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Why is 12am midnight and 12pm noon? | its probably easier to see why when you use a 24 hour clock. midnight is 00:00, clearly the start of the new day. 01:00 marks 1 hour passing of the new day, not the start of the 1st hour. the same way we count birthdays starting at 0 not 1, 1 year old means 1 year has passed. 12:00 is the middle of the day and marks th... |
'Sworn Virgins' of Albania | Yes, Sworn Virgins in the Balkans are classified as one of the "third genders." Albania is *very* patriarchal Because of that, some biological women , take a vow of complete chastity for life, and then adopt a male lifestyle, wearing men's clothing, doing men's work, etc. They are the Sworn Virgins. They are not transg... |
What is Martial Law? How does it effect people who are under Martial Law? Does every country have it? What are some reasons that it could happen? | It means the military takes over governance and law enforcement. It is generally used in extreme situations and thus is often fairly harsh. Curfews and militarized crowd control are often in effect. Most every country is capable of it, but almost everyone agrees that putting the military in charge is only good for extr... |
Why do banks keep making money if it gets circulated back to the economy anyway? | I don't think you mean "making money" in the sense of printing it I think you mean how can a bank keep claiming it's holdings and profits keep going up. Back when there was a physical standard for the value of money it would not be possible to claim the existence of more money than the value of the gold. But now the va... |
What motivates Billionaires to keep working? | Competition with other billionaires and wanting to build the wealth even moreI know a couple people who are not billionaires, but very very wealthy self made multi millionaires. They originally retired in their late thirties, bit came back to business simply because they wanted something to do.So now they work jot beca... |
Why I don't feel hot or sweat in the shower | Go stand outside on an average day. How do you feel? Warm? Cool? Good. Now I'm going to dump a bucket of water over your head. **Sploosh**! Now how do you feel? Pretty cold, I would guess. The same thing happens in the shower. Since you're wet, you cool off. Even tho the water is hot, being covered in water cools you d... |
What's the difference between various NSAIDs (Advil, aspirin, aleve etc.)? Are some more effectual than others? | Some NSAIDs have different ways of reaching the end goal of reducing inflammation and providing relief. These are called mechanisms of action. In addition, some may be sorted into different classes because of their chemical structure. The most common NSAIDs you use are a kind called proprionic acid derivatives which in... |
If we can look millions of miles into space, why can't we look for the American flag on the moon to prove it? | There are other things you can look for, like the mirrors that were placed there. But we don't need to see the American flag to prove that we went there. Every sane person on this planet knows we did, because there's a mountain of evidence to support it and no evidence to refute it. |
When drugs go past their expiry date, do they 'go bad' like how foods rot, or do they just lose efficacy? | Depends on the drug. Most of them are still effective long after their expiration, but we can't use them in retail. Refrigerated things definitely spoil. Antibiotics absolutely lose efficacy. Some of them can become toxic after a certain length of time, but that is pretty uncommon.It generally means that the drug loses... |
When did we change from barter to trading precious metals? | I'd like to point out that money doesn't always have to be precious metals. But anyway, the use of some form of currency seems to have emerged very early on in major civilizations. As to the why, frankly barter is more complicated because there's no way to set the value of a good compared to another good. It's also mor... |
When a person is born deaf, what language do they think in? | To elaborate even further on the first two responses. People think in pictures, mental images. We don't begin to assign words to those images until we learn language. People also have basic needs such as food and water. In that case we are not thinking in images but rather based on instinct. We then assign words to tho... |
How do elementary school kids all over the country know the same playground songs/rhymes/etc? | Memes were around thousands of years before there was an internet, and they spread ~~geometrically~~ ~~exponentially~~ quadratically. ~~This means that one person tells ten people, each of whom tell ten people, each of whom tell ten people,~~ Within a few years, you have global coverage.Media is a good answer, but also... |
Why do people in hot countries have darker skin if black absorbs heat? | Darker skin is a result of higher levels of melanin in skin. Melanin's primary role is to block UV radiation. Most of the countries we think of as 'hotter' or inhabited by dark skinned individuals tend to be in the tropics, where solar radiation is more intense. There, higher levels of melanin protected the skin and th... |
before a crack appears in a window and produces a face (a side of the crack), why aren't the faces visible? | The distance between the faces are smaller than the wavelength of light. You can't have a reflectance if light can't bounce off of it. Only when the distance between the crack gets large enough will you be able to see it as light can then be reflected off the sides. If you really wanted to be able to detect or find a c... |
Why do so many people think that there are 52 states in the US? | I haven't met anyone from the UK that thinks that but if there are such people I reckon they think 2 of the following count as states; District of Columbia Puerto Rico American Samao Guam U.S Virgin Islands Northern Mariana Islands DC is a federal district while the others are inhabited territories. edit - grammar |
Why are .gif files so slower that higher resolution video? | Basically because your computer waits to load the first picture completely, before it loads the second picture. Whereas video can buffer in advance, and more than one thing at a time . The reason a video can buffer fast, is because of compression which is a totally different ELI5. Compression basically only loads the C... |
Why are magnetic stripes still on credit/debit cards in the UK? | You might want to use the card in a country that doesn't use chip and pin, like the United States. It's practically free to put it on there, so they make it so you have it in the cases where you do need it. |
The MLB waiver trade deadline. | Very basically, a player can be traded before July 31 without having to go through the waiver process. After July 31, a player first has to clear waivers before being allowed to go to another team, meaning, that he has to be put on the waiver wire where any team can try to claim him. The team with the worst record has ... |
What would happen to my body if I took a laxative at the same time as an anti-diarrheal? | depends on how they work and how they interact with eachother. I'd say 5% chance they cancel eachother out and 95% chance of severe intestinal distress.It really depends on the drugs you took and how much time you had, some can be more effective although the laxative would likely win. Laxative classes : * Draw water in... |
How can a pregnancy test tell if you are pregnant just from your urine? | Pregnancy tests rely on the presence of the hormone human chorionic gonadotropin , a glycoprotein that is secreted by the placenta shortly after fertilization. The placenta begins developing after the fertilized egg implants in a woman's uterus, which happens about six days after conception, so the earliest these tests... |
When looking in the sky at night, how can I differentiate between stars, satellites, planets and other objects? | Stars 'twinkle,' planets generally provide a steady light. Artificial Satellites will be visibly moving, and won't be 'twinkling.' Meteorites will be moving *fast.*", 'Stars don't move and generally twinkle because they're so far away, the appear to be just a single point of light. Planets don't move either and they do... |
When I rub my feet on the carpet and then shock someone, why is the shock more painful to them than myself? | Alsk, why does this happen rarely, sometimes not even after I rub my feet on carpet for minutes? What are the variables here, is there a "trick" to it?Stop using your knuckle to zap people on the eyeball. |
What's really happening in Xi Jinping's "Anti-corruption" campaign? | "The Anti-corruption campaign in China is a far-reaching campaign against corruption which began in China following the conclusion of the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China. Held in November 2012, the 18th National Congress, saw the elevation of Xi Jinping to the General Secretary of the Communist P... |
HOW DID THEY CACULATE UTC or GMT | Time-keeping is a totally arbitrary concept. We count hours, minutes, and seconds the way that we do merely because everyone agreed that that was the best way to do it. UTC is simply a "Zero Point" upon which "Time Zones" are based. The constants in this situation are the length of a day and the length of a year. The l... |
Why "coed" means "both males and females" but it can also mean "a female student". | The use of co-ed to mean a female student is a fairly dated phrasing, and you don't see it used quite as much these days. At one point, it was uncommon for women to attend college. For a college to be co-ed meant that it now allowed women . So a co-ed student was a student who was at the school because it was a co-ed s... |
Why is homebrewing/microbrewing beer acceptable, but moonshine is illegal? | 1) Taxes/money -- the biggest, most obvious reason. Spirits have much higher alcohol-by-volume and the effort/equipment to make them is greater than a typical wine or beer. Therefore, spirits carry a much higher price tag. A higher sale price means the government gets a bigger cut when they tax it. 2) Safety . Methanol... |
Why do some sites consider a 30 number password too weak? | 11111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111 Super safe. Seriously though, it depends on the specific password. For instance, if it's just regular words strung together , it is comparably easy to crack if the algorithm tries dictionary lists first. The biggest risk in regards to passwords is ... |
What exactly is it in smells that make them smell "good" or "bad"? | edit: I'm not a specialist, just someone who is relatively curious about the subject. Take this answer with a grain of salt. ---It is not exactly something in the smell, it's something in your brain. It's a way for your brain to tell you what you should be eating and what you should not. So we decipher things our body ... |
When a website says that it uses 256-bit encryption, what are they saying, and why not use 500 or 1,000 or 1,000,000 bits? | The number is the size of the key. 256-bit encryption means a 256-bit key. The longer the key, in theory, the harder it is to break. Stronger encryption takes more computing power. 256-bit keys are not feasible to break with modern equipment, so there is little reason to go any higher. Going with a 1,000,000 bit key is... |
Why do apples turn brown/red after cutting and leaving them in room temperature for a bit? | When an apple is cut open, an enzyme called polyphenol oxidase is released from the cells of the apple and reacts with the oxygen in the air. This causes it to turn brown. It's similar to rust forming on metal. But, if you put lemon juice on the slices, it helps slow down the browning. Lime juice works too. Both are hi... |
Why do you get a closer shave when you go over the same area multiple times? | because the first pass takes some hair, and some of the top layer of dead skin. so the second pass is closer to the root of the hair. pro tip: exfoliate before you shave. then do one pass. less razor bumps, healthier skin, closer shave. |
If we can build massive telescopes to gaze into space why can't we build massive microscopes to gaze further into the sub-atomic level? | Telescopes use light. That is a simple statement, yes, but it is important. Light is a particle, and it reacts with things as if it had a physical size - it's wavelength. That wavelength is a few hundred nanometers. Trying to see atoms with light is like trying to see marbles by throwing basketballs at them, and seeing... |
Why does getting nervous cause upset stomach and the immediate need for a bathroom. | It's your body's response to feeling in danger, taking a crap relieves you of extra weight so that you can run faster. Also, a lot of hormones are released when you are stressed, namely cortizone and adrenaline.Often we're either in "rest and digest" or "fight or flight". When we get stressed and switch from the first ... |
What happens to a splinter when it enters the skins and I don't bother to remove it? What happens to it? How does the body remove it? | There are multiple possibilities. Most of the time it will be naturally pushed out of your skin. If it is superficial enough, this will probably happen without the skin even healing over. If it's a little deep, then the skin will heal over first. You will probably experience some irritation for a while until the skin a... |
Why do ideas seem good in my head but suck when I put pen to paper? | You usually don't think an idea through as much as you think you do until you put it on paper. That's when other details start coming up that you may not have thought of before. Before you write it down, it's probably just a vague concept. Putting it into words forces you to make that concept something a little more co... |
Why games like Dota2 and LoL became popular competitive games | > 2014 Dota2 Invitational International. What makes a good sport? Replayability and outcome that depends on skill rather than luck. Dota has more than 100 unique heroes with specific tactics and a lot of ways to customize it with items . Also Dota has pretty complicated metagame, so you not only require clicking skill,... |
Why can't we just install Windows on consoles (xbox scorpio etc.) If they're so powerful to run hardware intensive games? | Windows is designed to run on standard PC hardware. This makes certain assumptions about the CPU, how it's connected to the rest of the system, what's provided by BIOS/UEFI, built-in interfaces for everything from keyboards to clocks and a whole bunch of other stuff. They're basically built to be backwards compatible t... |
Are weirdly shaped voting districts always indicative of gerrymandering? Or must you sometimes draw a weirdly shaped district to ensure that the minority party gets at least one representative in the area? | Let's be clear here: Adjusting boundaries to favour a party - ANY party - is gerrymandering. That said, there could be legitimate reasons for funky boundaries, most notably because population isn't evenly distributed. Including a village in one district instead of another might just be an attempt at keeping the distric... |
How do gas pumps know when to stop filling your car? | The nozzle is shaped in such a way that when the tank has been filled to a certain point, any more gasoline flowing through is pushed back into the nozzle, stopping the flow. This is why it makes that harsh sound when the tank is suddenly full - that's the pressure of the back-flow pushing against the in-flow . As as e... |
ELI: Gabriel's Horn | I've often heard it said that the horn needs a finite amount of paint to fill it, but an infinite amount of paint to paint it's surface. What it comes down to is the difference between measuring area in two dimensions and in three dimensions . The difference here is that it's three dimensional area shrinks much faster ... |
I heard that recycling does more harm than good because of the emissions during the recycling process. Is this statement accurate? | It depends on what you think the alternative is. Yes, recycling can use a lot of energy and will create nasty wastes and people shouldn't think that recycling just makes everything perfect. On the other hand, most things which can be recycled require less energy, waste, and environmental impact than making the same pro... |
What exactly is "missing" in the brain/mental processes when someone has above average written communication skills, yet poor/below average verbal communication skills? | When speaking your brain has to translate the words in your head, into impulses that go to your vocal cords and lungs. This is a synced process I.E your body has to send the impulse continually or you won't get the word out. This takes brain power which you could normally use to create better arguments. It also prevent... |
What causes Stockholm Syndrome? | "Most of human history has been played out in hunter-gatherer societies in which abductions, particularly of women and their dependent children, must have been a very common occurrence." [Source] Basically, people-napping in caveman times was so common, that those who were more docile and friendly with their captors we... |
if water is clear, why do our clothes (and other things) get darker when they're wet? | A wet cloth looks\xa0darker\xa0because less light is reflected from a wet cloth. Any cloth is woven from a yarn or fibre. That fibre is in turn\xa0made\xa0of smaller micro-fibres. Light comes from the room lights, or from the Sun, and lands on the cloth. |
Why does my hair hurt when I've got the flu? | I'm almost positive that this has to do with the viral infection causing inflammation at various sites in your body. An inflammation response is what causes the sore throat and the muscle/joint aching, as well as most of the other symptoms. The tissue around your hair follicles is probably inflamed, to the point that m... |
How does having a 144hz monitor help when games like csgo are only 64 ticks per second. | Using smaller numbers here so it's easier to understand, imagine the game ran at 2 frames per second, and your monitor also runs at 2 frames per second. So the game finishes calculating this frame and then passes it to the graphics card. The monitor is only fast enough to draw 2 frames per second, so it takes half a se... |
Why do Ball Park Hot Dogs plump when you cook them? | They contain a lot of water/moisture and sodium which is absorbed into the 'meat'. When you heat it the moisture expands and due to the elasticity of the casing they are able to 'plump' up. |
(or12) Why pure sodium, when exposed to water blows the fuck up like it does? | All atoms are made up of two kinds of particles, Negative ones and positive ones . In an atom, Electrons are found hovering in different shapes way outside the protons, and so can be easily kicked off or pulled onto other atoms. Sodium is an element with one electron in the way outsides of its atom "shell". This means ... |
Why are black peoples voices so deep? | Black people tend to have higher testosterone levels than other races. One effect of this is a deeper voice.As a black man idk but I'll stab at it. Think back to African civilizations things are so much more distant/ spread out than other settled civilizations where there is a town center, neighbors 10 ft away, etc. Ba... |
Why does bottled water have a sell-by date? | Got this from _URL_0_:There are several reasons why water bottles come with an expiration date. The main one is government bureaucracy: water is a consumable food product, and as such, it is subject to laws requiring expiration dates on all consumables, from bologna to lemonade. Besides that, the expiration date on bot... |
Does the type of file affect the speed at which you can transfer it? | The only issue I can think of is the difference between 1 large file and 10000 small files. For every file in that list, a new request must be made, connection established, and then the data is transferred. Whereas 1 large file only needs 1 connection established and then streams ALL of the content at once. It's MUCH f... |
What is the reason for that feeling triggered when water goes up your nose and why does our body reject it in that way? | Salt will kill a snail, just suck the water right out of their tissues and cause them to die in a puddle of fluid due to its [osmotic pressure] The water/salt balance of human body fluids is much closer to that of salt water than fresh water. Skin is pretty much water proof so getting water there is no problem, but the... |
the Texas bill about wrongful births. | In Texas a mother can sue a doctor for failing to properly diagnose problems with a fetus. This started in a 1975 case where a pregnant woman sued her doctor. She got rubella while pregnant and claimed her doctor failed to properly diagnose her or warn her about the effect the illness could have on her baby. She had th... |
How does someone circumvent a censored internet? | VPN or proxy. If you're at work, don't. IT will immediately know and you will be fired as soon as they get around to giving a shit.try downloading the pirate bays modified firefox browser |
Why is the Midwest called that? | As the settlers were moving west, the Rocky Mountains were a natural boundary. Most people that moved to the far west traveled by ship. So west became the Texas / Oklahoma / New Mexico area and the area in between became known as the mid-west.'West' in the US, is pretty much anything Rocky Mountains and further west. C... |
Solipsism and it's different types | Imagine that you have a virtual reality game, like the matrix, you plug in and every sense tells you that you are actually there. You see it, hear it, smell it, taste it, feel it as if you were actually there. And you don't sense any of the real world. Now imagine that you are plugged out of the game, you get up from t... |
How does mining of asteroids work in space? | NASA and others in the prospace movement have been discussing and doing research on how to do it since the 1980s. If you want to find out what the current thinking is and who is trying to build it, check out the Space Development conferences, especially those of the National Space Society or attend one of the local cha... |
What makes Scientology stand out as that one "crazy" religion? | Among other things, high profile celebrity adherents with [unusual] public [behavior], cultish behavior in regards to isolation of adherants from non-adherents allegedly up to forced involuntary confinement and [possibly death], heavy litigation, and a number of scandals including not only attempts to [ruin detractors]... |
What causes people to pass out if they are experiencing extreme pain? | Similar to shock. Pain can cause heart rate to drop, dropping blood pressure, causing fainting. Source: first google resultI'm a fainter, and it's not even from "extreme" pain. Needles, or even thinking/talking about them can make me faint and it has to do with the brain going into shock and reducing the blood pressure... |
How did our week get split into 'week' and 'weekend'? | Henry Ford he gave his employees Saturday and Sunday off and that trend followed and was cemented during the Great depressionBefore the industrial revolution there was no real separation between week and weekend. People went to church on Sundays, but regardless of the day of the week people living a largely subsistence... |
What is the difference between momentum and energy? | Well one major difference is that momentum is a vector . That means in addition to a quantity, it has a direction. This is important for problems involving the conservation of momentum. Meanwhile, kinetic energy is a scalar, and has no direction in space. Here's an interesting thought experiment illustrating the real w... |
Why does our skin turn red after leaning on something? | When you lean on it, your skin actually turns whiteish because you're blocking the flow of blood to that area. This causes blood to build up in your blood vessels that are right before the part of your body that you leaned on. So when you let go all or that blood rushes through. A good analogy would be a hose pipe. Ima... |
What is the difference between high quality chocolate and cheap chocolate? | My Mom worked for Godiva chocolate for years. Cheaper chocolate uses less cacao, lower quality cacao, and blends it with cheaper stuff like hydrogenated oils. Better chocolate has more cacao and blends it with better stuff, which is why it's meltier, doesn't last as long, and tastes fucking fabulous. I became a total c... |
just got back from Dubai and can't understand where it gets all its money? | Oil money and slave labor can do some amazing things. Once the oil money started pushing the city up real estate and construction started to take over as everyone wanted a piece of this city that has been marketed as the future.It grew off the back of oil, but is now run by tourism and other exports/imports. It is also... |
Why do companies that aren't consumer oriented (such as IBM) still air commercials on TV and produce print advertisements in magazines? | The people who make decisions for businesses large and small also watch television and read magazinesBecause investors watch TV too. This makes them more likely to buy IBM stock. |
How can humans die of electrocution from wires yet survive lightning bolts? | the reason you die from electrocution is it is an ongoing, continuous, current.The current will immobilize an muscle tissue it passes through, keeping it contracted for as long as the current is present. This includes your heart and lungs, to name a few. So basically you die because it stopped your heart / breathing / ... |
Why can I not remember the lyrics of a song off the top of my head, but the second that the song plays I remember it? | Memory is set up as a network of pieces of information that are all connected in one way or another. When a part of the network is actvated it makes it easier to retrieve information from the rest of the network . It's the same reason that studying in the same room that you are going to take a test oftentimes leads to ... |
Why are cars not insulated to capture heat in the winter and keep the car cool in the summer. | Cars *are* insulated, but it works both ways. If you have it trying to keep heat out in the summer then it also tries to keep heat out in the winter. Simultaneously it is trying to keep heat in during the summer and heat in during the winter. Insulation inhibits heat transfer in either direction. |
Why does cyclooctane have a higher boiling point than octane? | The ring shape allows for a larger area of contact than the points of contact between non-cyclic octane. More contact means stronger van der Waals forces between molecules, increasing boiling point. |
Why is that in many countries around the world you cannot flush toilet paper in the toilet and throw it away in a trash can instead? | It depends on the plumbing and the waste water treatment facilities that are available in that area. For obvious reasons, it's easier to move water through pipes than solids like toilet paper. If the pipes are old or not designed well then the paper will get clogged up in the pipes. Even if the paper doesn't get clogge... |
"Feels like" temperature. Doesn't it being 35 degrees mean that's how it feels regardless? How can it feel like 16? | [Wind chill] can make it feel colder than it actually is, while [high humidity] can make it feel warmer than it actually isYou are a warm blooded animal, which means you release heat to your environment to regulate temperature. If there are two rooms with the same temperature air , the air that is moving will have more... |
Why does google always show the same ads in front of YouTube videos and doesn't diversify? Wouldn't they get better results? | Google knows who you are, and what sorts of things you're in to. They sell access to your demographic to advertisers, who pay for '20something males who like Star Wars' or '30-38 year old women who like celebrities'. If you only routinely see two ads, it's because only two companies want to target your demographic thro... |
Why do receiver volume levels go backwards? | It's with reference to an absolute volume. It's saying, "We are increasing from 24 dB quieter than reference to 23 dB quieter". That reference volume might be the maximum possible volume the electronics can stand, might be the pain threshold of humans, any number of things.It's showing the signal gain, not volume. For ... |
In Right of First Refusal negotiations, what prevents the owning party from making extreme demands to escape the option holder? | As I understand it, you can ask MGM for anything you want. But if you then get an offer from someone else for your screenplay for $3.79 MGM has the option to buy it at $3.79 before you can sell itThey generally get right of first refusal on any *specific offer*, not just to be the first to negotiate. If you want to sel... |
this quote from Glengarry Glen Ross : “Let me buy you a pack of gum. I’ll show you how to chew it.” | Do you need to be explained how to chew things? Hopefully not because it's such a basic skill that newborn babies have it. How do you use chewing gum? You chew on it. It's so obvious that it's named after it. So there you have it. It's a huge burn. "You're so incompetent and worthy of pity that I will buy you a pack of... |
In a single driver audio system, how are multiple frequencies produced at the same time? | Imagine this. The speaker is able to vibrate really quickly. Let's say that in one second, it can move between the maximum to minimum positions and back 50,000 times. This is equivalent to 50,000 Hz, or 50kHz. The human ear can hear up to 20kHz, so the speaker can easily produce all the frequencies you are capable of h... |
How do 2.5d shooters like Wolfenstein and Doom work? | Not a programmer, so I can't go into much detail. In Wolfenstien, the map was simply a grid of blocks on a 2d plane. The renderer would use this grid to render all walls at a uniform height. In Doom, floor and ceiling values were added to the 2d grid, in addition to textures for floors and ceilings. The renderer would ... |
What happens when you give birth in a foreign country? | This depends on the laws of the countries involved. There is no one, universal, global answer. Some countries say that if you are born while in their territory, you are a citizen. Some countries say that if one of your parents is a citizen of that country when you are born, then so are you. Some countries permit dual c... |
Why does melted cheese taste better than non melted cheese? | Simply *melted* cheese tastes better because it is more fluid, and the things that make cheese taste the way it does are easier for your tongue to detect when it is warm. Try eating a piece of frozen cheese no flavour at all. Now, if you keep heating cheese, past melting until it *browns* a bit like on a pizza. This br... |
How come meditating and sleeping be different if in both cases the body is relaxed and not moving? | Because sleeping involves a specific group of states of altered consciousness. Meditation, while sometimes recognized as an altered state of consciousness, does not put the mind in the same state as sleep, even though you are relaxed and not moving. The not moving is voluntary, rather than involuntary as it is in some ... |
Why does anyone in the US care about Iran at all? | Why does the US care NOW about Iran? Three reasons: 1: They keep threatening Israel and Israel spends a lot of time & money cultivating US politicians to provide a layer of defense against aggression. 2: The US needs oil to flow out of the Persian Gulf to ensure a reasonably free market price for energy, although that ... |
Why do we feel so strong love to animals thats often stronger than our love to fellow humans? | We have lower expectations of animals. If a person were to chew up a couch pillow, we 'd think they're insane. But with a dog we just scold them and go about our day. Similarly, we expect a person to comfort us when we feel sad, but when a dog does it, it seems to go beyond "animal" thinking and make a real connection.... |
Why do only certain electronics usually use 9 volt batteries? | With circuit designs that we call "linear," the supply voltage is irrelevant. You can use a 9V battery, or you can use a 1.5V battery and draw six times as much current from it: at least in theory, the device will function the same way. The 1.5V battery won't last as long, but you could use multiple batteries if you wa... |
Why is baltimore such a violent city? | Same thing that drives violence in other cities, since Baltimore isn't the most violent city. A lot of single parent families, drug addiction, alcohol abuse, poverty, people who are poor decision makers due to poor schools and poor parental role models, police use of excessive force, high rates of incarceration being t... |
How the hell do carrier pigeons know where they're going? | They're hatched and raised at some location, and then distributed via land routes to other locations. When released, they will fly back to where they were raised. So each location that wishes to receive pigeons breeds them and then sends them to people they would like to receive messages from. Once they get the message... |
Why does the need to micturate increase drastically when one's hands come in contact with water? | Maybe maybe not, most likely there is a large psychosomatic component. As to say your brain is registering wetness/water which triggers you to think about it. BUT I would personally bet the reason is because you have trained your body that usually if you have to pee, you will go wash your hands and then pee. Over time ... |
Do airlines really save that much money when the cut back on services? | definitely! the story goes that American Airlines saved $40,000 back in the 1987 by eliminating a single olive from the salads served to first-class passengers. Can't find a definitive link, but there's plenty of sites that relay the [same story]. The large carriers fly thousands of flights a day . If they find a way t... |
How are satellites for tv and radio able to broadcast thousands of signals at once? Do they have an individual antenna for each signal? | TV and radio satellites do have multiple antenna arrays that send out their signals on individual frequencies. Those antennas are called "transponders". Each satellite can have dozens of transponders, each receiving, amplifying and then re-broadcasting between 20 to a couple hundred channels. For more information, also... |
how do we know what animals see? | _URL_0_Often, Google is more useful than reddit.The best scientists to can do is describe what an animal sees as an analogy to what we see, but we since we don't have the same eyes and brains as those animals obviously we can't interpret colors the same way they do. If the animal has structures in its eyes that are sim... |
Why are people so upset about the 9/11 mattress sale, while Memorial Day sales are considered ok? | Memorial Day is a traditional holiday that's been around for about 150 years. Many Americans do take the opportunity to remember fallen veterans, but the event usually is not tied to any specific event in history. I anticipate that most Americans are familiar with the holiday and its general meaning, but not its specif... |
What causes some animals to 'take in' human babies and raise them as their own? | Where is this happening outside fantasy novels? If a human baby is abandoned, it will most likely die. They are massively underdeveloped when they are born. . There is no way any other animal can care for us. Even other primates. Feral children are often products of family neglect. If abandoned, it appears the youngest... |
Why do we capitalize 'I' but not other pronouns like you, me, he or she? | I learned about this a few weeks ago when one of my students asked this question. The first person personal pronoun used to be "ich", but evolved to "i". Typesetters thought the little "i" looked small by itself, so they started capitalizing it. It has nothing to do with grammar. _URL_0_The New York Times has a [great ... |
how come when you speed up a song on YouTube, it doesn't get that "Alvin and the Chipmunks" effect you get when you speed up a vinyl record? | Essentially it’s because computers are smart. Sound is a wave, with how high or low a sound is being determined by how many waves it has per second. More waves = high pitch. So when a recording gets played at a faster speed, be that a record or on a computer, more waves come out in the same amount of time, so everythin... |
Why don't we have more options/competition for companies like comcast? | Companies such as Comcast are known as natural monopolies. Don't get me wrong, there is some competition, such as satellite internet, but as far a cable goes they're your only choice. It's unfortunate, but it makes sense. If there were a ton of cable companies it would be a disaster with all their underground lines cro... |
Why are screens measured diagonally? | The first CRT screens used a circular glass bulb as a display, with a rectangular image displayed on it, and the diameter of the circle was given as the size of the screen. When rectangular CRT bulbs were developed, the diagonal size was used because it was the closest equivalent measurement to the existing circular bu... |
What exactly is the Fibonaci Code. | You ask how it relates to things? Well, check out these three Vihart videos: [Doodling in Math: Spirals, Fibonacci, and Being a Plant [1 of 3]] [Doodling in Math Class: Spirals, Fibonacci, and Being a Plant [2 of 3]] [Doodling in Math: Spirals, Fibonacci, and Being a Plant [3 of 3]] |
- Why do some websites let Advertising companies ruin or completely destroy the usability of their sites? | This usually happens right after the website is sold. The new owner is trying to generate instant income. Almost always at the cost of site traffic.They don't let advertising companies destroy their site. They sacrifice usability for monetization. The host company makes the decision to do this, not any advertising comp... |
Why are the differences between male and female faces pronounced compared to other mammals? | Most species have some degree of sexual diamorphism, humans are just evolved to notice the differences in other humans more than the differences between different animals of another species. The differences arn't more pronounced, we just pay more attention to them because of sex. If you were a chimpanzee you would have... |
Bills presented to Congress that nobody asked for | ah..but someone DID ask for it. the person that wrote the bill was obviously asked by special interest groups to write a bill. just because YOU don't want it, doesn't mean that someone else doesn't want it. |
Why do us humans enjoy being scared and love scary movies so much? | It's the same principal as why we like humor. Humor is based on potential danger that we can enjoy without actually being in danger. Mr Bean does things that we'd freak out/be in serious trouble for if we were caught doing the things he does, for example. Horror is similar. We get to watch the slasher kill babysitters ... |
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