makes it worse. Sitting up straight helps me. I have heard that to help with most tummy troubles, being on your left side is better. |
Are real life measurable values infinitely precise? | We are limited by nature in our precision. Many high-precision measurements are done by using light in some way, which means the precision is limited by the wavelength of the light being used. |
to what extent do our recycling habits affect climate change? | Very little, sometimes. Some things are actually cheaper to be made than recycled , like glass and paper, so recycling them is actually worse for the environment. Other things are better for the environment to be recycled, like aluminum cans. Litter, and pollution, is a more important problem than recycling everything. |
What is the real reason and truth behind why China is cancelling all debts to the poor countries that owe money to them? | You would have to ask the Chinese leadership for a definitive answer but my suspicion is that they've calculating the value of the goodwill is greater than the likely return on the loan. The value of a loan isn't just the face value of the loan, but the value of the loan discounted by time and risk. So it's entirely po... |
Why have I never seen an adult with Autism ? | Autistic person here! Over time, yes, it does get less noticeable. But this is because autistic adults have had more experience to learn what 'works' in social settings and what doesn't. Also, brain development seems to play a role is lessening the symptoms . So major symptoms that would be more prominent in kids would... |
Why does a finger or a stylus work on a touch screen but other items (like a glove) do not? | So most modern touchscreens work by something called capacitance. Capacitance relates to how well an object can hold an electric charge. There's this thing behind the screen on your phone that holds a very small electric charge, and when your finger gets close to it, a tiny bit of that charge moves to your finger, and ... |
Why does getting an air bubble in your bloodstream kill you? | It doesn't. At least not like you see on TV. I got a good friend who is a nurse and he explained the bubble in the bloodstream thing to me. First, it's called an embolism. Most of the times, small bubbles in a vein won't hurt you. Veins are flowing back to the heart, and a small bubble is going to pop when it flows bac... |
What is information entropy? | Consider the data: aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa It's low information and high length. Why low information? Because I could more easily represent this same data as: New data: a20 |
Where do "bad words" come from and when were they first recognized as rude? | I remember an earlier ELI5/Askreddit comment that said we get a couple of our swear words from Roman Empire-era "barbarian" languages. The only example I can remember is that the "more refined" latin word for a female's genitals was "vagina" but the Germanics called it a "cunt". Therefore it's a bad word because it was... |
If certain animals like the lobster can live forever, What is currently stopping scientists from genetically engineering humans to do the same? | You've got to find a creature with a complex brain structure that live forever. We can keep the body going but eventually the mind just doesn't work anymore and you can get a plethora of degenerative brain diseases |
How does a company (say, Edward Jones) benefit from having a charitable foundation arm (like Edward Jones Charitable Foundation)? | It's called Corporate Social Responsibility. Basically means that a company returns what it received from society. Just look at how many charities McDonalds have. It neutralises all the debate about how unhealthy they are. Also boosts the company's reputation, and thus becomes a good marketing source as well. Remember ... |
Why do we have déjà vu? | Haven't you already asked that? I used to enjoy those feelings of deja vu, but then I read an definition of it which didn't match up with what I thought and made it seem much less interesting, so I haven't wondered about it for years. In case *you* are wondering why I wrote that, fucking autobot. |
How does my seatbelt know to lock on jerky motions, but not when pulled out slowly? | A centrifugal clutch . When the belt is pulled, it unroll from a spool. If the spool spins too fast , a mechanism is pushed outwards and locks it. |
Why would we reduce/remove tariffs on Japanese cars & trucks. Where is the upside for the US? | It would benefit consumers because they'd have a better selection of cheaper cars., many of which have superior technology at better prices than US cars. Short term, it would hurt automakers and their employees as they lost out to competition. Long term, companies would be forced to compete and the best would survive w... |
Why do certain devices (such as digital cameras, cellphones) have an option of setting its date and time way before the model itself was released? | It is more programming logic that does not really get you anything. Also, the production process would require an additional step of setting the date of the model's release. If they screw it up, they would probably need to do a review the error in some documented process that is a pain and takes time . So there really ... |
Why is information easier to retain when presented as a story versus esoteric fact? | There are 2 big factors:1. People remember information in chunks. When a person hears a group of connected pieces of information, they only have to remember one part and then that reminds them of the rest of it. For example, f you see a game winning score from a sports game, you are more likely to remember the events l... |
Why are external hard drives so much more expensive than relgular hard drives? | That's just a terrible deal. I bought my mom a 1tb external drive for 80 bucks over a year ago. One thing that changes the price is the rpm speed of the disk. A 10k rpm drive will be more expensive than a 5k rpm one. Just do some searching. You should be able to easily find drives well over 2tb if you are spending 200 ... |
How does inflation "end"? | It will continue forever, or as long as governments attempt to foster a modest amount of inflation to keep economies moving. Currency revaluation [as happened in Turkey in 2005] will make sure we have a manageable number of zerosMost economists agree that some inflation is good for economies, it causes problems when th... |
We just got some amazing pictures of Pluto! Now what exactly are we learning from them? | [Here] is an interview with one of the scientists on the mission discussing the early results, what comes next, and the mission in general. There's a bit too much to sum up in a comment but suffice it to say we're learning a lot about objects in the Kuiper Belt which can give us new information about how the solar syst... |
Why would stocks drop after something like the Boston Bombings? | Anything that causes fear of economic disturbance of any type will cause people to reduce risk by removing money from volatile sources of wealth to something more stable . There is also a bit of self fulfilling prophecy involved, because people are fearful that the price might go down because of the event and they want... |
What are land surveys, how are they conducted, and why are they needed? | Land surveys are precise measurements of land. They can involve such measurements as exact area, precise location of boundary points, elevations, mineral content, water locations .all sorts of things. There are many ways they are conducted. The basic measurements are usually taken with GPS receivers, calibrated to know... |
Is there a maximum pain that can be felt? | There are all sorts of limits. Neurons can only fire so fast, leading to a maximum input from a single source, then there is pain gating where some pain can block other pain. However, pain is entirely relative. Someone who has never really been injured will be in agony over a broken arm. UFC fighters who experience suc... |
What is Ethereum, and how does it have a monetary value? | I can't speak about Ethereum specifically, but I can give you a generalized explanation of bitcoin and hope the information is useful to you. The processing power used to generate a new coin is not *useful* or *practical* to someone in the same way as Folding@Home. The processing requirement to creating new coins is a ... |
Why do we produce so much more mucus when we have a cold? | mucus exists to keep viruses from entering the body. When you have a cold your body tries to protect itself by purging the mucus, thus resulting in excess. Mucus contains antibodies that fight infections as well so an excess helps wash some of the germs out of your system. Your immune system does most of the work but a... |
What is the difference between "grey" and "gray" and when are we supposed to use them? | They both mean the same thing. Which version you use depends on where you live - gray is generally the version used in the USA, grey the one generally used in British English. See the [n-grams] . Try changing to different versions of English in the dropdown. Edit: minor edit to clarify the last sentence.There's no real... |
Why do cigarettes, cigars, etc not burn up right away? | Fresh tobacco, like any plant, had a lot of water in it, and will not burn readily. So the tobacco leaves are dried to just the right point where they will burn, but slowly enough to smoke. |
How do people get electrocuted in the shower during a storm? | Lightning + water pipes = electrified water pipes. Electrified water pipes + water = electrified water. Electrified water + shower = electrified shower. Electrified shower + wet person = electrified wet person. Electrified wet person + ground = complete circuit. This is very unlikely though. You need to have metal pipe... |
Why is the jugular so exposed? | well the most important jugular vein that runs to your brain actually has some pretty good coverage, the SCM lies right over it. as for the other jugular veins, they drain blood from places like your superficial face, head, etc. so they're really taking blood right from the surface of your body, which makes them a bit ... |
When dogs have so much better ears than us, why isnt their barking hurt them? Isnt it extremly loudly for them? | Dogs have better ears means they can pick up sounds too quiet for us to hear or frequencies, it doesn't mean that all sounds they hear are amplified. A dog will hear sounds just as loud as us, but they will also pick up sounds we can't hear, that's what them having better hearing means. |
What impact has/will the detonation of the 1000+ nuclear bombs detonated during the Cold War, and all those since, have/had on the environment. | Imagine you are in a big ball pit just like the one in this picture _URL_0_. Then you do a wee wee in the ball pit. Imagine that the wee wee is nuclear fallout. Now imagine that some other kids get in the ball pit. Do they even notice that you did a wee wee in there? Probably not. That is what all the nuclear bombs det... |
Why does California have more strict gun laws then other states? | Pretty simple answer really, California has a high crime rate and a very large percentage of the population is left leaning and anti gun. |
How does this circuit work? | I'm still in high school, but I will try and explain it from what I understand so far about electronics. The CA3130 is what's called an 'op amp' or 'operational amplifier', its basically a chip that has hundreds of transistors connected up so that it has a gain of around 100,000 or more. This means that it can detect v... |
Why can't snow tires be used year round? | From [this link] > Q: Can I leave my snow tires on all year? > A: You can, but it's not a good idea. Snow tires tend to be noisier, plus the softer compounds from which they are made means they will wear out faster, especially in warm weather. Wear is critical, because winter tires rely on their deep tread to dig into ... |
Why was Euro Disney (Disneyland Paris) such a financial disaster when it opened ? | What i understand from my hospitality and culture classes, is that Disney tried to copy and paste Disney World into Disney Europe. Like everything was the same, company culture, work ethics whatsoever. Since Europeans and Americans are most definitely not the same type of people that completely backlashed and made them... |
How did the telephone and the way it worked influence the invention of the internet? Like the idea of one to one communication down a line? | Arguably the internet was more inspired by the post office than by the telephone. The telephone is a circuit switched network. When you make a call you send a code to the exchange which cause it to connect the wires to your phone to the wires of your correspondents phone. You can then talk but if the one route between ... |
How come my mac can go into sleep mode for what seems forever, but my PC laptop only sleeps for a few hours before dying? | So, your Windows laptop has two energy saving modes: sleep and hibernation. In sleep mode, everything is turned off except for power to the memory. In hibernation mode, the memory is written to disk and then everything powers off. In Windows sleep mode, it lasts only as long as there is power available to it, either by... |
How does night vision work, and why is it green? | Different models work in different ways. A typical 1980s-2000s night vision monacle will amplify all of the light that goes into it. It's essentially just a camera and a screen. They're green for various reasons. The human eye is slightly better at differentiating between different shades of green than it is with red a... |
Why does black/dark clothing make one look slimmer? | Dark clothing is better at masking bulges and curves. It also hides folds and wrinkles in clothing that can give the illusion of weight. |
Can your sense of hearing be hurt by high-frequency sounds you can't hear? | Absolutely. Sound is simply longitudinal air waves cause by the vibration of an object at a particular frequency. When we say that humans can only hear a certain range of sounds, it means that the little hairs that are connected to nerves that connect to the brain can only vibrate those sounds. But what matters for hea... |
Why are there two sets of "door open" and "door close" buttons in some elevators | Because there is a back door as well. Many elevators that go to a loading dock have two sets of doors, so you need two sets of buttonsmore importantly why do the "door close" buttons never seem to work? |
How do camera operators in golf games track golf balls? They seem impossible to track in real life | ~~Eh, [top comment] is simply reposting an answer word for word from [a previous thread.]~~ The actual solution is actually simpler than that. The camera operator tracks it by eye - one of the methods of doing this is to feed his camera viewfinder with the output of the red channel only. This gives the ball contrast ag... |
How can something with as much sugar as Coke not be overwhelmingly sweet? | You're used to it. Try cutting sugar out of your diet for a few weeks. Soft drink becomes disgusting. |
Why do stores like Walmart or Meijer have 25 registers yet only keep 2 open? | It doesn't cost much to install registers. It does cost a lot to pay people to stand next to them. Most stores have software that predicts how many customers they'll have that day & thus the absolute minimum number of employees they need. Sometimes they'll underestimate . But, usually they'll have the minimum necessary... |
Why do some babies look exactly like one parent as a kid but as they get older they look more like the other parent? | I don't know if it's genes necessary, but facial features and structures change, and as they do they start highlighting some traits that look more like mom, or other traits that look more like dad. When my son was born, he had a narrow face and looked more like me. Now, 6 months later, he's chubby cheeks, giving him a ... |
FCC Rules on Racial Slurs | As far as words, the US Supreme Court has ruled that broadcasters have a right to broadcast *indecent* material between the hours of 10PM and 6AM but never *obscene* material. Neither of the instances you describe could be considered legally indecent. Far more content revision/censorship is done by the broadcaster itse... |
How would the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act decrease healthcare costs? What are alternatives? | It won't. The ACA was designed in part by the insurance industry to make it easier to purchase health insurance. It does nothing to address skyrocketing medical costs. Essentially the Affordable Care Act is a misnomer. It does nothing to make healthcare affordable, it makes insurance "affordable". While there are provi... |
Why is every FM radio signal an odd decimal? | In the US, FM radio is divided into 101 channels which are each 0.2 MHz wide. The FM band extends from 87.8 MHz to 108 MHz. So, the lowest channel is 0.2 MHz wide and its assigned band is 87.8 to 88 MHz. That makes its center frequency 87.9 MHz. The next channel is 0.2 MHz higher, centered at 90.1 MHz and so on. The FM... |
Why is it offensive to dress up as an Indian? | It's usually only seen as offensive if you get stuff really wrong or are copying old stereotypes. For example, the big feather headdresses were a plains Indian thing, so wearing that plus Seneca face paint and a Mohawk hairstyle would be pretty offensive because you obviously don't know/care about native people.On the ... |
Why does alcohol sting when you put it on cuts? | Alcohol kills bacteria cells, which is why we put it on cuts . Alcohol also kills cells composing your flesh, which is why it hurts. |
Why hasn't one of the world's billionaires simply bought one of the poorest countries of the world and made himself king? | People become billionaires by making smart business decisions. Buying a broke, starving country, ignoring any legal or moral issues, would be a bad business move that would be bound to lose them more money than they ever spent. and it's better to be billionaire in a developed country than a king in some third world shi... |
In computers, what's the difference between worms, viruses, Trojan horses, and the like? | It's been a few years since I worked for an Antivirus company but lets see if I can shake off the rust and give a proper explaination. Worms are designed to infiltrate other systems. They are, by design, non-intrusive and covert. Their primary function is to infect as many computers, routers, filers etc as possible. Tr... |
When waves interfere, what happens to the energy that they are carrying? | There is a lot less magic and mystery to this than the thread would have you believe. Energy is conserved. If you have a condition with destructive interference, there **is** consequently constructive interference elsewhere to balance the energy. > But wait a minute, dude, can't I set up two waves to be perfectly out o... |
How is that cars can decelerate fast, but accelerate slowly? | Oh we can make a car that accelerates that fast, it all just depends on how the car is setup. If you want to look at the opposite end of this spectrum. Look at a top fuel dragster. They go from 0-100 mph in less than a second. With that absurdly short time comes an absurd short amount of distance. They take thousands o... |
Why do kettles, saucepans on stoves make noise when waiting for boiling water? | The noise is cavitation. As the water boils, there is a phase change from liquid to gas at the hottest regions . The newly formed bubbles rise, but in doing so they lose heat to the surrounding cooler water. As they cool, the bubbles collapse as they change phase back to liquid. A shockwave is produced every time a bub... |
How comes that England even 500 years ago didn't have problems having a female ruler? | Saying they "didn't have problems" is overstating things somewhat. There were several plots against her during her reign, but she had the support of others in government. Even though England hadn't yet become a constitutional monarchy, Elizabeth made a point of seeking and heeding advice from advisers throughout her re... |
How can a smartphone camera, with such a small lens, detect different levels of depth to apply a portrait effect? | 1 - The device identifies what is in the first plane 2 - Whatever is not in the "first plane mask" is blurred by software after the actual image is taken - the background is captured with good focus , the blurr is "photoshopped" automatically afterwardsTa da! A blog from Google about the technology. Long story short: d... |
How is it, that sometimes letting something ferment makes it more edible, but usually leaving food to decay is a sure fire way for food poisoning? | There's two ways in which food that has gone bad can harm you. The first is when it's become infected with an organism that can also infect you and overwhelms you. So that organism gets into your gut or your bloodstream and starts reproducing like mad. E coli is an example of this. The second is when byproducts of an o... |
Why does a dog's leg move uncontrollably when you scratch their belly. | Likely due to the nervous pathways in the canine anatomy. I would assume that the nerves in a dogs belly link to nerves in their legs. Much like when you tickle someone in some spots, for some people anyway they have uncontrollable movements in other limbs. In short, a little stimulation in one spot simulates an other ... |
Why are wheels on carts, office chairs and some other moveable stuff off center? | Being off center of the mounting pin forces the wheel to trail behind the direction of movement. That allows them to always be aimed in the direction of travelIt allows the wheel to stay oriented with the direction of travel. The drag against the wheels forces them to swivel to be parallel to the forward direction of i... |
Why are fabric scissors zig zagged? | The scissors you are referring to are [pinking scissors/shears]. The zig-zag is to prevent fraying of the fabric. As I understand it the zig-zag helps to prevent fraying because the threads left are not all one single line across the length of the cut, it is various threads that are not continuously connected helping t... |
Do hallucinogens have the same effect on reptiles that they have on humans? | I don't think a reptile can have an existential crisis, followed by a period of self-discovery and then settle on a period of emotional nirvana. |
Why are some people technologically challenged, even though most modern products have become extremely user-friendly? | There are those who just want to use technology and those who want to understand how things work. This applies just as much to old technology as to modern technology. It's not a new problem. There have always been those who want to repair something and those who want someone else to do it for them.My theory is that som... |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.