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How the heck does insurance work? | Let's say you go to school with 10 other nerdy kids and one bully who is always stealing one nerd's lunch money. Every single day the bully finds one random nerd and steals their $5. But the teacher's won't do anything about it. They don't care. Fortunately, you're one of the math nerds and have a bright idea. You go t... |
How does it work when two light switches operate on a single lamp? | Normal light switches have two terminals. A three-way switch has three terminals. There's a "common" terminal, an "up" terminal and a "down" terminal. The common is always contacting one of the others . The two switches have their ups connected by a wire, and their downs connected by another wire. Power comes into the ... |
Why is my penis so tan even though it never sees sunlight? | Your dick is basically a skin balloon that fills with blood instead of air. Now, if you can imagine comparing a deflated red balloon to an inflated red balloon, there is a clear color difference as the inflated balloon will be lighter. Same concept. When your dick is flaccid it's got the full 9 inches of skin compacted... |
Why do some drinks like beer or coffee make me have to pee so quickly and frequently? | The term for theses kinds of things is "diuretic".They suppress the bodies natural mechanism for retaining water. When you suppress this, more water makes it through the kidneys and into the bladder and needs excreting. These compounds do this by mimicking a hormone your body naturally makes to regulate the amount of w... |
How Capacitors, Inductors, and Diodes work? | I'm not going to go into heavy-duty semiconductor physics, with doping, electrons, holes, depletion regions, etc. This is ELI5, after all. A diode is like a one-way valve for electricity. Electricity can go one direction, but it can't go back. A capacitor is like an ultra-tiny little battery. It can short a miniscule a... |
why are people hesitant to take credit for good things they do? | I'm not sure if anyone else feels this way about it, but I feel like I should do good things for others because I am considerate, and everyone should be considerate. I truly believe that there are more considerate people in the world than you would think. On the other hand, though, sometimes when word gets out that YOU... |
Why does it take a long time to produce CD/Product Keys | Who did you buy it from? It's likely that they are a reseller and have to order some more when they run out. Like they only ordered a batch of 100 keys. Such transactions take time. I'm guessing btw", 'Wherever you ordered it from only bought x amount of keys so they need to order some more. It may be digital but they ... |
Why does the world feel quieter when it snows? | It's harder for sound to travel through the air when there is snow in it. Same thing is true when it rains Also the snow already on the ground also works like sound dampening. As the sound can bounce much easier on the hard ground than the soft snow. |
What happens when a woman has a contraction? | A hormone is released that causes the uterus to contract, which helps propel the baby in anticipation of delivery. A synthetic form of oxytocin is what many doctors give to induce labor. |
Why is digital content comparable in cost to hard copies? i.e. Downloaded movies, games, and books compared to their physical counterparts. | When people buy a CD, they aren't paying for the materials, they're paying for the content. I'm not paying £8 for a circle of plastic, I'm paying £8 for a list of songs I enjoy. With virtual copies, the information is the same so the cost should be the same. |
What's included in death of "natural causes," and how does it work for people who are relatively young ( < 50)? | If you're referring to "natural causes" as listed on a death certificate: Natural causes would be determined by pre-existing conditions. Let's say a woman in her mid-30's had a history of heart problems. It 'd be no surprise that she might die of heart failure. Often times the coroner or medical examiner will determine... |
Why absolute majority of multiplayer games have accounts locked to specific region/server? | Many reasons. A good technological reason is latency. The less time it takes for information to travel from your computer to the server the faster you can react to things. People who a re geographically closer to a server tend to be able to communicate with it much more quickly. There is also the semi obvious problem o... |
why does an object seem to stay in place when you look at it with one eye closed but move when you look at it with the other eye closed? | Because your eyes are in different places. They each have a slightly different perspective, where you see the object from changes. It's why we see in 3d. |
What’s the difference between copyright and trademark? | They are very different. Copyright is a system by which the creator of a work may prevent others from copying that work. This allows the creator to profit from their work and to maintain creative control over it. Copyright exists to encourage people to create works. Trademark is a system by which a person or business m... |
Microwaved liquid seems to lose heat faster than conventionally heated liquid. Why? | Well, you'd have to experiment to see if it's a real effect. It may just be something that you've imagined, or related to the circumstances when you tend to microwave vs. when you tend to use a kettle. It's also not necessarily true that the temperature is the same - you may be boiling water in a kettle, but it may onl... |
Why do google/microsoft/firefox care if I use their browser or not? | Ad revenue. Firefox gets millions of dollars a year from Google for using their search engine for the Firefox start page and as the default search bar at the top right. Google increases it's own revenue by doing the same on Chrome, and Microsoft is pushing IE more now that they have Bing.Influence. Writing a major web ... |
What caused babys to die in (e.g. medieval age) so often at birth? Why didn't it happen so often to animals? | It did, and does happen as often if not more often with animals. Any animal species that commonly births multiple offspring has a high infant/juvenile mortality rate in the wild. What caused so many infants to die during earlier points in human history was lack of modern medical knowledge/care, contaminated water/food,... |
How do hairs know when they've grown to a certain length? | Hairs don't know. Your hair follicles go through a timed cycle - they grow for a period of time, then they rest, then they shed the old hair and grow a new one. The length of the growth cycle determines the maximum length of the hair.When you find out, could you tell my nose hairs?Pretty sure the hair on your head does... |
Why are there juice bottles and fruit snacks labeled with serving sizes of 100% daily value of vitamin C? | Well it's a recommended serving size, and minimum intake daily value of vitamin C, having more is only good for you until a certain point. They do this to make it more appealing. Vitamin C isn't dangerous unless you get an incredible large doses, which is uncommon for most people. Let me put it like this, you can eat 1... |
Why don't we have an effective & commercial form of penis enlargement yet? | Because they do not work. It is a placebo and supplements making false claims. Big pharma cannot cash in on it because actual drugs are more strictly regulated than supplements and actually have to do what they claim they do. We do not have a pill that will make you bigger, only surgery. |
why are the United States of America reffered to today as "land of freedom" when one gets the impression its less free than you might think. | Look at where it comes from not it's meaning today. Land of the free originates from around the 1810's in the song Star-Spangled banner after overthrown the rule of the British and forming their own country. At that point in time Belgium was under the rule of the first French Empire which was an absolute monarchy ran b... |
how do gnats just "appear" in my house overnight? | Could be fruit flies. They lay their eggs on soft spots on fruit, which you may then take into your home, where they hatch. If you have a lot of fruit about, they may then subsequently lay more eggs on more of your fruit, and you wind up with a pest.As u/stuthulhu pointed out, they're most likely fruit flies. Gnats are... |
Why does the alcohol in alcoholic beverages smell different from the alcohol in beauty/hygiene products? | There are different types of alcohol. Primarily: - Isopropyl Alcohol - Methyl Alcohol - Ethyl Alcohol You *definitely* do not want to drink the first two. What they use in hygiene products is usually isopropyl alcohol.There's different kinds of alcohol. Ethyl alcohol is the kind you can drink. It's in everything beer, ... |
Why are clocks divided into 12 hours instead of 10, 60 seconds instead of 100? Is there a metric equivalent to tell time? | Dates back to the fertile crescent city states like Babylon, I believe. 60 is a really useful number - you can divide it by 2,3,4,5, and 6 so it lends itself to many different fractions. Same with 12 for hours. There have been some experiments with decimal time but it never really caught on. I think the Soviets tried i... |
Why are a lot of highly intelligent people socially awkward? | I'll throw in a different viewpoint. Highly intelligent people can be hyper aware of how words and actions can affect others. This can lead to a sort of crippling precognition where the individual plays out the most likely response scenarios in his or her mind before actualizing them. Often by the time they've run this... |
Why does the spicy mustard in Chinese restaurants burn the back of my head? | Because it's made to be put on your food, not on the back of your head.It could be a mild allergic reaction to an ingredient in the mustard. Most likely not detrimental but surely not optimal. |
A/C is on, but it's colder outside than it is inside. Should I open the windows to make it cool faster? | depends. The a/c also dehumidifies. If it is cold and wet outside than no. Cold and dry yesYou have a thermostat that controls when your A/C is on. If the temperature in your room is colder than the temperature set on the A/C, then the A/C will shut off. However, if the temperature in your room is hotter than what is s... |
Why a lot of videogame usernames don't allow spaces | This is too discourage identity theft and fraud. It's difficult for an in-game user to differentiate between "DOOM Killer100" and "DOOM Killer100"Note: This may not be the real reason, but it is a plausible reason to consider. In programming, it is often much easier to parse names and other text-based things if they do... |
Why did the U.N. (U.S.) not declare war on China during the Korean war? | They didn't even declare war on North Korea during the Korean War. "Officially", North Korea did not exist and the South Korean government was considered to be the only legitimate government of Korea. Similarly, the People's Republic of China was not recognized by the U.N. at the time. Instead, Chiang Kai-shek's govern... |
Why isn't Windows Based on UNIX | Because Windows *was* built on an existing framework - MS-DOS. UNIX was built for workstations, not personal computers. So it would have been impossible to cram it onto on a lightweight machine like the original PC. It was also wholly unnecessary, as its core feature - multi-user processing - was impractical on an 8-bi... |
How does one get into the Secret Service? | I don't work for the Secret Service but I am with Dept. of Homeland Security. As true with most government jobs - it pays to have served in the military. The government does not promote you. You have to compete for the next higher job as it comes open. And in each competition, veterans have a "point preference" advanta... |
Why does it seem like there is so much effort by Europeans to get America to convert to the metric? | [This] illustrates at least a part of it. It would simplify a lot if we switched over, manufacturers wouldn't have to make different versions, etc. Also, keep in mind that many of the products in the US are built overseas, so manufacturers all over the world have to set up different systems to cater to the US.Because i... |
What is the difference between a crossbow bolt and an arrow, and why is there a difference? | Crossbow bolts are generally shorter and thicker than an arrow. Crossbows generate much more force than a standard bow does, propelling the bolt with much higher speed. The shorter bolt size makes use of the crossbow easier , and the thickness lets the bolt handle the firing stresses better, and carry more force to the... |
How does altitude affect the operation of an electronic device? | The most notable effect is the thickness of the atmosphere. Any device uses air to dissipate heat, and at high altitudes, the air is thinner and therefore can't remove as much heat from the device. |
Why is it hard to see a star when looking directly at it, but see it clearly when I move my eyes around? | I know the answer to this! The reason is that our eyes contain two types of sensors, one called cones, and the others called rods. Your eye contains maaaany mores rods, than it does cones, and they're more sensitive to "brightness", but not color BUUUT these lie mostly on the outer edge of your retina. So when you aver... |
how a person in a coma gets rid of "waste products"? Do they defecate like normal or does the body excrete some other way? | They defecate and urinate normally. Nurses use bed pans, catheters, etc to move the waste away from the patientThey still defecate and urinate. They will be incontinent. Even people fed intravenously still defecateThey poop oh yes they poop. Comatose people are routinely fed with Ensure type feedings with a tube. They ... |
"If I make more, I'll have to pay more taxes" | Yes and no. The taxes you "pay" each paycheck are not due at that moment. They are only due when you file taxes. The government has given you the "option" to have them just take out an estimated amount of what you should owe rather than rely on you to save that money until tax time. You'll notice when you file taxes, t... |
why is it that breast cancer seems to always be the cancer people raise money for? | The [Komen Foundation] has basically made a business out of breast cancer awareness. It's a positive feedback cycle. They make a lot of money to make ads so they can make even more money. Now this would be great, except that they only spend about 20% of their fund on research, and the rest goes back to awareness and "o... |
What happens when we look at the bright spot in the dark | Okay, as I understand it; In your eyes you have *Cones* and *Rods*. The *Rods* pickup on very low levels of light and collect that light mostly from the periphery . They are also not very good as determining color. Your main vision uses information from the *Cones* and usually from what you are looking directly at. The... |
If I eat something high in carbs, and then eat a bunch of fiber powder like Metamucil, why doesn't it work like net carbs in the high carb thing I ate? | No, it doesn't. Calories in, calories out. Carbs have 3.75 calories per gram on average, rounded up to 4. If you consume 50g of carbs, you are consuming 50 * 4 = 200 calories. What the extra fiber *will* do is help it through your digestive tract, but you are still consuming 200 calories. I take extra fiber every day f... |
Minkowski Space (and, more importantly, the concept of the "null" geodesic). | In normal geometry, the distance from the origin is always a positive number for every point that is not the origin. In a Minkowski space, the distance can be 0 or negative; a null geodesic is just a line containing all the points 0 distance away from the origin. |
Why does hearing go out momentarily while yawning? | The muscles stretched during yawning pull on the eustachian tubes. This causes a pressure change in the tube which is connected to the ear drum. That interrior pressure change temporarily interferes with the sound. |
why is that my really cold bare feet sweat when I am wearing slippers? | When your feet first get into the slippers your body begins to heat up, as it no longer has to work as hard to stay warm. As a reaction, it expands blood vessels near the surface of your feet to shed extra heat. The only problem is most of that heat gets trapped under the slipper. When your body registers that it isn't... |
why do realtors use Zillow when trying to sale a house? | Ignore the Zillow estimates. They're almost always wrong and by wrong I mean low. If the realtor doesn't bring over estimates based on the "solds" from the local MLS, they're not worth their marketing weight. Also, realtors worth their weight, will have featured advertising on Zillow, Trulia and _URL_0_ . it's importan... |
Why does my neck beard grow faster than my normal beard? | As best as I know, different areas of hair growth have many different properties. Not just speed but in some cases color. I have a beard and while most of it is black a little bit on each side of my chin is orange. Some parts grow faster and its just coincidence that for you its neck thats faster. Joke answer, you are ... |
why do we challenge changes to a fictional entity (like vampires) if they don't exist? | It's called [Genre Consistency]: > The fictional universe should behave like other works in its genre, unless specifically noted otherwise. Any fictional concepts, characters, or settings borrowed from other works should behave as they do in those works. Tropes are Played Straight. For example, a dragon is generally ex... |
Why e^(pi*i) = -1 | First, how much do you know about complex numbers? i is a complex numbers, so without a little knowledge this isn't easy to explain. Short primer on complex numbers: A complex number consists of two parts. First you have a number, which signifies a number. Then you have i*a number. This signifies how far over the numbe... |
How come utility companies, landlords, etc. can report bad debt to collections and credit bureaus but have no obligation to report when bills are paid on time? | Because it is assumed your bills are paid on time. Same reason the police don't file a report on you everyday saying "Didn't commit a crime today" because it's assumed you didn't until you doThey do report when you pay on time. Its on your credit report. They report negative items, and they report "pays as agreed". At ... |
Why do people find fart noises so funny? | Louis CK does a better job explaining than I do. _URL_0_', "I don't really find them funny anymore but i think it might be linked to the embarrasment of another, well that is at first. Then each time you hear a fart it's just natural and instant for you to laugh! Well i feel very productive, i just wrote a paragraph ab... |
How do multi-level marketing companies like ItWorks and Mary Kay, work. | Sure you could. Start with a product that is more expensive than its equivalent in stores. Build some kind of lore around it that makes it seem like it's actually worth more even though it's not. Refuse to ever sell it in stores so that it has an air of exclusivity. Come up with nearly identical products that are seaso... |
Why is college tuition so damn high? | I'm assuming you're from the US in specific. Thing of everything involved in a school. You have professors, who have to be paid. You have IT to be paid, and assistants, and janitors, and librarians the list goes on. All those people have to be paid. Then you have to pay for new equipment. Even if some stuff is out of d... |
Why does Internet Explorer still exist & why doesn't Microsoft make it on par with Chrome ? | That's what Edge is about, but they've been gradually improving it for years. The problem is with resources though. Plenty of people use IE because it comes packaged with Windows, and it's not a money-making product. As a result, it's not really a priority. Like Apple and their Excel/Word counterparts. They produce the... |
Aside from take off/landing, what purpose do headlights serve on airplanes mid-flight? | Pilots have them on so other air planes know there there, Now the instruments in the airplanes are very precise BUT! have room to fail that's why sometimes you got to trust yourself and not what a computer says. |
How did Australia get some many nightmare enducing dangerous creatures in comparison to the rest of the world? | It's kinda because it's an island. Things evolve a bit more extremely when the population is relatively small and isolated. There are also more spiders and snakes in hotter areas, and Australia's pretty hot, so has a lot of spiders and snakes. A lot of spiders and snakes are nightmare inducing and whatnot. |
the relationship/difference between a government and a parliament | A Government runs the country. It can take many forms, but it is the national executive. They implement policy, and run agencies which give a framework within which the country happens . A Parliament is a representative body, used in lots of countries. It's comprised of people who are supposed to represent the people, ... |
Why does China have the world's largest population? Has it always been that way? Has its population ever been surpassed by that of another state? | China has historically had a very large population. In fact, it's estimated that if you were to take China in 2 AD and compare it to today's countries, China would be 14th, at around 87 million. . While China has historically always had a large population, there are a few countries that may have taken the title, includ... |
What would happen if you ate the stuff inside silica gel packets (the ones that say DO NOT EAT on them) | It's a dessicant, which means it removes moisture . It would be extremely "dry" to eat and it might also dry up your mucous membranes which can lead to problems if that mucous membrane is your stomach. Maybe not, although given that it's not that great tasting I wouldn't take the chance. But as the chemical goes, it's ... |
How do Bioré pore strips work? | I'm not sure how it grabs it, but I can tell you that for the vast majority of people, what you are grabbing is called sebum. Your skin naturally produces oils to protect it. When you use a Biore pore strip, you are ripping these natural oils out of your pores, irritating the pore and leaving it vulnerable to infection... |
How does the App Shazam work? | It turns samples of music into giant matricies, essentially assigning a value to x # of moments. It then compares this matrix to a database.Here's the algorithm described by the chief scientist and co-founder of Shazam: _URL_0_ Definitely not ELI5 though, but might be of interest.Furthermore, because it is really findi... |
Why are imaginary friends so common with kids? | are they though? Only mentions about this i'v heard are from american movies/sitcoms. Is it only an american thing?", 'During preschool years children have to develop roles and understand them throughout their lives. Imaginary friends would give an opportunity for children to practice roles more often than not. Let's s... |
How did the universe form when there was no time? | If there is no time, there is no cause and effect which is necessary to satisfy your question.We have no idea what happened before the Big Bang but time as we measure it today did not start until that point. This means that if we measure time, which we do it by looking at far away distances and what we see in the backg... |
British currency. Pounds, sterling, quid, pence?! | Pounds are like dollars, pence are like cents. pounds is short for "pounds sterling." Quid is like saying "bucks."The British Pound Sterling is their official currency. The current exchange rate is 1 British pound per 1.45 us dollars. Quid is just a slang term for a pound. 1 pence is like a penny. Theres 100 pence in a... |
Why do online videos have to rebuffer parts of the video that have already been loaded? | Video is loaded temporarily into memory. The video application estimates what has been loaded with a white bar. The application will act different depending on the quality of your connection, and the quality of your computer. When you change your current location on the video stream, a lot of times the application does... |
What causes allergies, what determines what allergies you have, and what exactly is happening when someone has an allergic reaction? | Imagine that your body has a security system, which is in charge of checking out a lot of things in order to keep you alive and healthy. One of the most important things that get checked is what enters your body. Under normal circumstances, it should work like an airport, where the passengers are only disturbed if the ... |
When growing yearly crops, what happens to the vast majority of the plant that is inedible? Is it currently used or is it disposed? | It depends on if the the leaves are poisionous and such. Corn husks and the stalks themselves are very fiberous, and can be used as insullation for garden beds over the winter, or to keep the compost warm. Tomato stalks are poisionous, so I usually get rid of them in an area of the yard that I don't ever use.In commerc... |
In (American) Common Law, 12 jurors must vote unanimously in order to convict somone. How is this done in the Civil Law system? | There are no single "civil law" system, many of the systems are different. I can give an example from where I live, but all countries have their own quirks. Here in Denmark , non-judicial people are utilised in two ways, either as juries or as assessors, together referred to as "lay judges." In cases with assessors, th... |
Why do so many games that are made in Japan have so few Japanese characters? | For the most part, they themselves see these characters as Japanese. Megaman has blue eyes because it matches his design. Misty has red hair to make her stand out. In both of these cases, it's not meant to be a literal representation of a phenotype, but a design choice that makes the characters distinct- you'll also fi... |
How do antidepressants cause you to sweat when you aren't hot? | A lot of medications act on the hypothalamus of the brain, which controls the release of hormones, sleeping cycles, and body temperature. The nervous system carries information to the hypothalamus, e.g. fingers are a certain temperature. The hypothalamus will then compare that temperature against a set value, and react... |
a credit card authorization hold. | Hotel worker here, get this question all the time. Lets say you are renting a room for $100. There is also taxes and most likely there will be incidental charges So we want to make sure you are good for it, so we seek an authorization of $200. Your bank says to us, "Yes, Mezzizle is good for $200." Now, we don't know w... |
why are there so many illegal immigrants; is it really that hard to legally become a member of the U.S.? | yes it is . the US made it even harder to become legal i have some friends who have put alot of money in attorneys and done everything that allows them to qualify but still nothing. even after they are accepted they still have to wait years and years.[Yes, it is really that hard]. It is stupid difficult to get into the... |
Why is it considered weird to drink the milk of another human, but drinking the milk of a cow is A-Okay? | It became the cultural norm when it filled an important societal need and now it is just accepted because it is normal. The need: People can't eat grass. Large parts of the world grow almost exclusively grass. Cows can eat grass. If you eat the cow, you no longer have a cow. Also, milk can be converted to cheese, which... |
The concept of artificial demand | Normally, demand for a product increases because people want that product. But you can also have a situation where demand for a product is increasing just because people want *the demand to increase*; they don't care about the actual product. This has negative effects, because it leads to a bunch of products that nobod... |
When addressing two people's names why do certain ones sound better listed first. For example Adam & Eve vs. Eve & Adam? | The stress of syllables and cadence will have a lot to do with how names fit together in speech. There is some sense of familiarity like Sonny and Cher vs. Cher and Sonny, but the rhythm of Sonny and Cher feels better than Cher and Sonny. "Jack and Jill went up a hill" vs. "Jill and Jack went up a hill" are very close ... |
Why do we get sleep paralysis? | [Sleep paralysis] is a phenomenon in which people, either when falling asleep or wakening, temporarily experience an inability to move . More formally, it is a transition state between wakefulness and rest characterized by complete muscle atonia . It can occur at sleep onset or upon awakening, and it is often associate... |
What are these black spots that mysteriously appear floating on the air? | So you or your girlfriend have any especially wool-y type clothes? Or do you have a cat that has very fine hair and sheds a lot? |
Why so many other languages make frequent use of accents/umlauts, but English doesn't really have any? | Because the Latin Alphabet did not originally have any diacritical marks . Accents marks and umlauts were added by each language individually as they developed , and it just happened that English didn't bother to create any. Instead, English prefers to spell out the pronounciation instead . The fact that England was th... |
When does a cult become an accepted religion? | It very much depends which definition of "cult" you're using. If you're a sociologist or a student of religion, a cult *is* a religion . In that context, a cult is specifically a religious grouping with beliefs and teachings that are unorthodox and/or new in its social context. It can be of any size; the thing that mat... |
Why does molestation screw people up? | Let's start with the worst case. Suppose a child is six months old and the father of the child does not realize that a grown man's penis won't fit up a six month old child's asshole and fractures the baby's hip leaving the infant fecally incontinent for the rest of his life. That is going to screw someone up for the re... |
How is the US Intellegence community fundamentally different from when they were so confident of WMD in Iraq? | First of all, the intelligence analysts looking at American cyber-security and those looking at international weapons capabilities are students of different specialties. Secondly, the Bush Administration pushed the intelligence that supported their predisposition for the war, and didn't feature at all the deep division... |
Why do we "lose" fitness over time when not training? | It takes more calories to support more muscle. If you're not putting it to use, then your body assumes it's excess, so it burns the "excess" muscle to make the body more efficient/require less calories |
The hydrogen generators today represent a sustainable alternative for generating energy, proposing a viable way of generating energy by this route and practical applications of this use | No they don't. Because there is no hydrogen mine. To get hydrogen you need to expend energy, far more than you get from burning it. Because simply put the reactions release and take equal energy, but you always have inefficiency, so you always put in more than you get out. Unless you mean fusion in which case no it rea... |
The process for remastering old games (PS1 etc) for new consoles (PS4/XBoxOne) | The first and primary thing done is porting the game. For these consoles that usually means there are different graphic APIs, and you need to update the game engine to use the newer APIs. Going from something like PS3 to PS4 shouldn't be a lot of work, Sony wants to make it easy for you. But stuff like PS4 to XBoxOne i... |
why is tasering sometimes unsuccessful? | Tasers do not operate based on pain . They pass electricity through the flesh which activates nerves, contracting muscles and not allowing them to be relaxed. The result is the subject is unable to move. In order to achieve this they must place two barbed probes within the target an appropriate distance apart, along wi... |
How did USB get to be universal? | There were too many of older connectors, so a few big companies decided to build something that everyone could use together. Since they had a larger market share and took the lead, others followed and everyone in the industry adopted the standard. |
Why and how the chronometer works. | Before you leave your home port, you set your chronometer so that you have a good time fix. Then you keep it wound, but don't reset it, as you travel. When you want to know what the longitude is, you determine what time the local noon is and compare that to your chronometer. If you've gone one-third of the way around t... |
What's stopping an Airforce pilot from "flying off" with a stealth plane? | A psychological screening that weeds out impulsive people before they can become pilots?', "If a pilot cut off radio communications or left the mission area, we would scramble jets to intercept it. It'd get shot down before it was able to land at a hostile location.First of all, even a stealth plane is visible most of ... |
Why do kids need a permission slip to watch r-rated movies in most classes in school, but in health they can show us graphic videos with no permission of any kind? | Kids can opt out of them and parents can request that they are not allowed to be in the classes.Because giving birth isn't violent or profane. It's life. |
Why do Americans and Germans indicate "3" differently with their fingers? | There's two different ways of indicating the number 3. There is one way for countries that have landed on the moon and there's another way for countries that haven't. |
Why are unicorns not called unihorns? | In short, they are. > unicorn > early 13c., from Old French unicorne, from Late Latin unicornus , from noun use of Latin unicornis "having one horn," from uni- "one" + cornus "horn" . > The "corn" in "unicorn" is actually from a Latin root that meant "horn". Consequently, this means they are in fact named "unihorns"Am ... |
If tobacco companies are beginning to get desperate about losing business to a more health-conscious public, why don't they reduce the amount of additives and create a less harmful cigarette? | There are cigarette brands that offer no-additive tobacco , which have kind of taken off in recent years. That said, the older, more established brands are naturally hesitant to change formulas. Why do that and risk losing loyal customers when you could just make a new line of zero-additive products?', "A lot of the ch... |
How do all animals know that a ball is a play thing? | It's less of "This ball is a toy" and more of "this rolling thing is entertaining." Most animals need some form of entertainment, and a rolling object is very helpful in that. Humans aren't really any different. We roll things around all the time and entertain ourselves with things that are necessarily play things.Many... |
How does the DEA make any money off of saying Synthetic Cannabis is safer than naturally grown? | Synthetic Cannabis is made by pharmaceutical companies. Pharmaceutical companies spend MASSIVE amounts of money bribing politicians for decisions that are profitable to them. [In terms of political bribes , they blow away every other industry by a long shot.] Making their product legal and everyone else's illegal is ob... |
What would happen to firewalls if Google were to make a VPN service? | If Google were to do this, the user would have a different IP address from the site itself. |
Why are drag strip race tracks one quarter mile and not 1 mile long? | A drag race takes place in 3-12 seconds depending on the type. It's all about acceleration and gear shifting skills, so there's no real point once they hit top speed. Additionally the top fuel dragsters need a total engine rebuild after every race , so making the track longer would only show which engine can last longe... |
if rhinoceros horns are made of keratin, why don't people just grind up fingernail clippings and sell it as rhino horn? | Because rhino horn isn't a compressed powder, it has structure and internal shape. A rhino horn is more like a gigantic hair than it is a fingernail. There does actually exist [synthetic rhino horn] though, and people are actively trying to flood the market with it to protect rhinos.Your hair is primarily made of kerat... |
What's happening in Sri Lanka currently? | Sri Lankan government killed a whole bunch of civilians who were in the no fire zone. This is now beyond dispute. They deny it / ignore it / continue to "silence" journalists. Sri Lanka is set to become the chair of the commonwealth. They do not deserve this honour, hence timely outrage. Source: worked for Amn. Int. re... |
What are whiteheads/blackheads actually made out of? | They are made out of sebum. Sebum is a substance you secrete in your skin from special glands. If there is too much and it gets trapped in the gland duct, it builds up. The reason you secrete the sebum in the first place is to lubricate your skinMostly dead skin, along with some dirt and oil in the pore. A whitehead is... |
How was it so common for a person to own thousands upon thousands of acres not even 200 years ago, yet it would take substantial wealth to have that anymore? | The population has grown SIGNIFICANTLY since then, and land is scarce with 7 billion+ people in the world', "It's not that hard to own a lot of land. It's just hard to own a lot of land in areas considered to be desirable. Buying a thousand acres of land in Manhattan? I don't think anyone has that much money . But buyi... |
Why does chicken taste dry when you boil it in water? | It's over cooking that makes it taste dry. This happens because the proteins contract and squeeze out the moisture. Cook chicken at too high a temperature, too fast or too long and this happens. |
Why does it seem like I can "feel" the noise of nails on a chalkboard? | I believe it's something related to synethesia. It's when the neural pathways are so close that they sometimes cross. Some people can visualize music as color, imagine specific textures to sounds, et cetera. |
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