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The Syria conflict | Oh boy. Okay. Syria is (was, depends on how you see it) ruled by a dictator Assad (who is generally a dick). During a string of revolutions in arab world called the arab spring protests against his regime broke out. Western (USA, Europe) world usually supports the rebels when they rebel against a dictator (we don't bel... | 288 | en |
why are loading bars and remaining times so inacurrate? | Let's say the progress bar is for loading a game level before playing it. There of course the copying of data into memory that takes the biggest amount of time but also things like unpacking compressed files, executing code to prepare the game session, maybe connect to an online server for a multiplayer session and dow... | 288 | en |
How can nuclear fusion AND fission both work? | The core difference is that nuclear fission happens with very large atoms, and nuclear fusion happens with very small ones. This difference is all the difference when it comes to energy production. All nuclear reactions follow the same basic idea: energy is released if the total mass of the resultant particles is less ... | 288 | en |
What are programming design patterns? | They are one of the reasons why some people drop out of CS programs in college, for one. On a slightly more serious note: a design pattern is basically a sort of recipe to solve a common problem -- only it's a partial recipe. These problems aren't anything "big" like "write an application to do my taxes", but they are ... | 288 | en |
What are Stocks | > What are they? Stocks are, in essence, equal portions of a company. When you buy a stock, you're buying a part of that company. If a company has 1,000,000 shares in existence and you buy 1 share, you own 1/1,000,000 of the company. Usually shares come with rights, such as voting rights, as well as the right to receiv... | 288 | en |
If fire can't happen in space due to the lack of oxygen what happens if theres an explosion (what would it look like)? | Fire can and does happen in space. This is how rockets get things up into orbit, by burning huge, prolonged explosions in space. What *is* true is that a lot of things that we think of as combustable don't burn because they don't have oxygen to react with in space like they do inside our atmosphere. For fires in space,... | 288 | en |
how does a TV remote control when a television turns on and off? | Aim your phone camera at it, specifically the shiny black part at the front. You'll see a purple dot glowing there. That's a very near infrared LED light. Just outside of human vision, but within the range of your camera. Purple because it causes the red and blue sensors on your camera to react. Not intentional or anyt... | 288 | en |
how does a capacitor work? | It stores up energy and gives it back, but it reacts differently to different frequencies of the circuit it's attached to. Because it reacts to frequency, designers can create math functions with the capacitor and two other components, the resistor and the inductor. These other two each act differently in the presence ... | 288 | en |
Why is it OK to compare and draw conclusions from data where there are two samples of very different size? | Sample size is important on its own as it relates to the statistical “power” of a study. Power is about how large of a sample size you need to detect a statistical difference between variables with a given amount of certainty. For example, let’s say we have a two-sided coin, and we don’t know whether it’s a fair coin (... | 288 | en |
if you light a lighter in front of a TV, why does the reflection show 4 tiny rainbows around the flame? | This is to do with, not the display itself, but the layers of diffusers that make up the backlight behind the display An LCD TV consists of a backlight and an LCD panel. The backlight's job is to produce an even spread of light across the display. You first have an array of LEDs, but those LEDs are point sources, and y... | 288 | en |
How does something like a complex theoretical equation get turned into a real world application? | > real world application? Let's... Use a real world application as an example, rather than FTL travel. Let's say you want to build a wall, and to prevent it from falling over you want it to be vertical. If there isn't any wind, you can hang something heavy from a string to show you what vertical is, but if you'd like t... | 288 | en |
How are taxes on crypto calculated? | That's not how tax brackets work. You don't get taxed 29% on all your income if your income is between $150k-$214k. You get taxed 29% on the income you make *between* $150k-$214k So if the $320k is your total gain, and you're only taxed on 50% of your gains, you would be taxed 29% on $10k (because you're being taxed on... | 288 | en |
How does probability work? | The probability of a second roll coming up a 1 is another 1 in 6. Because the result of the first roll has absolutely no effect on the result of the second roll, each individual roll has the same probability. Now, if you want to know the probability that you will roll the same number twice, then it is 1/6 * 1/6, which ... | 288 | en |
Advanced Data Structures (Binary Trees, Hash Tables, Linked Lists) | The most simple data structure is a standard array, which it’s simplicity can be great for a lot of tasks! But when when you need a more purpose driven task, advanced data structures can work even better. Hash tables are my favorite, and have a lot of applications, but the main purpose is to efficiently find an element... | 288 | en |
Why is India's garbage/river pollution situation so bad? | Actual indian here... Our pollution is so bad, because the people in power don't care, and the people who do care can't ever get to power. The indian government is a carefully balanced pile of bribery and corruption built over a foundation of pure apathy and greed. While sure, there are some diligent workers at the gra... | 288 | en |
The Bill of Rights | As a baseline, consider that the Founders didn't conceive of the Constitution or the Bill of Rights as granting our civil rights; rather, there are fundamental rights that all people are born with by virtue of their humanity. The right to speak your mind, to worship as you wish, to peaceably assemble, to be free from u... | 288 | en |
How do perennial types of flora “die” in the Fall/Winter, but thrive and bloom again in Spring/Summer? | It's all about food production via photosynthesis. Plants have the ability to shed parts that use more food than they produce. You don't see as much die back in places where temperatures and length of day are pretty even all year long. Plants may stop blooming for part of the year, but don't need to die back because th... | 288 | en |
How is it asymptomatic carriers of diseases do not suffer ill effects of the disease damaging their body if they carry enough to be infectious? | Your body is a constant, raging microbial battleground where thousands of different species of bacteria and viruses are in an unending struggle for dominance over both each other and your body as a whole. It's like a Battle Royale game where one player (your body's immune system) starts with a bunch of powerful guns an... | 288 | en |
Why is isn't easy for a game to utilize all the cores on a CPU? | This isn't easy to explain to people that don't know anything about programming, but the short version is this: Because a lot of things in a software program or game need to happen sequential, something you can't be sure to happen when using multiple cores. If you are only using 1 core, you can be sure that A will happ... | 288 | en |
Why do old people shake so much? | These are known as tremors, which have the tendency to worsen with age. There are multiple types of tremors that are quite common in the elderly. Some of the main ones are: • Essential tremor - the actual cause of this is unknown but is thought to have a hereditary component to it. This is the most common type of tremo... | 288 | en |
What happens to your body as you build endurance? Is there any change to your heart, lungs, etc.? If so, how does it compare to a "normal" person? | There's a bunch of things that happen, but I'll just list a few 1. The heart becomes stronger. The muscles in your heart will grow, meaning they can exert less of their maximum force per stroke, or push more even more blood at their new maximum effort. I once saw an older triathlete patient whose heart was in such "goo... | 288 | en |
How does the text summarizing alghorithm work? | I do text analysis/extraction for a living so this is my thing (I've only been doing it for a year, so I'm no expert). I skimmed the algorithm posted by rift95 (he deleted his comment so here is the link he posted URL_0 ) and will try to explain it (assuming I understand it correctly). Basically you rank each sentence ... | 288 | en |
How do mRNA-based human therapeutics work? | TLDR: They trick your body into making the harmless part of a virus that your body then reacts to and learns to defend itself against. Traditional vaccines often use a weakened or dead form of a virus to teach your immune system how to fight a particular disease. mRNA vaccines use a different method. Your body is injec... | 288 | en |
Does national debt matter? | Debt can be good or bad. The USA is in an extremely privileged "debt position" right now because it can actually issue debt that it repays at less than the inflation rate. This means people are effectively giving the USA money for the pleasure of owning its debt. However the debt of the USA is mostly due to a structura... | 288 | en |
If the voice we hear when we talk is different than our actual voice how is it that we are able to do accurate impressions? | Hi, trained vocalist/singer/voice over here. The phenomenon you’re talking about is related to how sound travels through your skull to reach your own ears. Most people are completely unaccustomed to listening the sound of their own voice that it sounds bizarre to them when they hear it played back on a recording, thoug... | 288 | en |
How do computers turn a million yes and nos into a basic program? | The order of the yes's and no's matters. Let's call yes (1) and no (0). A container that hold a 1 or 0 is a *bit*. Now let's make a rule that 4 bits in a row is a *nibble*. We could choose any number, but 4 is a good number. Now I'll make another rule. There's a way to turn a nibble into an integer. The value of a nibb... | 288 | en |
what is gamergate? Is it good or bad? | Once upon a time, a woman named Zoe Quinn made a game called Depression Quest. It was a simple, free game that just involved roleplaying depression by clicking on text, sort of like a "choose your own story" with simple animations and images. It was meant to raise awareness of what it's like to have clinical depression... | 288 | en |
Why is inflation necessary? | A few reasons: - As the number of people in an economy increases, you need to increase the monetary supply to match. This is tough to do perfectly, so you side with a touch of inflation because the alternative is worse (more on that later) - It punishes stagnant money. Economies work when people are spending and invest... | 288 | en |
Is there a major difference (less etymology, more sociopolitics) between ‘equity,’ ‘equality,’ and ‘parity,’ and what are the implications? | I'm not going to try and say that "equity means A and equality means B", because I've seen a few of those and I don't think they're well supported by etymology or by common usage. (There's a slightly-famous one with three kids of different heights trying to see over a fence.) The basic distinction is something like thi... | 288 | en |
Who do all the planet not eventually get sucked into the sun? | To get sucked in, they would have to lose their momentum and energy. But what's going to do that in space? Nothing really. A well lubricated, low friction clock pendulum can swing for a very long time, a massive planet flying through basically empty space experiences essentially zero friction. They can keep flying in a... | 288 | en |
Why are some intervals calls ‘major’ while others are called ‘perfect’? | Musical intervals are defined by the ratio of the frequency of two pitches. Perfect intervals have really simple ratios.* An octave is defined by a 2:1 ratio. If your base note is 100Hz, 200Hz is an octave above it. A perfect fifth is 3:2, and a perfect fourth is 4:3. To our ears, when you play both notes in the interv... | 288 | en |
What major economic development(s) occurred between around the 50's and now that made it necessary for the average household to have two incomes instead of one to have a "good life"? | You're going to get a lot of answers but the truth is a lot of the damage from World War II gave the US a leg up economically for the 20 years post war. So much of Europe and Asia's working-age male population had been decimated. Barely any industrial capacity was left standing in China, Japan, Europe and Russia. Railr... | 288 | en |
how do doctors and veterinarians decide between stitches, staples, and other ways of keeping together surgeries? | Surgical Staples Much like the staples used to hold paper together, surgical staples are used to hold a wound together. Staples are easy to place, strong enough to hold a wound closed in an area that moves frequently like the abdomen, and often painless to remove. These staples, unlike office supplies, are sterile to h... | 288 | en |
Difference between colonialism and imperalism | The terms are closely related and often treated as interchangeable, and the differences are largely arbitrary. Colonialism is the idea of having colonies, ie dominions away from your homeland that you own. Oftentimes this has involved exploitation by the colonial power of resources and people of the land taken over, so... | 288 | en |
Airplanes being able to provide Wifi (And why only now after a long time) | Things in aviation take a long time. A really long time. For instance, some US registered airliners today still don't have what we would refer to in the industry as "glass" cockpits. Meaning they don't have the computer monitor like screens, instead they have what we call "steam gauges." The name is a misnomer as no ac... | 287 | en |
Why do portable FM radios only have a strong signal when their antenna is perfectly oriented, and on a related note, why does the FM signal in your call stay strong, even when the car's moving? | I'm no radio engineer, but I know a bit about radios. Radio signals travel in waves. FM radio waves are, in general, around 6 feet (2 meters) tall. The antenna size must be a matching height to the wave, or a 1/2 wavelength, or a 1/4 wavelength, 1/8th, etc in order to best receive ("tuned" to) the signal. The closer th... | 287 | en |
Why does drinking carbonated drinks worsen the effect of spicy food? | It seems this has been studied more thoroughly than I had imagined. You see, capsaicin, the active ingredient in chili, activates these receptor proteins, which sense painful heat. As you can imagine, this fools your brain into perceiving it as heat, often painful heat. CO2 in soda has an effect on acidity, given that ... | 287 | en |
Questions about technological advances/the singularity | I can answer part of your question. In recent years processing power for GPUs and CPUs is based on transistor number and transistor size. In essence, how many transistors can you cram together in a single chip or card. The more transistors the more and faster calculations can be made. In your graphics cards example, Nv... | 287 | en |
how does the government get $2 trillion dollars to lend out? | Not a dumb question at all. After all, putting your hands on $2 trillion sounds a little crazy. The answer, however, is pretty simple: debt. Just like someone buying on credit cards, governments usually spend more cash than they have available. However, unlike your average person with a huge credit card bill, countries... | 287 | en |
If drums produce sounds that correspond to certain frequencies (e.g., C#, F), how is it that drums, when played, do not clash with the songs in different keys? | They do, it's called frequency masking. Mix engineers put a lot of effort into dealing with it, both live and in recordings. Cymbals are a particular nuisance. They don't necessarily clash harmonically however. That's because tuning the drums with a drum key is necessary, but only for the more tonal pieces of the kit (... | 287 | en |
The difference between mean and median and mode. | Mean is simply the average of all values in a set. If you have 1,1,2,3,5,8,13 in a set the mean would be (1 + 1 + 2 + 3 + 5 + 8 + 13) / 7 = 4.71 Median is the middle value in the set - the one where half the values are below it and half above. In the above set 3 would be the median because (1,1,2) are all below it and ... | 287 | en |
Why is it harder to identify a face when the eyes are covered? | Your brain processes faces using a different, specialized circuit that is a physically separate brain location. (non ELI5: It's called the [Fusiform Face Area]( URL_0 )) This area is extra detail-oriented and processes the visual input very "deeply" for two reasons: 1. Telling people apart is very important. Mistaking ... | 287 | en |
What are “anti-nutrients” and do they really render foods like whole wheat bread and beans unhealthy? | This blog entry is written by a food writer, not by anybody who has had scientific training or has clinical qualifications. That's a red flag. The title is also obvious clickbait, which is another red flag. It also talks in all-or-nothing language, yet another red flag. There are red flags everywhere. First, yes, there... | 287 | en |
What is keeping us from developing higher frequency lasers, such as gamma ray lasers? | This is a complex question. To start; we actually *do* have gamma ray lasers, but they have to be engineered in a special way. In a normal laser, there is the lasing medium and mirrors. The lasing medium generates the beam and the mirrors are necessary to make the beam form properly. There are more in-depth explanation... | 287 | en |
if someone loses their memory do they become an entirely different person without their experiences or are they the same type of person but not remember why? | Depends a lot on the exact kind of amnesia. The most common form of amnesia in movies is the loss of autobiographical long-term memory. Autobiographical memory is the ability to remember past events that have happened to you in a kind of slide show fashion - remembering your 10th birthday for example is autobiographica... | 287 | en |
Why is it a big deal that 1 in 200 of people alive today can trace their lineage back to Genghis Khan? | > So Genghis Khan's DNA has had 800/25 = 32 generations (more if 20) to spread around the world. In that time, an unbroken line would need to average less than 2 progeny per person per generation (1.73^32 = 40 million) to get to ~40 mio descendents now. This seems quite normal as people did tend to have a lot of childr... | 287 | en |
How do laptop companies install the Operating System into their laptops? | TLDR: Imaging/hard drive cloning on an industrial scale We use similar techniques in Industry to prepare laptops and desktops for businesses. You install the Operating System on an example machine, install the drivers and any software that you want to package with the device. Once the machine is in a state that's ready... | 287 | en |
How will Anthony Kennedy retirement affect the future in USA | The President will offer up a nominee to Congress who will then approve/disapprove after several rounds of public and private questioning. Generally speaking, nominees are approved, even if they're faced with strong opposition. The fact that Republicans control both houses of Congress means that Trump's selection is al... | 287 | en |
if everything obeys the law of physics, is it theoretically possible to predict the future accurately if we know all of such laws? | No, and this is a foundational principle of Chaos Theory. In a non-linear dynamic system (even a system as simple as a [double pendulum]( URL_0 )), even a tiny difference in the initial conditions will have a huge impact in how the system evolves over time, even if the system is fully deterministic. The [three-body pro... | 287 | en |
if someone knows how to play the piano, and sat down at a organ, would they be able to play the organ without any practice? | Have played both piano (for many years) and organ (just 1 or 2 yrs) so I have first hand experience. First, the obvious difference is that the organ has a pedalboard so you play the bass notes with your feet. Completely unique skill that you must learn from scratch. Secondly, the organ has stops (the knobs to the side ... | 287 | en |
I've seen clips of players im games like Minecraft and others make fully functioning calculators. How is this done/possible? | This is a very good intro to some very approachable CS concepts. If my explanation is confusing, skip to the end for some YouTube links Most computers are made up of assembled "logic gates". They take a set of inputs and produce a set of outputs, the inputs and outputs are either "on" or "off", aka 1 or 0. There's a ha... | 287 | en |
When we hear harmony/chords in music, how does the brain *know* what the lead part or root notes are? | harmonics has a lot to do with overtones. when two notes share multiple overtones, they sound better together. the explanation is a bit too complex for text form, but i found [these]( URL_0 ) [two]( URL_1 ) videos extremely helpfull (the entire series is a really good explanation of a lot of fundamental concepts in mus... | 287 | en |
Why pain has levels how does body work and why do we feel like the leg fracture I had last week wasn't that painful like the hand fracture I have right now . And why emotional pain is more hurtful than the physical pain even it doesn't hurt in body ? | Pain is your body's way of saying that something is wrong, and that you need to take some kind of action. That action might be that you need to avoid putting pressure on the area (like a sprained ankle), it might be to drink more water (like a headache), it might be that you actually need to seek medical help. For phys... | 287 | en |
. How are we able to learn behavioral traits of species never documented while alive? How are we so certain about dinosaur knowledge when it's based solely on fossils? | That question is similar to, "how is a forensic team investigating a crime able to know what happened if they never saw it?" They find evidence that was left behind that they can peice together to form a complete picture of what happened. Paleontologists do the same thing but with extinct animals. They use fossile reco... | 287 | en |
what do anti-histamines do to the body that reduces allergies? | It's in the name: they are *anti* (against) *histamine* (a signal your body uses to activate your immune system). Whenever you're injured or your body senses an attack, the cells around the affected area release histamine. The histamine tells that part of the body to do things like dilate the blood vessels to cause inf... | 287 | en |
How does Proton Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy work? | I have experience in both NMR and EPR. Explaining it without mathematics can be challenging. In extremely simplified terms, though, imagine an entity with two possible states. Call them state 1 and state 2. Adding radio waves to the system tends to make it go to state 1. Adding a perpendicular magnetic field tends to m... | 287 | en |
How do gambling odds work? | Different types mean different things. You'll often see an American football game that has point spreads with both sides at -110. This means you have to bet 110 dollars to win 100. To win the bet you have to "cover the spread". If the Packers are favored by 4 over the Cowboys and you bet on the Packers, the Packers hav... | 287 | en |
Options Stock Buying | Options are an agreement where you have the *option* to buy or sell a stock at a certain price in the future. If I buy a *call* from you, I am entering a contract where you will sell me a stock in some company (let’s say Orange) for some price (let’s say $100) at some point in the future. If a share of Orange stock is ... | 287 | en |
When a company goes bankrupt, how does that impact the owner? | It depends. most of the time the owner is separate from the company so their personal belongings aren't subject to the bankruptcy. In some cases an owner of a business won't do this. Example. You make cupcakes. You buy a little store, hire 2 people to help and sell cupcakes out of that store. You probably had to take o... | 287 | en |
How does the government actually take in and spend money? | > Is there just some big bank account, and do they just write a check/ is there some sort of government wire transfer system? The Federal Reserve (AKA The Fed) is the closest thing to a "big bank account" for the government. It's super complicated, but that is one of the Federal Reserves many functions. It's a pretty b... | 287 | en |
In abdominal surgery, is there a precise way in which the intestines must be placed back inside the body? | As someone who was told to just throw them back in, you can just toss them in. They have been in the same place in the body since they existed. They're muscle memory is very impressive as a result. The surgery I learned this on was an exploratory one. We were prepared for the worst when he opened this 80 year old woman... | 287 | en |
Why didn't any other species make as many advancements as humans? | There's this book called *Sapiens* that argues that it is the human ability to communally believe in the imaginary which largely allowed us to develop to this point. Other social animals have to spend a significant amount of time developing their social structures and relationships. They have to spend time with others ... | 287 | en |
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 (non-human primates, elephants, whales) it is not a common thing. Of course we got a couple of hypothesises, but... | 287 | en |
How can the global economy survive while most countries are in debt, and that debt continues to grow? | Countries being in debt is a complicated topic and not exactly the best measure of their economic health when taken as a single piece of data. For instance: a lot of hullabaloo has been raised about the US's debt, but it is rarely pointed out that like 1/4 of that is owed by the US government to itself (ie: state depar... | 287 | en |
How does carbon dating work? | A lot of people are mentioning Carbon-14, but don't explain how it's used in testing and why. Carbon-14 is radioactive, and it's created via interaction between UV radiation and the CO2 in the air. Since the CO2 level cycled through the atmosphere, it remains relatively constant as the constant sun produces it at a con... | 287 | en |
What's going on between India and Pakistan and some guy sentenced to death? | Last year, Pakistan's intelligence services captured an Indian national, Kulbhushan Jadhav, within their borders. They produced a video taped confession from Jadhav, stating that he was spying for India. India claims that Jadhav was kidnapped by the Pakistani secret service from Iran, claims that a spy would not carry ... | 287 | en |
How can the internet be running out of IP addresses? | an ip address is 4x 8 bit numbers. that's it. exactly how they're tallied and how stuff works is more complicated - there are entire qualifications half of which are taken up by various forms of subnetting. the highest value you can have in an 8 bit number is 255; it then overflows back to 0. 255(U8BIT) + 1(U8BIT) = 0(... | 287 | en |
How does our internal sense of direction work? | When you are exploring your environment, your brain is storing bits of information. Just like it remembers what those trees looked like, or that house or that mountain, it also remembers these things in relation to each other EG "that big colorful tree in the front yard of that pink house". Stringing all those observat... | 287 | en |
How is your lifestyle related to Diabetes? | It's due to insulin resistance. It means that insulin is adequately secreted in response to high blood sugar, but the cells of your body don't respond by collecting/sucking up that sugar. This then results in a persistently high blood sugar. We don't understand it completely, but there are genetic and environmental com... | 287 | en |
How are fireworks that create complex designs made? | Basically by layering them like onions inside onions. The individual things that burn and make trails are little spherical pellets of gunpowder called stars. The gunpowder in the stars is tightly packed and glued together with a binder like starch to make them solid. Because it's solid each star will burn from the outs... | 287 | en |
What is thermodynamics and how it is relevant in our everyday life? | Thermodynamics regulates the fundamental processes of life. Every enzyme in your body, every biochemical reaction, every component of your metabolism- from your nerves firing to your body absorbing nutrients, breaking them down and using the energy in movement and constructing new tissues- relies on thermodynamics. Wit... | 287 | en |
How do broken bones know how to mend themselves e.g. how do two pieces of a rib reconnect and heal completely on their own? | So there's a layer of live tissue on the surface of bones called the periosteum as well as nerves running along the bones that "know" when the bones are broken because they will be physically broken. They will be able to detect the change in their environment from "My neighbor is another normal bone cell and he's telli... | 287 | en |
"Too big to fail." What does this mean? Why should a failed business be kept afloat by taxpayers? | Too big to fail means that if a business, usually a financial institution, fails, then the failure has a significant negative impact on the free flow of money or would destabilize the entire financial system. For example, let's say Bank of America announces tomorrow that it's insolvent. It stops making loans and cannot... | 287 | en |
Why does most seafood have the same distinctive taste? | Couple of reasons. Firstly, salt. Most seafood lives in salt water, which means they're naturally saltier than other meats you eat. Secondly, Trimethylamine. This is the chemical responsible for that pungent, unmistakeable "fishy smell". All fish, crustaceans and I believe molluscs that live in sea water contain a chem... | 287 | en |
Sleep paralysis demons (for someone who has never experienced sleep paralysis before). | Sleep is not an on/off switch; it doesn't always work perfectly. "Sleep paralysis" is actually completely normal - it would be very bad for someone to be acting out everything in their dreams, so their bodies lock up and stop them from moving while they're asleep. Usually. The problem is when part of a person is awake ... | 287 | en |
What does it mean for a problem to be NP Hard or NP Complete? | First a quick eli5 style definition of "NP": a class of problems which are very difficult to solve, but easy to verify a solution if offered, when simplified down to a Yes/No answer. The most well known example is the travelling salesman problem: given a list of cities and a complete cost table (eg: cost of a bus ride ... | 287 | en |
How does the chest cavity close up after heart surgery is performed? | Oh!!! I can answer this from the perspective of personal experience! I’ve had open heart surgery twice: once as a baby and once as a 20y0 (currently 27). So for me at least, they used a scalpel to cut the skin and then a surgical saw to cut through the sternum. Then they “crack” open the ribs to the sides to allow acce... | 287 | en |
Before binary code and how it knows what it was doing. | Computers made using what are called logic gates. Essentially, you have two wires going into the gate and one going out. Each input wire can be turned on or off, and the output wire depends on what kind of gate it is and what the inputs are. In an AND gate, the output is turned on if both inputs are turned on, and turn... | 287 | en |
how low pain tolerance and high pain tolerance works | Pain is actually a very complex process. See, what you experience as pain happens in your brain, not your nerves. Nociception (literally “harm perception”) is the process of a pain-sensitive nerve detecting a noxious stimulus and sending a message back to the brain. All peripheral nerves terminate at the spine, and pas... | 287 | en |
JPG vs. JPEG vs PNG photo formats | **PNG:** A PNG is what's called a "lossless," compression format. It looks for repeated data and simplifies it to save space. A simplified example would be: **RED, RED, RED, RED, BLUE** \- > becomes - > **REDx4, BLUE**. The data you put in will always be the exact data that comes out but the file sizes will be larger t... | 287 | en |
What does the "in A minor" or "in D minor" in classical music songs mean? | If a piece of minor is in "A minor" or "D minor", it is telling you two things: (a) which is the tonal center, and (b) which is the quality. Both of them make "the key" of the piece and it isn't limited to classical music, modern songs (like a song by Led Zeppelin or Bruno Mars) are also in keys, but they don't include... | 287 | en |
How is the umbilical cord connected inside the developing baby, and what happens to those connections (veins/arteries) after the baby is born and the cord is cut? | The umbilical cord contains one vein and two arteries, the vein Carrie's oxygenated blood from the mother to the fetus and it enters into the fetus' circulation via the ductus venosus that connects to the fetus' liver, this then goes into the inferior vena cava, and into the right heart. Since the lungs arent open to a... | 287 | en |
what does it really mean for isps to sell browsing history? | Basically imagine that your ISP was your mailman and every time you received mail from someone or send someone a letter he made a not of it and now he can legally sell a list of all the stuff you have send or received by mail to whoever he wants. The ISP can keep track of all the websites you visit. They now can sell d... | 287 | en |
Why do atoms form ionic bonds? | > How does gaining something make chlorine lose energy? Does the electon have negative energy? No. But Cl^- has less energy than the original neutral chlorine atom *and* a free electron. Energy of Cl < Energy of Cl^- < Energy of Cl + Energy of e^(-). So the reaction Cl + e^- - > Cl^- *is* exothermic. The electron doesn... | 287 | en |
How did we find out what the nucleus of an atom looks like? | It wasn't just one experiment that leads us to this result, but for the sake of a proper ELI5 I'll talk only about Rutherford's golden leaf experiment which pretty much proved us that the atom is mostly void. So before Rutherford's experiment, we believed that atoms had a nucleus which is neutrally charged, that is it ... | 287 | en |
What is really happening when a song is stuck in our head? | So there isn't a firm answer to this question. There are several theories, but the different theories don't completely agree. One idea is that catchy songs tend to be in a very short loop structure. That is, the end of part of it returns back to where it started. And since it's short, that allows the whole "loop" to be... | 287 | en |
A wormhole basically connects two points in space through a passage made over space. How exactly is the space "folded" to allow for this faster passage? | Wormholes are purely theoretical. The maths works for them, but there's no evidence that the physics works. Imagine having to find a path between two points on a piece of apper. There may be a whole number of different paths you could take (an infinite number), but given any two paths you can always turn one into the o... | 287 | en |
Why do most people look and feel so terrible upon waking if sleep is renewing? | We look bad because our hair gets messed up during sleep. Our face muscles are relaxed, changing the way we look. Dehydration is an issue with a lot of people after waking up. Feeling terrible can have a few causes. Interrupted sleep is a common one. If our sleep gets interrupted we have a difficult time going through ... | 287 | en |
How without being able to observe or communicate in a meaningful way can plants mimic other plants leaf colour / shape to deter animals from eating them? | Plants do not evolve their characteristics through observation and communication. They do not "decide" their evolution or traits. It is simple mutation and success/failure, over and over and over again. Imagine, for simplicities sake, a community of plants with leaves that are green that grow next to a community of poi... | 287 | en |
if there are so many billionaires and millionaires donating such huge sums of money to charity every year,along with the general public making their small donations of course, how are there still so many in poverty without access to basic ammenities? Where is all this money going? | There's a lot going on here. To start, think of the scale of the problem. There are 3 billion (with a big bloody B) people living in poverty (less than €2.30/$2.50 per day) with 1.3 billion living in extreme poverty. Here in Ireland we have our own problems but the "average person" spends €120/$131 per day. So, to incr... | 287 | en |
How does a computer read a CD or DVD and extract the appropriate content? | The disc is spun and below it is a laser mounted on a track that moves back and forth so it can be pointed at any point on the disc as it passes over. When the laser hits the disc the light is reflected back and there is a sensor ready to detect it. However by altering the disc, either by changing the distance between ... | 287 | en |
What is the difference between a RNA vaccine and a "conventional" vaccine ? | My first try on an ELI5. I hope I'm getting it right if not let me know! Conventional vaccines (I refer here to the most traditional type here) use a killed or weakened pathogen or part of it to induce an immune response. You basically give your immune system the task to find a good target on that pathogen, so it will ... | 286 | en |
What process in our brain makes something "cute" and something else "ugly"? | The problem with trying to pin down the process is that these reactions are so highly variable. I absolutely adore all manner of little animals that others, perhaps even the majority, may find are actively ugly/creepy. Pigeons, moths, puffins, chambered nautilus, and terrestrial crabs would all be on my list of cutest ... | 286 | en |
What gives fire its shape? | When air is heated, it tends to expand. To explain why it expands - Heat is basically the measure of vibration and movement of the actual molecules within a substance. When something is solid, these vibrations don't have enough energy to stop the attractive forces between the molecules thus they stay mostly in place. W... | 286 | en |
Why can a TV display different resolutions and still look crisp and clear, but on a monitor anything other than native looks terrible? | Most TVs nowadays have all sorts of fun features that increase the output quality that your normal LCD panel doesn't. One big one I see in my house every day: My LCD on my laptop is 60Hz (it redraws the screen 60 times a second) The TV in my living room, however, is 120Hz, no matter the input. It can take 1080p, at 30H... | 286 | en |
How does panting cool off mammals, and why doesn’t this work for humans? | What's happening is that the air moving around the dog's large mouth and throat area is causing the moisture there to dry. Moisture needs a bit of warmth to jump from "Liquid" state to "Gas" state, and as it transforms into vapour, it steals that heat from the tissues in the dog's mouth that it's next to, cooling those... | 286 | en |
How did Ready Player One (novel) get around copyright, trademark, etc.? | Definitely not a copyright lawyer, but in general there's an idea called "fair use" in copyright law that holds that you can use copyrighted ideas in reference, for parody, for commentary, and a few other ways, without violating the owner's copyrights. I could write a book right now where the main character makes sever... | 286 | en |
how do Shakespeare directors cut as much as half of a script from a production and have it still make sense? | Almost any script has a lot of extra stuff in it which is not crucial to the plot. This is not unique to Shakespeare. You could probably convey the plot of most plays and movies in just a few scenes with a few lines of dialog each. PETER PAN: SCENE 1. INTERIOR, WENDY'S ROOM Wendy: I'm bored. Peter: *enters through wind... | 286 | en |
How do people determine if X poison/venom is 10 million times more harmful than Y poison/venom? | /u/Bigted1800 is indeed correct, but that's not really a complete definition. For toxicity, there's so many factors that come into play that it's really hard/unbelievably unethical to test for, so we use something called the LD50. That's the Lethal Dose 50% number, i.e. *this* amount will kill half of people exposed to... | 286 | en |
Why it's so difficult for countries to build nuclear weapons. | There are basically 2 kinds of practical nuclear weapons; gun-type and implosion-type. A gun-type bomb is technically piss easy to build. Take two subcritical masses of high enriched uranium (HEU) and fire them at each other so they become one supercritical mass. The design is so idiot-proof the US didn't even bother t... | 286 | en |
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