Split (3)

train · 279k rows

query stringlengths 8 249	answer stringlengths 45 7.8k
What causes that distortion in the air near hot surfaces?	There are two things working together to make that happen. First, when air gets hot, it means the molecules are bouncing around faster. Because they're bouncing faster, they push each other away, and the gas expands and gets thinner . Second, when light goes from a thinner gas to a thicker one , it changes direction based on the angle of the border between the two gases and the difference in density. So when light goes from a pocket of hot air to "normal" air, it can bend a little bit. And that's why things look distorted when you see them through hot air. It's basically similar to the reason stuff looks distorted through a glass of water, but of course in that case the water is denser than the air [Cold air is denser than warm air and has therefore a greater refractive index. As light passes from colder air across a sharp boundary to significantly warmer air, the light rays bend away from the direction of the temperature gradient. When light rays pass from hotter to cooler, they bend toward the direction of the gradient. If the air near the ground is warmer than that higher up, the light ray bends in a concave, upward trajectory.]
The difference between beer, ale, lager, stout, draught etc....	In the most basic sense, there are two main types of beers: ales and lagers. Ales are top fermented whiles lagers are bottom fermented. A stout is a type of ale made with roasted malts. A draught beer is just beer from a keg. If you're looking for more information look at [this thread].
What's the physical advantage of sweating more (excessively) during exercise?	The physical advantage of sweating more is that it provides more capacity to cool the body down through the evaporation of sweat. The transition from liquid to vapor reqruires energy, which is pulled from the body in the form of heat. When core body temperature increases less rapid than normal, it enables you to run for a longer period of time and faster before your performance drops because the body tempeature is way too high. Someone who is not used to exercise will take a long time before he sweats, but he'll sweat earlier and more when he continues to train. That is the main trend, but there's still a lot of differences between people in sweating patterns. Some people have a very low sweat threshold, or the rate of sweat increase is super high etc. These differences don't mean that they're all beneficial because there are limits to everything but in general, more sweat=more cooling. Sometimes sweat just drips off the body. That isn't because the body spends too much liquid for sweating and getting much cooling in return. In an ideal setting, the body maxes out the sweat capacity and all the sweat you produce will be evaporated. So the problem isn't on the body side of things, it just want to cool down. Sweat evaporation happens all the time, but there are 2 things that affect the rate of sweat evaporation: convection and humidity. It's not a suprise when I say that sweat evaporation happens more easily when there's a nice wind blowing around you, look at how a blow dryer works. Second, humidity plays a yuuge part. When humidity is low, the water pressure in the air is low and evaporation is fairly easy. When humidity is high, the air is more saturated with water. This makes it harder for sweat to evaporate and the sweat just rolls off your body. Try to go for a run on a day with dry heat and on day with high humidity. You'll feel a big big difference.
Why do certain foods taste bad when they are actually beneficial for us?	What is \'good\' or \'bad\' for us is often not determined by what it is but rather by how much. From an evolutionary perspective, we crave sugar and fats because this was the most difficult thing to have, and at the same time, its the thing that contains most energy. Our bodies still \'believe\' that this is the case, so we still crave sugar and fats despite its abundance. The science of what we should and shouldn't eat is a difficult one, and it doesn't help that every scientific finding or study is then bloated by mass media in articles like "If you eat xy, you will live longer" just because some rat experiment showed a marginal effect of a highly concentrated and chemically modified substance that also happens to be in xy. So you will probably find studies suggesting that eating oils in general is bad, and others stating that eating olive oil is better than eating palm fat, whilst others state that not oils but carbohydrates are the problem. Then there is taste, and that is often very individual. I for example like olive oil and could eat bread dipped into nothing but olive oil every day.
When dating, why is age difference a big deal for teens/kids, but not for adults?	Children and young adults are on a [diminishing returns] scale of maturity. That means that there's a lot more difference in maturity between a 14 and 16 year old than there is between a 32 and 33 year old. Ideally, by the time you're in your mid-20's your both mature and smart enough to recognize when someone older than you is taking advantage of you. Something that teens and younger-adults cannot necessarily do. This isn't universal, of course, but lets just say exceptions are exceptionally rare .
how can so many different kinds of cheese be made starting from the same few ingredients and similar techniques?	In many cases, the same few ingredients can be changed in quantity or be substituted for other similar ingredients. Furthermore, preparation methods, aging methods, and storage and packaging methods can drastically change the character, flavor and texture of the cheese, leading to different varieties. Other factors like fat content, moisture content, the cultures used , and any flavorings added will further change the end product. In the case of cottage cheese, it's one of the earliest stages of curdling, and very little if any moisture is pressed out of it, leading to a very loose, lumpy product. Blue cheese is allowed to age for a long time after it curdles, it is tightly pressed to extract as much moisture as possible, and it is left to culture a type of mold which changes the taste and texture to those associated with Blue Cheese. Similar ingredients, but significant differences in the way everything comes together to make a different product. :)
Euclidean vs non-Euclidean geometry with examples	Euclidean geometry is the normal geometry you probably learned in school. It's all based on squares and takes place within a plane. Non-Euclidean geometry is literally anything else. One of the simpler non-Euclidean geometries is spherical geometry. Spherical geometry takes place on the surface of a sphere . In spherical geometry, you don't have lines. Instead, you have "great circles", which are circles with the same radius as the sphere itself. Now, you no longer have parallel "lines", because any two great circles must intersect. You can use great circles to make triangles on the surface of the sphere. But these triangles have different properties than Euclidean triangles. The three angles on a Euclidean triangle always add up to 180 degrees. IIRC, the angles of a triangle on a sphere always add up to more than 180 degrees. In fact, you can have a triangle with three right angles. You just put a right angle at the north pole, then put the other line along the equator.Euclidean geometry is the geometry you can do on a piece of paper, the kind you can draw that you learned in high school. It's the kind where triangles have 180 degrees and parallel lines never meet. Non-Euclidean geometry is everything else. For example, if you draw a triangle on the surface of the earth and put the corners at the north pole, the equator-prime Meriden intersection, and 90e0n, then your triangle now has three 90 degree angles, for a total interior angle of 270. This all a consequence of the fact that the earth is not flat! So non-Euclidean geometry is the geometry of spaces that aren't flat.
Why does an electric kettle make a lot of sound at first, which eventually dies off once the water starts to boil?	Cavitation. Basically, the heating element heats the water just above it. This causes that water to boil, forming a little bubble of gas. This bubble immediately rises, encounters colder water, shrinks and collapses. The repeated forming and collapsing of the bubbles creates the noise. Once the liquid starts boiling the noise disappears.
Why when you look sideways at a moniter it looks like a picture negative?	Nope, it's just LCD monitors. LCD stands for "liquid crystal display", because there is a layer of an electrically reactive liquid, enclosed in tiny little cells, over the top of the screen. When the liquid is activated, it turns dark, blocking out a pixel of color. As you move to the side, instead of looking straight through the cells, you're looking at them from an angle. As you move further to the side, you start looking through the barrier between the cells as well. When light from the screen hits those walls, it refracts - it gets bent at an angle, and the colors no longer line up exactly. The further you go to the side, the more this diffracts the colors away from your eyes, so you don't see them. LCD manufacturers have worked very hard to fix this issue, and it's hardly noticeable on modern LCDs unless you get way off to the side.
What happens to the roof of your mouth when you eat hot food?	The tissue lining the roof of your mouth is not skin, it's more sensitive tissue. What might be equivalent to putting a hot iron on your arm, could be compared with hot melted cheese on the soft tissue in your mouth. It isn't as tough as skin thus, causing it to blister like skin would.
Why are females generally shorter than males?	Evolution. Male humans had to fight other male humans to survive so they grew stronger and taller and bigger through natural selection. Females did the nurturing and child rearing and did not need height since they weren't out hunting food and killing rivals.Long bones grow via the growth plate . This is an area of cartilage. The cartilage grows from one end of the plate and on the other end it ossifies . This is called longitudinal bone growth. Growth Hormone largely regulates the growth of this plate. Prepubescent females are usually taller than prepubescent males, and this is due to females having high concentrations of growth hormone. However, during puberty sex hormones in males speed up the rate of cartilage growth and subsequent ossification of that cartilage, for a longer time than in women. Eventually, the rate of cartilage production slows compared to the rate of ossification, and the whole plate becomes bone. It is at this moment when final adult height is reached. The hormonal regulations of the plate are still not completely understood.
What would happen (legally or otherwise) if you just up and left your wife/family with no notice?	This really depends on state law however, the only really thing the left behind wife can do is file for divorce or legal separation and request support. Then a judge has to grant such support either as a temporary basis until the divorce is final or on a schedule with finalization of paperwork. However, if there are no children, support will be for a short period of time, and only if there is a big difference in the ABILITY to earn income. A short term marriage is no longer the life time meal ticket it once was and if both parties has similar incomes in the past, support will be minimal. If the leaving spouse cannot be found, then very little can be done, unless the leaving spouse is declared dead, and that needs evidence. In short, on a short term basis, very little, on a long term basis, divorce or legal separation with possible support payments.
From all the US backed dictatorial coups, why was Pinochet's coup the one that gained notoriety around the world?	I'm no expert in the politics or history of the region. But I would surmise that the reason for the notoriety of Pinochet's regime was the egregious human rights violations. As an example, reportedly there were camps solely dedicated to sexually abusing prisoners. From Wikipedia: "One woman testified that she had been “raped and sexually assaulted with trained dogs and with live rats.” She was forced to have sex with her father and brother—who were also detained." If you want to know more, I would recommend checking out the Wikipedia article: _URL_0_', "Allende was a democratically elected leftist and it took place while the Western New Left was at its strongest. So there was more attention paid to these things in the US at the time, unlike the Guatemalan coup d'état in 1954, in the middle of the Second Red Scare.
What is the purpose of the sewn on loop on a seat belt?	It has a few purposes: * It stops the buckle seat-belt from rattling against the side pillar. _If you take a closer look, you'll find that the driver's-side seat-belt does not have one, because they should always be buckled in._ * It stops the [buckle] from sliding all the way down.
What does a software engineer acutally do	I work with some. From what I understand, they write computer code for an engineering project. Often they are part of a team, in which parts of the project are broken up into sections for each person to work on. For example, say you work for a company that makes a video entertainment system like Roku or Apple TV. As a software engineer you might help with making the computer code that runs the GUI - all the menus and buttons etc. Or you might work on computer code that handles core functions like streaming video and audio, that kind of thing. So all that to say an software engineer helps to create software to meet some goals or requirements. If you are interested in it, check out coding as there can be decent money in it!
Why do we wake up with morning face?	When you're up and about and walking around, your heart has to work against gravity to pump blood up into your face. But when you have been laying horizontal in a bed for 8 or so hours it gives blood the opportunity to "pool" or "settle" in your face, resulting in puffiness. You'll get a more extreme example of this if you hang upside down for an extended period of time.
Why do we breathe differently when we sleep? It goes from a mostly silent process to an audible and pronounced inhalation.	Your throat and palate relax when you're asleep, and can restrict airflow. In more severe cases, it causes snoring and apnea.
Why on maps and globes do they show Antarctica with ice caps but not the arctic?	Basically, under ice cap of Antarctica there is land, and thus it is counted as a continent. Arctic consists of pure ice, without any landBecause Antarctica has land underneath the ice. The Arctic is floating sea ice.
I spend a lot of time looking at computer and phone screens. What exactly is it doing to my eyes?	Looking at a computer or phone requires concentration and attention. Your eyes need to focus on small print and details. This can fatigue the muscles in the eyes which makes them ache if you spend extended periods of time doing so. Also, you blink less often when focused which can cause dry eyes as well. And that's it. Poor vision is normally caused by deformation of the eye that is genetic in origin. As you age your vision almost universally gets worse over time as well. So tired, achey, dry eyes? That can be from the computer. Poor vision? Nope.
The technical difference between LCD screens and Plasma screen.	Plasma screens are more prone to burn-in, but that is largely a problem of the past if you are looking for a screen to view TV programs on. The two different screens use very different mechanisms to display information. LCDs use a "liquid crystal" that can rapidly be turned between nearly transparent and opaque to let varying amounts of light out. If the LCD is also LED, then that light is coming from LEDs, otherwise it is a more normal light source. Plasma TVs create a small bit of ionized gas to generate varying levels of light. That light energizes phosphors, and over time the phosphors can wear out. This is really only a problem if a static image is left on the screen for very long periods of time. Computers often do this; TVs don't. Plasma TVs used to have worse BI problems than those made today. And this was made worse when showing standard definition 4:3 aspect ration images on high definition screens with a 12:9 aspect ratio. The TVs would put bars on the sides of the screen to display the image with the proper ratio, so the screens would tend to get an image of the bars burned in. Newer plasma TVs use tricks to avoid this problem. What really should matter to a consumer is the product. Plasmas can have slightly better brightness and better dark levels than LCDs. But they also generally consume a lot more power and thus are thicker and heavier and get hotter . My personal opinion is that the slightly better images you can get with some plasma TVs is not significant compared to an LED TV, and not worth the greater power/heat/weight/thickness.
Why are there so many distinct accents within England?	Same goes for the rest of Europe, lots of very distinct accents and dialects on a very small scale . I think that in the former colonies the language just didn't have time to diversify that much, and now that we have nation-wide broadcasts of "standardized" language there is not so much chance to develop one.People in England didn't travel much until the 20^th century, so they were isolated like separate tribes. Local accents are diminishing a bit because of radio and TV but that's only happened in the last 100 years. Basically, everyone in the UK talks like their parents and grandparents, and in their grandparents' time everyone was isolated geographically. In contrast non-indigenous Australians have all come here in the last couple of hundred years, and there's been a tradition of a travelling workforce for things like seasonal agricultural work, so our accents are much more homogenous.
Why do so many people dislike NATO?	Why do I feel like you asked a question but told everyone they can't disagree with you or something? Maybe it's just me. Also, this might not belong in this subreddit, I'm not going to start looking for sources for my opinions on an aggressive military coalition for a five year old.Personally, I see it as a relic. The USSR and Warsaw Pact is gone, and NATO was meant as a counter to the Soviet bloc in Eastern Europe, so it should be gone as wellVarious groups dislike NATO for different reasons. Communists dislike it because of its instrumental role in destroying the USSR and the Warsaw pact. Third world nationalists from various countries dislike it because from their point of view it is just an instrument of imperialism . Some modern Liberals also dislike it because they believe the end of the cold war made it obsolete, there was no reason for it to continue after the fall of communism.
How do police know if something has happened to a body post mortem?	Bruising, bleeding, clotting, etc occurs differently to a living body than to a dead one, because bruising is dependent on blood flow to the areaWhen you are dead your heart isn’t pumping blood around your body anymore, so if you stab or harm a dead body, then it won’t have the same bruising/bleeding patterns you’d normally expect.
How do people know what the Milky Way looks like if we are inside it?	We can observe the area around us and construct a pretty decent idea. We can't look in toward the center of the galaxy well, since there's too much dust in the way to see there or across. But the gravity of those stars still has a measurable impact on the ones we can observe, which lets us calculate how they must be arranged. Pictures you see of our galaxy are either artists' impressions or actually pictures of another spiral galaxy, like nearby Andromeda.
Why do so many bathrooms have their light switches outside of the room?	Bathrooms have water pipes in them, and it's safer to keep switches and outlets away from water unless they are waterproof.
Why do certain colors of lights have a second, differently colored ring around the source?	Go get your eyes checked. You seem to be seeing refraction happening within your eyes. It could be from some minor deformity in the eye like the ones that cause near sightedness and far sightedness, to pressure in the optical nerve. So basically please go to a doctor as soon as possible. Source: had something similar once due to a medicine increasing optical nerve pressure and I have a 3DS and there's no halo around the notification lights.
Why is UK telephone cable 6-core when you only actually hook up two of them?	Because when you are wiring up a building for telephones, almost all of the expense is the labor. It costs the workmen just as much to pull three-pair cabling as it does to pull single-pair cabling, and the cable itself is only very slightly more expensive. Once that cable is in, it then becomes very easy to install a second or third line, because the cabling is in place. So, if you needed a second line for, say, a fax machine, they don't have to do any new cabling at all.
Why are we entertained by fiction, though we are always looking for the truth?	Good fiction contains deeper truths about the human condition. It's not just about the specific events of the plot.
Are we the first on our planet to cross "the finish line" as far as evolution?	Well as you said the question doesn't really make sense because intelligence and self-awareness isn't a goal of evolution. Would other creatures become more intelligent and self-aware if not for us? Maybe. Maybe not. We found a niche and it works for us - if we never were it'd be an open niche for some other creature. That said evolution relies on chance mutations. It's quite possible the mutations required to fill our niche instead of us would just not have happened.
If the human body is only supposed to have about 25g of sugar a day, why do most flavored drinks exceed that?	Or most processed foods.. It's an addiction thing. Your body loves sugar. More the better. So companies load up things with sugar and we all buy them.
Why does brief lack of oxygen to the brain often feel good?	Ok, this is only a guess , but first to clarify: your vision fading after standing up too quickly is due to low blood pressure, not lack of air. I think perhaps much of the euphoric feeling is actually just adrenaline in response to your body being worried about what's going on. Same reason people get a rush on roller coasters or watching horror movies, for instance. Our bodies know that if we are losing air, it's likely not because we are dumb and don't know to avoid it, it's because we need more energy and ability to get out of a scary situation, hence adrenaline. Additionally, getting oxygen after being deprived of it can feel incredibly relieving, which might be where the "high" comes from, in addition to the adrenalineI'm not a scientist by any means, so anything I write comes from experience and research I 've done about it. But from what I 've read, when your brain is deprived of oxygen , it goes into a state called hypoxia, which causes the lightheadedness, tingling of hands and feet, and sometimes light hallucinations. Why the brain goes into this state I'm not sure, but I think it's similar to what the other redditor said about adrenaline. Because your body thinks you are dying, your adrenaline spikes, then it probably releases endorphins and dopamine to try to make the process less painful.Edit: apparently I misused the word "process" when describing hypoxia. It's actually a state.
What about yellow makes it appear lighter than other colors?	Our eyes are most sensitive to green light. About twice as sensitive to it as red or blue. Green therefore is the brightest primary color to our eyes. As you probably know, with light, color is subtractive. If you add all the colors, you get white, if you subtract any color you get the combination of the other two primary colors. So yellow is White minus blue, making it technically the second lightest color to our eyes since green is the brightest primary color. This is the same if you keep blue and green subtract red, you get Cyan, which is just as light as yellow because we still have green. But if you keep red and blue and subtract green you get purple which looks darker because we can't perceive red and blue as well as green, so purple looks darker than yellow or cyan. Of course this is only considering you keep with only two primary colors. If you were to take white light and remove only a tiny bit of red or blue, you would end up with a much brighter color close to white, but slighly resembling yellow or cyan.
Why infrared thermometers measure a mirror's surface, and not the surface it is reflected on.	I have a big, shiny aluminum pot and an infrared thermometer. The thermometer _always_ measures the _reflection_ of what's outside the pot, not the pot itself. Aluminum, and shiny metals, _will_ reflect infrared like a mirror, _but glass absorbs infrared_. It's opaque to it, like a blackboard to visible light. If you use a non-glass mirror, like my pot, it will do precisely what you suppose.
The differences between Toughness, Strength, and Hardness in material science	They are all pretty similar, but there are some distinct differences. Hardness is a measure of how much force can be applied to something before it permanently changes shape Toughness is the maximum amount of energy the object can take without breaking Strength is a measure of how elastic the object it is
Why does the US have a Two Party System? Is it in the Constitution?	The fate of all first past the post electoral systems is the eventuality of two party systems. With few exceptions, two main parties will dominate the political landscape given enough time. Here is a nice video describing the same:_URL_0_', "There being two parties is not part of the constitution but is a reflection of the elections' winner take all status . In order to become a congressman, you must obtain a majority of the votes. As a result, multiple parties are incentivized to pull their votes together in order to gain a majority. The idea is that even though this person does not hold all of my views, it is better than the opposition. Winner takes all systems are quite rare in other democaracies. For example, Germany has Proportional Elections. This means if a party obtains a % of the overall vote, they obtain a % of the overall seats. As a result, if the Green party gets 5% of the overall German vote, it gets 5% of the seats. In the American system, if the Green Party gets 5% of the vote, they will likely lose all seats. Some find proportional voting more fair, but it also leads to the rise of very niche parties having unfair control of politics. For example, instead of the Democrats and Republicans being in power, a situation arises where the Dems have 47% and cannot do anything, the Republicans have 47% and can't do anything, and as a result the niche party compromises and dictates the actions of the nation. Going back, elections that use proportional elections have drastically more political parties, on average 4 or more.
When zoomed out in pictures, why do buildings appear to have swirls?	_URL_0_ it happens when a computer tries to represent fine patterns with repeating details. The camera is incorrectly capturing and reproducing the image; this is caused by the camera's lack of ability to capture fine enough detail.
Where do the erratic/random "Call of the Void" thoughts/urges come from?	Since I don't think anyone is going to have a conclusive explanation for this, I personally think that they come out as a result of your brain thinking "what if I just did this" and then you think about what the consequences of it would be. It's just the fact that you become aware that you Could do it, and then you get scared that it's a possibility and you dwell on it.It's called L’appel du vide, there is a really good response here: _URL_0_ Basically it's a self-destructive urge to take control of a situation, like suicide.
What exactly does meta mean?	Yarr, ye forgot yer searchin' duties, for twas asked by those what came before ye!]", 'Strictly speaking meta- means "after" or "beyond." Asking a question like "how does gravity work" is a physics question. Our theories and study of physics can approach an answer to that question. A question like "why is the gravitational field there at all?" is a question we can't really approach with our current knowledge of physics. It is a concept that is "beyond" physics, that is, it is metaphysical.
Why does crab grass develop in random patches?	Crabgrass seeds need the perfect germination conditions. Something that lets them open when the water and heat are just right. And that 'rightness' is when a patch of regular grass dies. Opening the area for it to shoot out and grow because regular grass isn't blocking the conditions. So it looks like random patches because that's where regular grass has died and crabgrass took its place. Crab grass seeds will wait generations until conditions are right. Your whole lawn is filled with them. But you don't see it until the shoot comes out. And, crabgrass can sprout anytime during spring-fall, unlike other 'weeds' which can only do it during a specific season.
why does it feel good when someone else massages us but not ourselves?	Massages need to take place when you're relaxed. When your massage person does their work you're relaxed, you don't have to do anything while they work on your body. You can't easily massage your back or shoulders with ease or without contorting yourself and creating tension to begin with. Also, the kinds of people you'd usually find massaging you are professionals or lovers, one of which knows the anatomy of your body and how to make you feel good, and the other who you're comfortable and makes you feel good anyway. ;p
if cocaine and meth release dopamine, why do they feel good?	Dopamine has varying effects in different parts of the brian. It may well induce both pleasure and desire depending on what the rest of the brain is doing at that moment, as well as the place in the brain it gets released. Another factor is the type of dopamine receptors. Receptors can be compared to keyholes which unlock when they meet with the right key, and trigger a signal if unlocked. In this case dopamine is the key which fits into several locks; the dopamine receptors. For instance, there are at least 5 major classes of dopamine receptors which have different responses to dopamine. The response also depends on other factors in the synaptic cleft. A synaptic cleft is the place where the end of one neuron releases neurotransmitters , to excite/trigger the neuron it is connected to. More than one substance may be released into the cleft , and varying relative amounts of substances can have different effects. One of the leading hypotheses for the causative mechanism of symptoms of schizophrenia is an increase of a particular type of dopamine receptors in one part of the brain and a decrease in another part, for example. Don't pin me on this though as I know next to nothing about how the brain works; just a little bit about the physiology at the micro level. Edit: important notion from u/EverDownward that no single drug is a perfect 'key' and different drugs thus activate multiple receptors to varying degrees. His comment that pleasure can be experienced in multiple ways/dimensions is also a meaningful addition.
How does the FM radio on phones use the earphones as an aerial?	The answer is that the audio frequencies needed for an audio earth connection for the headphones, and the F.M. radio signal needed for the receiver, are so different. Sound is less than 20 thousand Hz, and radio, around 100 million Hz. All you need to do is put a small inductor between the earphone's earth connection and the device's ground, to prevent the high frequency radio signals being lost while allowing the audio currents to flow through; and use a small capacitor to draw off those radio signals to the receiver while blocking the low-frequency sound signals.
Why are popsicles included in the "novelties" section at the grocery store? And what makes them a novelty?	It refers to ice cream novelties. That's anything made of ice cream that isn't just ice cream in a tub. So popsicles and ice cream sandwiches and Klondike bars are all novelties
When I'm cooking, why does stirring the pot slow the onset of boiling?	Yes, stirring adds kinetic energy, but nowhere near enough to make an appreciable difference in temperature. Water takes a LOT of energy to heat up, more than you would ever be able to achieve with a spoon. As for why it slows the onset of boiling, it doesn't really, it just makes it look that way. When you have a pot on the stove, the water on the bottom is very hot compared to the water at the top. The water on the bottom will start to heat up and boil, but it immediately cools when it rises up into the higher water. That's why in early boiling you see little bubbles come up off the bottom of the pan and then immediately disappear. When you stir the water, you are equalizing the temperature inside of the pot, so instead of warm water with a very hot bottom, you now have a pot of water that's evenly warmer. You won't see the bottom "boiling" but you're not really changing the time it takes to get the whole pot boiling by all that much.By stirring the pot you are moving what part of the contents is in direct contact with the base of the pan's base which is directly/most closely connected to the heat source. Blowing on it achieves a similar purpose of moving the contents around.
Why do we worry so much if excessive worry is bad for us?	Anxiety is normal. Anxiety is healthy. Anxiety is a good thing when it is appropriate: in line with whatever situation is a potential problem. Worried about an exam? Not a bad thing. Excessive or intrusive anxiety is generally a sign of poorly managed anxiety. The way you think and act influences the way you feel. If you spend a lot of time thinking things like, "What if X happens" or, "If X happens I would be screwed" or, "Nothing ever works out for me," you're going to feel like shit. Anxiety is harmful because it means that your body's stress response is at full alert. It's fine when it's needed, but it's not a viable permanent state.
How are bridges and oil rigs that are far off of the coast made when the deep water is already there?	Oil rigs are built onshore and then towed to their final location and anchored. Bridges are generally not built over very deep water. When bridge pylons do have to be set in deep water there are several methods for pouring concrete underwaterI once read a book on the Golden Gate Bridge b/c I had the same question. The book described them dropping a series of giant cylindrical rings to the floor of the San Francisco Bay. The rings interlocked with each other, getting taller and taller until they reached a height above the surface of the water. At that point they pumped out all the water inside the now-tall cylinder. Hungry workers even gathered all the fish left dry at the bottom. They then had this water-free workspace that extended down to the bay floor.Coastal engineer here: They are called coffer dams. Same concept as explained before for the bridge building. As for oil rigs, do some google earth searches of ingleside, TX and Galveston, Tx and you'll see the massive oil rigs on their sides being built prior to being taken out to sea.
Voter ID? Who does it hurt, and how does it not help with vote fraud?	Voter fraud, by way of voting multiple times, is not an actual problem. A single person might be able to cast 10 extra votes by traveling all over & lying about who they are. To make an impact in elections, you 'd need hundreds of people all doing this. They 'd all have to keep completely quiet about the plan. Considering that the penalty for this is years in federal prison, it's just not really practical for anyone to do it. The real problems come from things like people hacking voting machines, throwing away ballots & lying on vote counts. These things do happen. They have the potential to affect election outcomes & something like "voter ID" won't stop them in the first place. So, if polling fraud isn't really an issue, why make laws requiring ID? We either have to assume that the politicians pushing for it are completely clueless about the issue or they have something else to gain from it. Those opposed to voter ID laws claim that it's an attempt to stop poor minorities from voting - considering that poor minorities tend to vote for Democrats & these laws are proposed by Republicans, that seems like a plausible explanation of things It really hurts poor people. To vote, you need a government issued ID. For people who are poor, they might not have one. To vote, they would need to purchase one for $5 or less . If you were poor, would you rather vote or have a meal? It discourages that demographic.In addition to the already-posted responses, government ID cards cost money. Requiring somebody to pay money to vote is illegal, it's called a poll tax.
Why/How does a epileptic person get a seizure from something like flashing lights?	/u/i_hate_ms Epilepsy in general is caused by faulty connections in the brain that make nerve cells hypersensitive. In the case of photosensitive epilepsy, the signals sent by the eyes to the brain trigger mass unsynchronized firing of nerve cells in the region of the brain that handles vision. Imagine if your computer screen showing random static instead of showing your regular desktop. This is the difference between a normal brain and an epileptic brainOnly about 3% to 5% of people that have epilepsy are affected by flashing lights, known as photosensitive. It is a common misconception that they all are. Epilepsy is a broad ranging term covering people who get recurring seizures. The causes can be very different for different people and the severity can be different. Another misconception is that anyone having a seizure will be rolling around the floor. You could be sitting beside someone having a seizure and you would not even notice, as some seizures are very mild and brief. Seizures are caused by irregular activity in the brain. For some people flashing lights or things like walking past railings or past trees causing light to flicker as they walk along can create the activity in the brain that it finds difficult to manage. For other people with epilepsy, it would cause no problem whatsoever and their triggers would be something completely different. So if the part of the brain that deals with certain kinds of activity, like vision, is affected by epilepsy, then flashing lights might cause seizures.
How did the US Army's Universal Camouflage Pattern ever got approval?	They did [15 evaluations over several years on various options], then adopted a 3 color pattern that was similar to one of the lowest scoring patterns that had not been involved in any of the evaluations.
Why do air conditioner units always have to be outside?	ac works by exchanging heat, in a very basic explanation it uses coils to pull the heat from the inside air and bring that heat to the coils outside to be cooled off. if that part of the unit was inside you wouldn't be doing anything but moving the heat around.
Body fat can be burned to provide calories. So why do fat people get hungry if they don't eat? Can't the body easily access those calories?	> Can't the body easily access those calories? Not as easily as the glucose in your bloodstream or the glycogen in your muscles and liver. Your body doesn't want to use the fat unless nothing else is availble. Remember, we evolved in a world where starvation lurked around every corner. Fat was to get us through when food wasn't available, so your body really wants to keep it around. It doesn't realize we now live in a world where food is cheap and abundant.Accessing fat to provide calories to function is something the body only reluctantly does, since fat is meant as a storage for when food is scarce, so the body will first make you more hungry to avoid burning fatYes, and the body will exactly do that. However, the stomach is empty and it sends to the brain the signal that it wants to eat.
Why did they use zeppelins in World War 1?	Because they had them and they were desperate to find anything that would help break the deadlock of the western front. Keep in mind that all this stuff, zeppelins, aircraft, machine guns, modern artillery, etc., it was all new and untested. Military theorists had of course made tons of predictions of what would happen and what would or wouldn't work, but those turned out to be a crapshoot. So they just tried stuff that seemed to make sense and figured things out as they went along. "Hey, we have this huge flying machine. We could use it for scouting, maybe? Oh hey, it can carry a lot of cargo. Maybe we could drop bombs from it?"', "You have to remember that when World War I broke out, aircraft were still relatively new. Even the big bombers you see in World War II were many years of work away. World War I era planes couldn't fly as fast, climb as high, carry as much, or stay up as long as planes in later wars could. Zeppelins helped to solve many of those problems. A zeppelin could fly very high, for a very long period of time, and could carry a lot--at least relative to a plane of the time. Granted, they weren't very fast, but you can't have everything. Zeppelins could fly so high that planes would have a difficult time catching up to them, and even ground fire would have problems bringig them down. That's on top of the fact that--until later in the war--they were surprisingly durable against machine gun fire. So, in short, they used zeppelins because they could do things that other forms of flying machines couldn't. They could fly high and stay up for a long time, so were good for reconaissance. They could carry heavy loads too, so you could use them as bombebrs as well.
Why is it that we can hear more ambient and softer noises while wearing earphones rather than listening to something via a speaker.	I assume you mean "ambient and softer noises" from the audio source, not the background, yes? If not, I have no idea what you're talking about. But if so, it's a question of volume contrast. Those ambient/softer noises are a lot quieter than the other sounds in the same audio track, right? Like, a lot quieter. So quiet that if you're listening on a speaker, with your ears 6+ feet away, you have to turn up the speakers really loud in order for those very quiet sounds to have enough energy for you to hear them at all. But if you do that, you also boost all the other, much louder, sounds in the same track. To the point that they wind up completely drowning out the quieter ones. But with headphones? Those are only an inch or two from your eardrums, yes? So very, very quiet noises can be picked up without having to turn everything up so loud that they get drowned out.
How does the US dollar come back to the US when it has been used in other countries?	If you come to NZ you'll come, bring your US dollar and trade it for NZ dollars that same day someone traveling to the US for some reason from NZ will trade their NZD for USD and tada, it's back in the US. Money rarely stays put, it's always circulating. Exchanges, either at banks or through exchange companies, ensure that foreign currency stays circulating.
Why do bad smells make us throw up?	In case you ate some of it. It's a biological response to purge toxins from your stomach, if something smells rotten, it probably is rotten and should not have been eaten. now we don't eat such things, but hundreds of thousands of years ago when the response evolved we might have.Basically, most things that smell that bad would be very bad to eat. The gag reflex stops us from eating things that could make us sick. Not sure about the exact mechanismSmell is our primal indication if something is fit to be eaten or contains too many toxins which would cause us harm prior to consumption. Vomiting is a reflex response to food that the body feels will cause us harm following consumption. The sense and reflex exist for the same purpose. A smell is an aerosol of the source and when it enters the body through the nose the same reflex reaction occurs as if it is in the stomach. TLDR: The body will reject smells the same way it would reject food that is eaten.
How does swishing around some mouthwash for a minute actually repair my teeth, let alone do anything more than "freshen breath"?	Mouthwash doesn't regrow enamel, once it's gone it's gone. What it does is kills the bacteria that causes tooth decay. You can repair you enamel by filling in the area where the enamel is gone with another mineral. Some mouthwash has calcium that binds to the area where the enamel is missing effectively repairing it.Also alcohol based mouthwash dehydrates the inside of your mouth. This leads to bacteria in your mouth producing odorous gas. So if you don't drink enough water after using mouthwash, you'd end up with bad breath anyways.> anamil 10/10 best spelling As /u/Tells_Complete_Lies said, the only use of mouthwash is to destroy the bacteria that would damage the enamel, before they can. It can prevent further enamel damage by destroying the bacteria in the process of damaging enamel, because it can enter cavities in teeth too. Enamel repairing mouthwash strengthens the enamel, but cannot be considered a full replacement. Visit your dentist regularly, as cavities may be prevented or slowed down by these mouthwashes, but cannot be fixed.
How does the "ping" command on the terminal actually work?	Simpler explanation: I write you a letter that says "This letter was sent from < my address > on < date > and < time > . Please send me a letter back as soon as you get this, with the exact time and date you received this. You follow the instruction and send the second letter back to me. When I get your letter, I know exactly how long it took for the letter to get to you, and how long it took the letter to make the round trip. If I don't get a letter back in a reasonable amount of time, I know that something has gone with the postal service between my address and yours. Now imagine that we're two computers, and instead of a letters we're sending data packets. That's basically how \'ping\' works.
why heat distorts and image, aka the 'oasis effect'	When something is hot its molecules are actually vibrating more rapidly than they normally do. Seeing the heat of the object is in-turn heating up the air surrounding it more than the rest of the air. This makes light pass through it differently than the cooler air because the hotter air is transferring away from the object to cool itself to be uniform with the rest of the air.
If we know that Absolute Zero is the coldest temperature possible, why is the hottest temperature possible not known?	There are a lot of wrong answers here, claiming that all molecular motion stops at 0K. That is not true at all! Heisenberg's uncertainty principle tells us, that it is impossible for atoms and molecules to have zero kinetic energy. Every bound system has [zero point energy]. So, what does absolute zero really mean?--- Quantum mechanics tells us that bound particles cannot have an arbitrary amount of energy. Instead, they can only hop between energy levels. And the lowest of these energy levels is still not 0J. The lowest energy level still has kinetic energy - the so called zero point energy. Thus, a bound particle must always have motion energy. What absolute zero really means, is that all particles are in this lowest energy state, which is called ground state. Since there is no way a system can have less energy than all its particles being in the ground state, there can be no colder temperature than absolute zero. In fact, due to the uncertainty principle, even reaching 0K is fundamentally impossible. What about a hottest temperature? --- There is no theoretical hard upper limit on temperature. There wouldn't be any mechanism preventing you from adding more and more energy into a system. In some way, of course the total amount of energy in the universe is an upper limit, but that really isn't very descriptive. Some people claim that the upper limit is posed by particles moving at the speed of light. That is not true. Even though the speed at which particles can move is limited, their kinetic energy has no upper bound. As temperature scales with energy, not speed, the speed of light does not pose an upper limit to temperature.Temperature has to do with how quickly the particles are moving. So the slowest is zero movement, right? But that gives us no indication of what the top speed is.
if race is a social construct, then why can't people identify as other races?	People absolutely can identify as other races. But since, as you've pointed out, race is a social construct, someone identifying as another race has to navigate the social ramifications of such an identification.
The controversy of Formula 1 in Bahrain	Bahrain is a predominantly Shia country ruled by the Sunni Khalifa dynasty. The dynasty is a dictatorship propped up by Saudi Arabia. Last year, as a part of the Arab Spring, people began to protest the regime and demand more democracy. These protests were violently crushed with Saudi assistance. Protests continue today. Many people think Formula 1 shouldn't hold races in a country currently suppressing the democratic rights of its people. They consider this similar to playing in South Africa during apartheid.
Why don’t cars have normal outlets?	Well infact some high end luxury cars do, and have done for a while, the main reason I think their not the norm is that a regular socket just seems too bulky for inside your average car, and so the 12v adapter is a lot more practical.
What's the difference between 1st, 2nd and 3rd degree murder?	It varies by state, but generally: 1st degree murder is a preplanned killing, or a killing in the process of committing another serious violent crime even if your initial plan for the crime didn't intend for the victim to die. 2nd degree murder is a killing that wasn't preplanned or part of another crime, but that wasn't committed after any real provocation or in self-defense. The next lower degree is usually called "voluntary manslaughter", not 3rd degree murder. It usually means a killing after being provoked, like someone is punching you in a bar, and instead of running or punching back, you shoot them. The next lower degree is called "involuntary manslaughter", and it's a death that results from reckless behavior that is likely to cause serious harm to someone, but without any intend to harm any specific person, like shooting a gun in the air, or throwing objects off a building. The lowest degree is called "criminally negligent homicide". That's usually reserved for deaths caused in car accidents where the driver is at fault. But some car deaths wouldn't be in that category - deliberately running someone over would be 1st or 2nd degree murder, and driving at 100+ mph on a residential street would be involuntary manslaughter. A killing that is deemed to be in self-defense is called justifiable homicide, and isn't a crime at all.
What exactly can cause an electronic device to become "bricked" (I.e. the hardware is untouched, but the device cannot be fixed)	You can usually brick something by altering the system software, putting it into a state where you can't ask it to go back. Imagine a computer which only as a keyboard for input. If I accidentally change the software so it ignores the keyboard, the hardware will all function perfectly but the computer will be bricked. There's no way for me to tell the computer to listen to the keyboard again.Electronic devices that run firmware can have that firmware get corrupted. If you corrupt just the right portion, you can put the device into a state where it won't even respond to another attempt to update the firmware. Without having special access inside the device, you now have a "brick", since the functions provided by the firmware are no longer available and you can never get them back. When we create firmware for devices like this, we typically have special access points that allow us to directly read and write the firmware memory, which allows a developer to "unbrick" a bricked device. When the devices get shipped, that access point isn't available, so you need working firmware to update the firmware.Most of the brickings I ever hear of are from bad flashes of ROMs. Generally meaning the person flashed the wrong ROM. Usually by 'wrong' I mean it wasn't built for their model of phone. The problem here is that things inside the phone, especially that radio, can be physically damaged beyond conventional repair by the phone trying to use it incorrectly. If you flash a ROM that was built for a different radio that's quite possibly the outcome.
Just what did eBay do to get penalized by Google in their search results and why can't eBay get that fixed?	A large proportion of ebay listings are just a huge wad of terms that the seller thinks people will search for to find their item. This is pretty much how the earliest [search engine optimization] worked - you 'd put a huge list of search terms in a hidden box somewhere on your page. Google caught on quickly and penalizes that kind of site. Let's use this example: [1989 TMNT "BAXTER STOCKMAN" - Vintage Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles MOC Unopened]. It's a shitty result for the search terms 1989, vintage, [MOC], and unopened - and it's a pretty shitty result for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and TMNT too. The only time you want that in your search results is if you search "Baxter Stockman action figure".
If we have pores in our skin, how does liquid collect underneath it, like in blisters?	A couple of ways. 1) Some blisters form under the part of the skin with the pores. Some form between the pores. 2) Blisters that form in the dermal sheath contain a lot of activated clotting factors which causes the pores to be clogged up with scar tissue, which allows the body to pump fluids into it without leaking.
Why is nostalgia painful or bittersweet?	It is often bittersweet but not always. One reason it is bittersweet is because it clearly articulates the passage of time and inevitability of death. Another reason is that when one recalls a wonderful time past it is also very clear that it can never happen again, and that brings a certain amount of remorse. Here are two examples. I often recall my boyhood and the memories are usually good. Then I am reminded that decades have passed and seemed to have passed quickly. That causes a bittersweet memory. I remember things my daughter did when she was two. She will never be two again and that makes me a little sadbecause you generally do not long for wonderful times past when you are fulfilled and happy. the contrast of your present and your past is what is painful or bittersweet. the fact that those times are gone foreverOn a side note: some say that all suffering is caused by "attachment". In a way, nostalgia is a form of attachment thus causing suffering in the individual. One way around attachment is to live in the present and not focus on the past or future.
What is ACLU's "The Resistance Training" and why does it matter?	Teach potential protestors how to follow the rules so they don't get injured, because injured protestors don't come out for the next scheduled protest. It covers the rules for being arrested, what to say, and when to keep your mouth shut.
How exactly does Cannabis kill cancer cells?	_URL_0_ Let it be know while it's been observed in a laboratory, we don't know how to apply it yet, and aren't even sure it will work on humans the way it has on mice. So no one can definitively tell you how the process would work in humans.From quick searches, it seems like cannabis is more preventative rather than a therapy or cure. Also, in the animal test models, pure forms of cannabinoid compounds were administered by gavage, which usually means that it is given forcefully through a tube directly into the stomach. This is probably not what most people do with cannabis
What does it mean to "re-mortgage" your home?	"re-mortgage" is not a commonly used term. You could be referring to two different things: Refinancing Years ago I bought a house at 7% interest, with a mortgage from Bank A. Since then, interest rates have gone down, so I went to Bank B and had them loan me enough money to pay off Bank A. So now I owe Bank B, but only at 4% interest. You have to pay fees to get a new loan, but a lower interest rate can make up for that quickly. Second Mortgage I wanted to pay off my car, but I needed a lot of money to do that. The value of my first house went up a lot since I bought it this increase in value is called equity. I went to Bank C and have them give me a loan, using the equity of my house as collateral. I now have a two loans on my house, the second one at a higher interest rate.
Why do glasses suggest intelligence?	Originally, glasses were made for the literate because they could afford it and illiterate people generally did not work jobs that required very good vision. You can be a farmer with bad vision, but cannot take a job that requires you to read if your eyes do not allow reading.
What is the Steam Machine that Valve is releasing, and how will it change gaming?	> what is? The steam machine is just trying bring pc gaming to the living room as most pc gamer are seen as they have big computers and have to play at their desk and its not practical to play with multiple people in a local space. So valve trying to cover that part of the market by making an Operating system that will just boot into steam and you can play games and feel like you are playing on console with the ease of use and making the actual machine being small so its looks like the size of a console. > As how that will change gaming? it will make more people buy one if they are reasonable price like a console and the person knows the difference between pc gaming and console gaming that will make them get steam machine rather than buying console but most likely most of the machines will be people that will build them based on having spare parts.
How modifying battery in psp allowed to hack it.	A lot of systems have a "service mode". This is built in by the manufacturer to have access to functions that a normal consumer will not have. Examples of these functions are changing firmware , error reporting or maintenance. By modifying a battery, the PSP is tricked into starting up in its "service mode", which allows also changing the operating system of the PSP. This mode is what hackers abused to change the operating system, so that it will no longer check if the inserted game is legal. This means you can play pirated games. edit: typo
Why does sadness or being down occasionally feel like a relief?	Look at it in this scenario, a loved one has been deathly ill for a long time. You've had to sacrifice your time and had to endure a great many inconveniences and financial pressures due to the want and need to help this person. Your income has even been impacted on because of the time you took off from work and the loved one ends up in the last moments of his of her live. The hospital asks whether they should keep trying to save the loved one or let him or her die. Either way the final result is inevitable. Resignation sets in that what will be will be, and in that sadness comes relief in that the struggle is over for both you and your loved one.
Why do some people get off on being angry all of the time? What does it do for them?	Sometimes it is a defense mechanism. I've seen angry people use a general anger-filled disposition to hide insecurities and in doing so they become highly irrational.
Why do TV shows like "House of Cards" have different directors for each episode?	Principal photography may only take a week or so , but there's always weeks of pre-production and post-production that the director is involved in Principal filming is a full time, 10+ hr days affair. It would be challenging for a director to handle that, and also handle several hours/day of pre- and post- production for previous or subsequent episodes, so they spread the workload around. Or, as the producers/show-runners, you may have an episode that calls for a particular skillset. Like the episode deals with a tricky subject matter or has a challenging action sequence and you know that a particular director has the skillset to translate that well into film.
Why can men keep producing children in old age but women have the menopause?	We actually don't know. We don't know why human woman experience menopause. It's a somewhat rare phenomenon in the animal kingdom too. While there are a couple of other species that also experience menopause it is not a common thing. Of course we got a couple of hypothesises, but nothing has been satisfactorily proven. On the non-adaptive front, there is the hypothesis that menopause is not something specifically selected for but rather just a side effect. Biologically, pregnancy requires a lot of high cost investment from females and it is simply harder to keep that up in late age. On the adaptive front, there are several hypotheses that menopause was something specifically selected for evolutionary. One of which is the mother hypothesis, which pretty much argues that because of the high cost of pregnancy at later age, and the higher chance of those children having defects, mothers improve the chances of their existing offspring by being able to focus on them rather than focus on producing more kids. Another one is the grandmother hypothesis, which is similar in some ways to the mother hypothesis, but argues that menopause in women was selected for because older women can improve the chances of not just their children, but their grandchildren as well, again improving the chances of their genes being carried on. The reason why this results in female infertility is because biologically a woman will always know who her child / grandchildren are, while males could not have this certainty. So for males it would continue to be beneficial to try and conceive more children, also at late ages.
Why does my video buffer even though the bar is fully loaded when I am on a slow connection	If you're really not fully loaded, but just loaded way ahead, the answer is this: The video and audio are loaded at different speeds. The load-bar indicates how much of the video and the audio has loaded, however, the audio might be lagging behind while the video is ahead. More complex answer: Most videos are encoded using varying bit-rate. That is, some parts of a video are easy to encode. Imagine a 100 frame black screen. There's not a lot of data needed to store that. Other parts might be harder. Noise is an example of something that's hard to store and requires a lot of data. Audio is the same way. Silence is easy to encode, greatly varying music is harder. The video player is sending you audio and video at a speed which ensures that both will be fully downloaded at the same time. However, it can happen that the audio requires relatively much data for the first half of the movie, while the video requires relatively little for the fist half. Now, if you have half your movie loaded, you will actually have loaded 40s of the video, while only having loaded 20s of the audio. The indicator will say that half of your data is loaded, or that 30s have been loaded. But you can't play beyond 20s because you don't have the audio yet. The reverse might happen as well.yeah and why is it that this never happens for advertisements and they load perfectlyThis is one of the great mysteries of the the modern internet.
Why are my nails only strong if they're short? Why can't they stay strong, like claws?	Thinking of claws, they seem thicker and with a stronger root than our human finger nails which are thin, and broad, and with a different root than claws have.
If a gang of men with automatic weapons robbed a bank in the UK, wouldn't it take much longer than in the States for armed response?	In both the U.S. and U.K., automatic weapons are very very rarely used in crime. It's not really a typical scenario that the police needs to be armed for. But both countries do have heavily armed subdivisions in their police forces, particularly in metropolitan areas. The UK has fewer such units in other parts of the country , but the scenario described is even more unlikely there.UK police has firearms units to respond to these kind of situations. Sure, the chance for their to be an armed cop on scene is far lower, but I highly doubt those are going to be the ones stopping the crime
Why do women's menstrual cycles sync up?	Apparently its a myth. The study that initially confirmed it was flawed and newer studies failed to find this synchrony. So there you go . . . .
If water had no surface tension, would you be able to jump into it from any height and (as long as the water was deep enough) survive?	No, it's not the surface tension which hurts when you hit water. Water is dense - a tonne per cubic metre, and hitting it when moving fast means you're trying to move a lot of water out of the way very quickly, which exerts considerable force on your feeble human frame. Compared to that force, surface tension is negligible.
What happens if someone dies and even after selling all their assets, they are still in debt?	No one else owes their debt except the wife or husband. Sometimes not even then. It is part of why interest is charged. When a mortgage is obtained life insurance is also bought for the outstanding principal.
Why do people wake up with bad breath in the morning?	Small bits of food have been heavily degraded by the weak digestive enzymes in saliva for hours without being exposed to the outside. Not too surprising, really.
Why do we lose saturation in our colors for several minutes when we are in the sun for a couple hours?	It's been about 2 years since I studied this, but I think I can take a crack at it. Your cones have the ability to adjust to a wide range of photons/second hitting your eye. For example, a tv screen might have 10^6 TIMES less photons hitting a cone than a bright summer day, but you'll see both just fine. To adjust to this, they have a variety of tools which take anywhere from a second to 15 minutes to take affect. During the intermediary time, you have lessened color vision.
Why can perception of time vary so drastically? Like when you're on drugs, or e.g. slow motion car crashes.	Your brain needs to process everything you see, hear, feel, think, etc. The faster it does this, the slower times goes for you. It's like an assembly line, and the fastest worker is pretty much waiting for the next piece to arrive. So by that logic, all humans and animals perceive time in a different speed depending on what's going on in their life and how their brain works.
How does a Thermoelectric Generator work?	What is really being asked is how the thermoelectric effect works, so I'll try and explain that. Imagine you had a metal wire that has either end held at a different temperature. The electrons in the metal act similar to a gas, where the electrons at the hotter end are moving faster and spreading out more. This causes a higher concentration of electrons at the cold end, which causes a voltage difference between the two ends of the wire. Note that different materials will generate different voltages, even under identical thermal conditions. A thermocouple or thermoelectric generator uses two dissimilar materials, with the hot ends attached together. This guarantees that there is a voltage difference between the two cold ends, which can either be used in power production or as a measurement signal.
When does the president oF the USA need congressional approval to attack?	The Congress "declares war." What presidents have been known to do is to wage undeclared wars, engagements, conflicts, whatever you want to call them. So that's how they get away with it, by not "declaring war".The president is the commander-in-chief. He alone has the authority to issue orders to the military; Congress isn't part of the command structure. There is a law that says presidents can only order an attack under certain conditions. But every president since it's been passed has argued that the law is unconstitutional, and half of them have broken it.All military action must be approved by congress. Approval can be interpreted a number of ways. If the congress declares war, gives its blessing in some other way , or even simply funds the military the president uses. There is one law, however, that allows the president to authorize military force for 60 days and the president must report to congress and request extensions. This law came to be during the Vietnam war. This law was intended for emergency purposes, but had been used by many presidents for short uses of the military against non-imminent threats to the country.The President can only order an attack if Congress declares war. The only foreign policy powers granted the president are these: 1) to be commander-in-chief of the armed forces during a war, and 2) receive diplomats. The president has no Constitutional authority to order an attack on his own without a delcaration of war unless there is an imminent attack or to repel an invasion. That's it.
Why are some people more prone to mosquito bites than others?	I read online somewhere that mosquitoes bite people with O blood group than other blood groups .Don't know how true that is.What's your brother's blood group?
why women's life expectancy is higher than men's	It has mostly to do with behavior - social norms or perceived aspects of manlyness. Therefore, men are more likely to engage in dangerous activities, show off, etc.Also, men take less care of their health, not going to doctors as regularly as women, disregarding ilness and self medicating more. ", 'Mostly because they lead less dangerous lives. They tend to have less dangerous occupations, less dangerous hobbies, and are less likely to commit violent crimes or be the victims of murder. That makes them less likely to die in accidents, and less likely to develop chronic conditions that shorten their life span.
Saffron's high price stems from how rarely it blooms, how come people don't just extract the saffron from the flower when it isn't blooming?	Saffron is the dried blooms of the plant. They literally do not exist when the plant is not blooming as they have not formed yet. What you are asking is the equivalent of "why don't they extract apples from the tree before they grow".Because the flower doesn't exist yet. If you extract it before it blooms, it isn't developed and won't taste like saffron.I thought the saffron threads were the dried stigmas of the flower. Each bloom only has three stigma. Edit: mistook stamen for stigma.
If it only cost 8m to buy out our senators for the ISP deal, why can't we raise that money and lobby ourselves?	Lobbyists don't "buy" politicians. I know that it's the common "I'm angry at Washington" belief, but honestly, lobbyists spend money to convince politicians that the people/organizations that they represent have the correct opinions about some subject. I'm not saying that there's no corruption in Washington. I'm sure there's a ton. And there's clearly corruption in the lobbying process, too. But not to the degree that most people seem to think. Which is why no one is going to "buy back" politician: they're not bought in the first place. They're just being convinced as to the validity of the lobbyists\' opinionsThere is no reason. You could start your own political group. Ask for donations from the general public. Use the funds to convince senators and congress members and ask them to write and back laws that you want. All you need is the money, time, and experience necessary to be effectiveyou certainly can just start a superPAC all by yourself and start lobbying politicians. steven colbert founded _URL_0_
Why can some people drink more than others without getting sick?	I think it's a resistance thing. An alcoholic can take more than a normal person because they drink so much, their body essentially adapts to handle it. Much like drugs in fact, and its the same reason you become addicted - your body becomes dependent on it.
How come in English we capitalise the word “I” but don’t do so for “a” or other personal pronouns such as “you”?	According to [_URL_0_] it used to be lowercase. Then, people started writing it a little bigger likely because it looked funny all on its own. Eventually, people started to capitalize it.
What are we smelling when we smell things?	smell a fart? tiny tiny turds floating through the air like zeppelins until they crash into your nose walls/hairsSmall particles of whatever you are smelling get into the air and float around, these particles bind to places in your nose and your body sense this as smell. Different particles bind differently in your nose, causing different smells.Smell is just little chemical tidbits that enter your olfactory bulbs and is then processed by the brain. Smell is also integral with taste. That means you really can't have one without the other. Taste is, actually, around 75% smell. Remember, your tongue can only pick up on a few flavors the rest is all smell. That's why, when you have a cold or your nose is congested, food doesn't taste the same.Smell is music on a very small scale The most sucessfull researchers in creating "designer smells of expensive materials from cheaper materials" figured out and basically have proven that a sense of smell just measures the vibrations of molecules. _URL_0_ Small molecules can only vibrate in very specific frequencies, depending on the shape and material of the molecule. Our senses are evolved around being able to smell molecules made from the same molecules that life on earth is mostly made from.Deleted my comment because it wasn't on topic. Only read half the question. Too much third shift, not enough sleep.
What is happening when a space shuttle, other aircraft, or meteor enters the atmosphere?	It is actually not friction that causes the red glow. It is because the shuttle is basically hitting a concrete wall when it enters the atmosphere going several thousand mph. It is the compression of the atmosphere that superheats the air around the shuttle.
Why do some British singers like Amy Winehouse sound American when they sing but others like Lily Allen still sound British?	I think it has to do with their singing style. Many singers seem to lose their accent because a lot of what we hear as an accent is dependent on intonation and the way vowels are pronounced. When you sing, intonation is more determined by melody than by language, and vowels tend to be elongated. The means by which we evaluate someone's accent aren't as obvious, so they end up sounding more "neutral." With Lily Allen specifically, in the couple of songs I 've heard, she seems to cram a lot of words into one verse. This could make her singing sound more like speech than you might hear with other singers. I suspect part of it is also a deliberate attempt to keep her accent when she singsA lot of foreign singers learn to sing by listening to American artists. They emulate their pronunciation, cadence, etc and it comes across as being the same accent. It sometimes happens in reverse also, such as the American singer in Green Day having a sort of pseudo-British accent. That isn't the whole picture, but a big part of it. Another aspect is the concept of a neutral English, kind of like the "accent" that many national newscasters cultivate. You might notice that singers with deep New York, Jersey or Southern accents can sound quite neutral while singingAccents are basically differences in pronunciation and intonation. However, when you're singing this changes, as your words are pronounced to be in tune with the melody. This leads to sounding "neutral", and it can be hard to tell the difference between English speakers from different countries. When songs are closer to speech, especially when someone sings faster, you often hear their regional accent more, as the pronunciation isn't changed by melody.
The whole DEFCON system. How many steps are there and their meaning. Along with what action is taken at each.	Here are the 5 DEFCON levels, followed by their historical precedent * [5]\tNormal peacetime readiness;\tGeneral "baseline" level during times of peace * [4]\tIncreased intelligence-gathering and security measures\tSporadically throughout Cold War, War on Terror * [3]\tArmed forces readiness increased above normal levels; Air Force ready to mobilize in 15 minutes\tPost-9/11 Attacks , Yom Kippur War , Operation Paul Bunyan , Post-Four Power Talks * [2]\tHigh readiness; armed forces ready to deploy in six hours\tCuban Missile Crisis * [1]\tMaximum readiness; all forces ready for combat; nuclear war imminent or likely\t -No historical precedent Edit: Formatting Source: _URL_0_ Note: Different branches can be issued different DEFCON levels, and as the numbers get lower the situation gets more serious. A DEFCON 1 would certainly apply in an apocalypse situation.
When a movie star signs up for a big budget movie how/when does he/she get paid?	Talent agent here they get paid multiple times in various ways. There's the lump sum upfront guaranteed money , royalties , and bonuses/incentives , plus numerous other ways depending on the particular movie. The timing of how each of those is paid out is completely negotiable, and varies from deal to deal based on what the actor prefers some need money asap, some want scheduled payments to make taxes/finances easier to manage. Even who gets to hold the money before it's paid is negotiable . There's no one answer unfortunately every last bit varies every single time.
How much will the radiation from the Fukushima meltdown really affect North America?	Since we're not exactly sure how much was released, and the leak is ongoing, it's hard to say for certain. That being said, not much - the Pacific is big, and releases of larger amounts of radiation have happened in the past .

Subsets and Splits

No community queries yet

The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.