id stringlengths 5 6 | input stringlengths 3 301 | output list | meta null |
|---|---|---|---|
1u21dg | Are we born to like certain things? | [
{
"answer": "I'd just like to add a couple things quickly. It would be incorrect to attribute our likes or preferences (for example) to either nature or nurture exclusively. Rather, they develop through complex interaction of the two. \n\nEvolutionary psychologists will tell you that we developed our preference... | null |
2tl4hs | where is edward snowden and what will probably come of him? | [
{
"answer": "Edward Snowden is living in Russia and is supported by the Russian government. As he has FSB bodyguards on him 24/7, it is unlikely that unless the Russians give him to the US voluntarily, or he can be tricked out of the country somehow -- *so the CIA or FBI can arrest him* -- he will likely be liv... | null |
6an7u2 | A few questions about indentured servants in the early 18th century | [
{
"answer": "If you're looking for a primary source, I highly recommend William Moraley's [*The Infortunate*](_URL_0_), an autobiography of an indentured servant from the early 18th century - the introduction by Susan Klepp and Billy Smith and should provide you with an excellent introduction to the subject and... | null |
2bmffi | why do car companies design strange looking electric cars instead of following telsa's clear success of making cool looking cars people want. | [
{
"answer": "Toyota = Japanese; i3 = German; Tesla = American. I'd say that the Corolla style is much more complicated to discuss because it's been around for almost 50 years.",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": "In addition to the answers about drag coefficients and use cases (sports car vs utilit... | null |
5ff4d3 | Does general relativity really affect GPS? | [
{
"answer": "Yes. Very much so. Three things to consider;\n\n1. Because of their altitude (lower gravitational field) their clocks tick faster than clocks here by about 45 microseconds per day. This needs to be corrected for. \n\n2. Because of their speeds their clocks tick slower than clocks on the ground by a... | null |
6qhoop | [Biology] What causes some people to be more prone to headaches than others? | [
{
"answer": "There are a lot of different types of headaches, and like almost every trait, both genetic background and environment play in role. It's also a hard question, because some of the most common types of headache, including migraines, are not perfectly understood yet.\n\nFor example, there is a heritab... | null |
bejuqu | how much can our life choices change our dna and how much of that could get transferred to our children? | [
{
"answer": "Your DNA is changed by random mutations, not by any actions of yours. Any injuries that remove a sense wil not be passed on. Any abilities that you acquire will not be passed on. [Lamarckism](_URL_0_) was the disproven hypothesis that this occurs.",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": nul... | null |
1nwr4i | In understanding language, does hearing an utterance and reading a text work differently in the brain? | [
{
"answer": "Language comprehension is handled by a part of the brain called [Wernicke's area]( _URL_0_). Wernicke's area handles both ~~spoken~~ read and heard language. There will be some minor differences, in that sound and vision are different ways and in different parts of the brain, but no actual language... | null |
aodjcv | What makes the International Space Station or any other object stay in a precise planetary orbit? | [
{
"answer": "The ISS is very much not in a stable orbit and it is boosted back up every month or so by burning several thousand pounds of fuel per year. The primary cause of the orbital decay is atmospheric drag from Earth's outer atmosphere. The atmospheric drag varies due to density changes caused by the Sun.... | null |
5vgbr7 | what makes each cell in a fetus differentiate into different types of cells? | [
{
"answer": "This is enormously complex, and I have a very minimal understanding of it, but I'll try to explain some of the factors. \n\n > What mechanism distributes the DNA of the parents?\n\nEvery cell has all your DNA. Cell types are distinguished by using only certain parts. So a muscle cell will use just ... | null |
qg1vu | Does any organism's hair, other than humans, go white with age? | [
{
"answer": "Sure, [gorillas](_URL_0_) and [golden retrievers](_URL_1_) both have fur that lightens as they age",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": "it's fairly obvious on black labradors' muzzle, here's a [young one](_URL_1_) and an [older one](_URL_0_)",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer... | null |
4wssd7 | What was a soldier's life expectancy during the Thirty Years War? | [
{
"answer": "Pretty terrible. The first data that springs to mind, Geoffrey Parker provides in *The Military Revolution,* where he catalogues the astounding wastage of men in the Swedish parish of Bygdea. In 1620, there were about 400 men of military age, of whom 36 were drafted to fight in Germany. In 1639,... | null |
73pmy3 | What's the reasoning for PEMDAS? | [
{
"answer": "Turns out that polynomials are best thought of as sums of terms with powers of the variable with their coefficients. That is, oftentimes, representing a polynomial like x^(2)+3x+2 is much better than (x+1)(x+2). The easiest way to do this is with PEMDAS. ",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answ... | null |
2ianwp | how do hand warmers stay warm for up to 10 hours? what makes them stay at a temperature perfect to warm me, but not burn my hands? | [
{
"answer": "It lasts 10 hours because it is a very slow chemical reaction. The temperature is not exactly a delicate balance. Anywhere from 70 - 110 Fahrenheit will warm without cause any harm. So staying in a 40 degree temperate range is not that hard. ",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": "There ... | null |
7nvzf4 | how does something like google maps work on the software side? what kind of software is used to make it interactive like it is? | [
{
"answer": "Most interactive websites use JavaScript for the interactive code. This is because JavaScript is supported in all browsers and have the ability to interact with the browser and website elements in a way that other browser elements like Flash and Java can not. There are already similar open source a... | null |
v22w9 | I've never been able to comprehend the concept of faster than light travel and its impacts. Help? | [
{
"answer": "It's not about \"time particles\" it's the fact that rulers and clocks **aren't** absolute measurement devices. Two equal clocks, moving relative to each other, will appear to run at different rates. And two equal rulers moving relative to each other will appear to measure different lengths.\n\nFor... | null |
a4jbw4 | if the speed of an object is relative to another object, then why can't matter travel faster than the speed if light, but in relation to something else? | [
{
"answer": "Velocities do not actually add up like you learned in high school/freshman physics. That is called Galilean relativity, and in the early 20th century it was found to be incorrect - velocity addition actually have a more complex formula, and they always add in a way that relative velocities do not s... | null |
1bp37s | What was American religion like prior to the First Great Awakening? | [
{
"answer": "The growth in the Baptist and Methodist Churches was a product of the Great Awakening, so they're not quite part of this question. As to the rest of it, there is much to say.\n\nFirst and foremost, remember that nothing \"replaced\" the Anglican and Puritain faiths. The Episcopal Church (the name f... | null |
89e4hz | Does irradiation of food for safety purposes affect nutritional content? | [
{
"answer": "Not particularly. Ionizing radiation kills microorganisms by damaging macromolecules like DNA and proteins. We do not incorporate whole macromolecules from our food, and many of them would be quite harmful if we did. The digestion process disassembles these molecules into their components. Denaturi... | null |
1fztey | What is the historical basis for having the dollar sign appear before the sum where units are standardized as appearing after the quantity? | [
{
"answer": "If you write me a check like this 100.00$ then I can easily turn it into 1100.00$ before cashing it.\n\nIt is much harder to employ shenanigans with $100.00",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": null,
"provenance": [
{
"wikipedia_id": "18717338",
"title": "United... | null |
1poxhh | does anything actually have any color? | [
{
"answer": "Things do have a color, but in the end how we \"see\" it is based on how our human sight has developed. Let me explain.\n\nOur sun emits radiation over an entire electromagnetic spectrum. The human eye has evolved to detect a very narrow band of that spectrum called visible light. Light behaves lik... | null |
wd6jt | What do you think of Guns, Germs and Steel? | [
{
"answer": "Former TA here:\n\nI've used it in classes before. It's a nice introduction into explaining a whole lot of things that students might find interesting. If you're looking to get into stuff like hunter-gatherer societies, disease, agriculture, the making of early societies, and the effects of and mea... | null |
1h83kb | How do we know that some sub-atomic particles respond differently to observation? | [
{
"answer": "This actually isn't unique to subatomic particles. It's an effect called the \"observer effect\". Imagine heating up a beaker of metal (let's say iron for the fun of it). You're goal is to heat it to a couple hundred degrees C above the melting point. Once the sample is completely melted, how do we... | null |
5eut75 | If you point your phone camera at an IR LED (like in a TV remote) it is visible but why does it show up as blue/purple rather than red? | [
{
"answer": "I did not know the answer to your question, but I was able to find answers to someone else's similar question and you may find those answers useful:\n\n_URL_0_",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": "The explanation has to do with how digital cameras try to determine the color of an object... | null |
3blsx5 | when looking at atoms through an electron scanning microscope, why are there no abundance of nitrogen/oxygen(air) atoms getting in the way? | [
{
"answer": "As CommissarAJ says, SEMs typically have a vacuum chamber - whatever you're looking at is put inside, and then the air is pumped out. What little remains doesn't really matter, because the image is built up as a computer model by a beam that scans back and forth (hence the \"S\" in SEM) and the odd... | null |
ps2yj | why does the length of music files differ from how long the file plays? | [
{
"answer": "In streaming especially, media files come with not only the media content but also some metadata like Title, Artist, and Length. This is important because you can't estimate the length of a song you haven't finished downloading. Since this data isn't directly calculated from the actual length of th... | null |
aykz9k | - how do video game servers work? | [
{
"answer": "I'm going to assume you're talking about servers for typical FPS (First Person Shooter) games.\n\nAll the server is doing is acting as a \"middle man\" to ensure all of the players (clients) know what all of the other players are doing, and to handle any reactions to those players actions, and agai... | null |
1p3en9 | How successful was African American participation in politics during the post-emancipation period? | [
{
"answer": "This is a huge question, you're basically asking for an overview of the Reconstruction era. I don't have time to type it all out but since no one else seems to be answering I'll give the cop out answer. People can feel free to downvote it once if/when real answers show up.\n\nCheck out Eric Foner's... | null |
rdwbb | Do men who have homosexual intercourse have less or more likeliness of getting prostate cancer? | [
{
"answer": "You may want to consider thinking beyond homosexual intercourse. I've witnessed more than enough straight men come throught the ER needing surgical removal of objects.",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": "FYI homosexual intercourse != anal sex.",
"provenance": null
},
{
"ans... | null |
1nfbne | Are there any accounts of a battle ending with only 1 or 2 men on both sides? | [
{
"answer": "There was a battle called \"The Battle of 300 Champions\" which took place between Sparta and Argos in 546 BC. There were only three survivors: two on the Argive side and one on the Spartan side. The two Argives assumed they were victorious and left the field. The sole surviving Spartan claimed oth... | null |
17n3sg | why do you get air bubbles all over your skin when you submerge yourself in a tub with hot water? | [
{
"answer": "For the same reason bubbles form on the inside of your glass of soda.\n\nAir can dissolve in liquids just like a solid like salt can. However, there's one big difference. With solids, warm water is generally able to dissolve more of a solid than cold water. With gases it's just the opposite. Cold w... | null |
gc6rn | A question about wind chill factor. | [
{
"answer": "Some info here _URL_0_\n\nI believe the wind chill is intended to represent the rate of heat loss. For instance, in your example, it is negative -5 outside, but the increased heat transfer due to wind speed causes your face to lose heat at the same rate as though it were -20.",
"provenance": n... | null |
1uvll7 | raspberry pi | [
{
"answer": "It is basically a computer, including processor, memory and graphics processor in a single, very small, board.\n\nTo function properly, you have to add storage space (sd card) for operating system, software and data, and a power supply.\n\nIt can also benefit from a screen to display stuff and some... | null |
1bep0p | the contribution of eating meat and thusly derived amino acids to the evolution of human intelligence. | [
{
"answer": "meat is a rich source of protein, but this isn't really what is considered important for human brain development. \n\nthe theory, as far as I understand it, claims that increased meat consumption allowed a much more efficient source of calories for human ancestor species and this calorie surplus is... | null |
5qvdeo | why are cold showers so uncomfortable compared to pools? | [
{
"answer": "They're both equally unpleasant to me, but if this is the case for you, I think it's for the same reason it feels colder when wind is blowing. In a still medium (water, air), you feel cold at first, but over time the temperature of your body and its close environment starts to equalize, making you ... | null |
qfqit | Why does the UK, for its size, have the largest amount of universities near the top of this list that aren't American? | [
{
"answer": "Number of reasons.\n\n1. Language. English is the lingua franca, which means that it's very easy for an english speaking university to \"pull\" people from a HUGE pool. For example I'm Finnish and went to one of the 3 English universities listed there. Why not France? I don't speak French. A lot of... | null |
2dvuqs | When did Ukraine become culturally separate from Russia? | [
{
"answer": "While it's certainly true that many Russian historians like to conceive of an unbroken line of Russianness characterizing Kievan Rus and stretching through various successors to the modern Russian Federation, such a reading is at best lazy and at worst dishonest. As Serhii Plokhy discusses at lengt... | null |
18mvr5 | Can viruses account for evolutionary "leaps"? | [
{
"answer": " > 2) If this is possible, could a genetically engineerd virus be used to exterminate certain handicaps, i.e., would it be possible to create a specific DNA change using a virus?\n\nPhage (viruses that infect bacteria) have been used to engineer specific DNA changes in bacteria for a while. See thi... | null |
1yfx25 | how are synthesized sounds created, like those in today's music? | [
{
"answer": "The concept was based off of speaker vibrations and the study of sound as a wavelength. \n\nIf you look at a large speaker, you'll see it moving up and down, which is how it creates sound. Every possible sound has a vibration speed and wavelength, so speakers wiggle up and down like that to produ... | null |
1u20p7 | what would be the immediate result of the u.s. declaring an end to its support of israel? | [
{
"answer": "Can you clarify what you mean by \"support\"? Political? Military? Alliances? Economic? Humanitarian? The world is a complicated place",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": "I don't think it will just end its support as Israel is an important ally and maybe the only true US ally in the ... | null |
54mqym | purpose of tv commercials and other advertisements having the background speaker's voice sound unnatural and sillier? | [
{
"answer": "It makes it more noticeable. If the voice is weird it's harder to tune out, so people often retain more information from it. ",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": null,
"provenance": [
{
"wikipedia_id": "9143052",
"title": "Brian Naylor (broadcaster)",
... | null |
18pylk | How accurate is the television series Downton Abbey's portrayal of the Edwardian/Pre-World War I era? | [
{
"answer": "It's a highly romanticized portrayal. Popular history broadcaster A. N. Wilson [trashed the show's idealistic portrayal of country life](_URL_1_) on BBC 4's _Today_:\n\n > We all know that during the years before and after the First World War, life was miserable for most people and we did need a ... | null |
8zftnh | how can plant seeds be stored for weeks and grow and be “alive” and have a life? | [
{
"answer": "They can be stored for years at a time.\n\nIt's an incomplete answer, but basically they are not in the active stage of their life cycle until they are aroused by their changing surroundings. ",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": "Plants seeds are so tough that they are capable of dorman... | null |
22cmi3 | waste management | [
{
"answer": "In the United States, there are two major processes depending on where you live, I will cover both.\n\n**Homes with sewage systems**: When you flush a toilet the waste is pushed down the pipes in your house and into the neighborhood sewage pipes. From there it makes its way to a sewage treatment pl... | null |
6geh6y | In 1996, the nintendo 64 was released and was '64' bit. The dreamcast which followed was billed as 128 bit. Why did it take so long for 64 bit home PCs to arrive and what's different between a 64 bit PC and a 128 bit dreamcast? | [
{
"answer": "\"128 bits\" in consoles was just marketing. The CPUs were not 128bit like the N64 was 64 bit. The memory bus might have been 128 bit but that is completely unrelated to how many bits the CPU operates with internally. A 128bit memory bus is basically just having a wider \"highway\" into the CPU, no... | null |
1e37i2 | Why is it that when we look at bright objects we see extra artifacts surrounding it, such as vertical lines of light? | [
{
"answer": "The bright lines in that particular picture look like [CCD smear](_URL_0_), an artifact caused by a certain type of image sensor.\n\nFor the vertical lines that you see with your own eyes, do they get more pronounced (brighter, longer, or larger) when you squint? If so, I think it may be [the pheno... | null |
kv91b | Discussion thread: Promising "FTL neutrino" explanation published yesterday. | [
{
"answer": "It would have been nice if they'd been able to send light along the same path - that'd cancel out all these factors - but from what I've heard, they just fired the neutrinos straight through the ground...",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": "Can they derive the 10^-5 speed discrepancy b... | null |
3ilw4a | How big could a spinning space station reasonably get? | [
{
"answer": "As it turns out, gravity inside a hollow sphere or annulus cancels itself out, so no, it would not be an issue.\n\nAcceleration due to rotation is linear with radius (assuming fixed angular velocity) so artificial gravity at 1/2 distance would be 1/2 the artificial gravity at full distance.",
"... | null |
b12l8r | what laws are actually broken when a parent bribes someone to get their kid into a prestigious school? | [
{
"answer": "The main thing here was that the company that they were paying to help get their kids into better colleges was illegally posing as a charity, so that the parents appeared to be donating to charity and getting tax writeoffs at the same time that they were cheating to get their kids into a prestigio... | null |
2lvram | Is longevity of use a recurring event with military firearms and equipment before the 20th Century. | [
{
"answer": "Sort of. What you mostly see, at least with 18th through early 19th century small arms, are minor changes made every decade or two to a design that's much older. \n\nThe Land Pattern Musket, famously known as the Brown Bess, was in use in various iterations from 1722 to 1838. The action remained th... | null |
1h21zo | Question about Nazi nerve gas. | [
{
"answer": "Also, what or who are \"Red Spaniards\"?",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": "most likely they were referring to [Zyklon B](_URL_0_) - it was a cyanide based pesticide that was used to gas large groups of people inside concentration camps like Auschwitz-Birkenau, Majdanek, and Sachsenha... | null |
c7077r | What is the oldest expression we still use in modern times? | [
{
"answer": "A lot of enduring phrases are usually religious in origin simply because preaching in olden times was the main way to convey an idea. \"A drop in the bucket\" can be linked to Isaiah 40:15 (KJV) for example. Now if this became an everyday expression more recently or not is harder to prove, but the ... | null |
3ai7oj | what is so horrible about the "new" simpsons seasons? | [
{
"answer": "When the Simpsons started out, they set out to mock and spoof old family television and movie cliches.\n\nThe show was quite subversive and rebellious for its time, with children casually swearing, the family worshiping Television, the show mocking authority figures, and generally turning moral les... | null |
fq67p8 | What is the mechanism by which a virus dies outside a host cell--and what happens to the RNA inside? | [
{
"answer": "If a virus is ripped apart by soap, the genome will be exposed to extracellular nucleases that will chop it up really quickly. \n\nRadiation inactivation, like with gamma or UV, will cause major genomic damage that may allow the virus to enter a cell, but never replicate to produce new viruses.\n\n... | null |
3m9d3t | How many friends do you need on Facebook to get a > 99% chance that at least one of your friends have birthday each day of the year? | [
{
"answer": "This problem is identical to the [coupon collector's problem](_URL_2_). The \"coupons\" are the 365 possible birthdays. We are ignoring February 29 and we are assuming birthdays are uniformly distributed by day of the year. (There is a solution for nonuniform distributions, but it's bit more diffic... | null |
32dkzk | why are dogs' noses wet? | [
{
"answer": "There are several reasons, actually. The first, and most important, is that the chemo-receptors (the things that actually pick up smells) on a dog's nose are more functional when wet. Similarly, our tongues can't taste anything when they are dry (stick your tongue out, let it dry, put something s... | null |
9mqtio | why do tanning oils (any oils?) make you tan/burn faster? | [
{
"answer": "They work similar to how light works when burning things with a magnifying lens. It attracts, then refracts the light creating a more powerful beam and focusing the UV rays. You can get similar effects if you tan while wet from the pool or if you rub mineral oil on your body",
"provenance": nul... | null |
ay2k2m | The advent of firearms largely made the bow and arrow obsolete, but also the heavy body armor that could defend against arrows. As infantry became increasingly unarmored, was there ever a resurgence of the bow and arrow before firearms became so advanced as to obsolete them entirely? | [
{
"answer": "You should check out u/wotan_weevil’s [recent answer here](_URL_0_) about the use of armor to protect against firearms. It was effective and in use for longer than you might think!",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": "This prior thread seems to get at the heart of your question:\n\n[Wit... | null |
1pv89b | why are archers in movies instructed to fire all at once? | [
{
"answer": "no, what holding their fire does is makes a rain of arrows that fill an entire battle field. in fact a good archer could launch a second arrow by the time the first has landed covering an even larger portion of the battle field.",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": "Well usually we see i... | null |
5uscar | why is a budget surplus a good thing and a fiscal deficit bad? | [
{
"answer": "Well a budget surplus simply means that the Government is making more money than it is spending. On the surface this is good because that's what you want to do. You, yourself would like a job that pays you more each month than your bills come to.\n\nBut a surplus or deficit on their own may or may ... | null |
1nb0o9 | When did it become common to have a calendar in your house? | [
{
"answer": "It certainly was around in Rome, often for horoscopes and such. Allusions to them are recurrent throughout Roman literature, such as in the Cena Trimalchionis, by Petronius.\n\n > Fragment 30 (translated by JP Sullivan):\n > [In the house of Trimalchio on the walls there was a fixture which] displa... | null |
25t5lr | Without modern equipment, how did early civilizations build those wood and rope bridges that go across huge canyons? How did they get it to the other side to connect it? | [
{
"answer": "First step: get somebody on both sides of the gap you want to bridge (which can be tricky).\n\nSecond step: Bring your bow, an arrow, some very light cord, and some heavier rope.\n\nThird step: Tie the light cord to the arrow and shoot it across the gap.\n\nFourth step: Tie the heavier rope to the ... | null |
2c7j2r | What problems existed before Matthew Perry's arrival that contributed to the Tokugawa fall? | [
{
"answer": "Ok I hope I can answer your question having read the book by Jansen and many others.\n\nSorry this is all off the top of my head but if you pm later I will be able to send you some other good books to read about this topic.\n\nI find it easier to split it into economic, social and political factors... | null |
17ygyn | What is the practical and observable difference between mitosis and amitosis? | [
{
"answer": "I'll jump in here real fast, but hopefully someone else will know more: In the early days of studying cell division, it wasn't clear whether most cells divided through mitosis or \"amitosis.\" It's now clear that the vast majority of cell divisions take place through mitosis (in other words, with D... | null |
3iedw3 | Why does xenon an inert gas interact with flourine? | [
{
"answer": "\"Xenon reacts directly with fluorine because fluorine is a very powerful oxidizing agent (hence it gets reduced and it gains an electron from Xenon). Xenon has larger radii; therefore the electron attraction to the nucleus is weaker in comparison to the smaller noble gases. Fluorine on the other h... | null |
1fi2b6 | How did the Norse treat people with dwarfism? | [
{
"answer": "Dwarfs in norse mythology and people with dwarfism in norse society are not necessarily the same, nor would they have been treated the same. Dwarfs are often portrayed the same height as normal humans, but as ethereal creatures that either lived underground or lived in stones and possessed magical ... | null |
3cwv5d | Why do Intel's next gen processors have lower clock-rate (~1.7GHz or ~1.9GHz) ? | [
{
"answer": " > But what if you absolutely need higher clock rate\n\nThis is why CPU manufacturers release a wide variety of processor models. From what I could find, Intel's Broadwell architecture (which I assume is what you're referring to) offers models with base clock speeds ranging from 1.6 GHz to 3.1 GH... | null |
9523wo | Best books to understand how government *really* works and is constrained? | [
{
"answer": "The thing is, I don't think this is really a history question; it's more of a political theory or political science question.\n\nThe interaction and interplay of rules and constraints, written and unwritten, legal and customary, that impact the behavior of individuals in government is one of the pr... | null |
1rx511 | why does my mouth feel more slimey and my breath smell significantly worse after waking up or working out as compared to throughout the rest of the day? | [
{
"answer": "Well, to answer that question, we have to first go to one of the common causes of halitosis -- dry mouth. When your mouth is dry, bacteria have a field day. See, your saliva washes away and control bacteria, so when it's not there, bacteria thrive. And what do those bacteria do when left to themsel... | null |
419h35 | why isn't there displayport on new tvs in general and most tv's just have hdmi 1.4? | [
{
"answer": "HDMI is the standard for TVs. No one is asking for or wanting displayport, so there is no reason to put it on. TVs use HDMI.",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": "A port like HDMI or Displayport is only useful if it's on both the sending and the receiving device.\n\nHDMI was released bef... | null |
4xdaph | i consumed 2100 net calories yesterday, how did i gain 4 pounds? | [
{
"answer": "You didn't, but you did eat food and drink water which has weight. That stuff is still in your body until your piss/shit it out. Body weight naturally fluctuates a few pounds on a daily basis.",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": "My recommendation is this, weigh on a weekly basis, not... | null |
230o33 | how are old movies so clear today? | [
{
"answer": "If the original prints of the film are available, they can create movies in newer formats directly from these prints. Due to the method of filming used decades ago, they are not limited to pixels and have a \"resolution\" far higher than DVD and even Blu-Ray. So they aren't taking the VHS footage a... | null |
llkbx | Why do glasses get scratch marks after washing in a dishwasher? | [
{
"answer": "Unlike bath or liquid dishwashing soap, a component of dish-washing powder is an abrasive compound. It's like sand eroding driftwood but at a less intense scale. The graininess is responsible for providing the friction that does the cleaning. Similar to a dentist's toothpaste, actually. ",
"pro... | null |
ad6421 | why does a small amount of urine come out when you put your dick in your pants after peeing? | [
{
"answer": "You know when you use a garden hose to water the lawn and when you turn off the water it still leaks a little...ya...like that 👍",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": "The remaining pee in the penis gets squeezed out when you put it back in the underwear. This is why it’s good practice t... | null |
akmlct | why does blood pressure increase with age? | [
{
"answer": "To control blood pressure the arteries are elastic. However they become stiff with age which means higher blood pressure. ",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": null,
"provenance": [
{
"wikipedia_id": "60041475",
"title": "Blood vessel disorder",
"section... | null |
rsn9k | what exactly does a travel agent do? | [
{
"answer": "They organize flight times, book hotels, and possibly contact entertainment venues like sky-diving companies, or scuba diving instructors, etc and make appointments for you. They might buy your Disneyworld tickets for you in advance.\n\nSo basically, they don't do much that can't be done for yours... | null |
1u1nnt | Does exercising on an empty stomach train your body to burn fat not carbohydrates when normally exercising? | [
{
"answer": "The basic concept behind this is a metabolic state called ketosis, which is a process in which the human body begins converting long-chain fatty acids into molecules called ketones. These molecules are then used by the body as an alternative source of energy.\n\nKetone bodies are only produced once... | null |
7rvlou | If electrons move in a copper wire not by each electron travelling all the way, but by bumping into the one ahead and pushing it forward, how can electricity travel faster than the speed of sound of copper? | [
{
"answer": "The electrons do not bump into one another, this is simply a convenient way to explain what is happening in simple terms to people new to the idea. \n\nWhen a potential difference is applied to the ends of a wire it sets up an electric field all the way through. This field propagates through the wi... | null |
79uv76 | Whys is sound quality over the phone still much worse than a sound recording taken on the same phone? | [
{
"answer": "[Significant compression is applied over the phone.](_URL_1_) There is actually a long history of compression with speech, and today the compression can go as low as 700 bits/sec. If that number does not shock you, let me explain why it should.\n\nUncompressed 8-bit quantized speech requires 54.4 k... | null |
8gzbde | what is the source behind christianity's hate of sodomy/anal sex? | [
{
"answer": "This is an inaccurate use of the word hate on your part. Anything seen as a distraction from procreation was forbidden. Masturbation and homosexuality were equally scorned, if I recall correctly. This was in the old Testament, so not just Christianity. It would include Jusaism as well. ",
"pr... | null |
2pg649 | When did we refer to the Middle Ages as such? What is it the middle of? Eventually we will have a new middle age wouldn't we? | [
{
"answer": "The Middle Ages is named so because it's the period of European history that falls between Antiquity and Modernity.\n\nStarting at the fall of the Roman Empire, and finishing sometime around the Renaissance and the Age of Discovery(the period when Europe began to explore the world on a large scale)... | null |
2s7ldg | why does the top comment thread on every front page post consist of a chain of puns? | [
{
"answer": "I like to think it's because puns are a simple form of humor that everyone can enjoy and contribute to easily, and lots of people come to reddit for a fun, short distraction, of which puns are a perfect example. Also, you know you're pretty much asking for a thread full of puns, right?",
"prove... | null |
3hctdp | Anglo-Saxon England Books | [
{
"answer": "This is pretty much [everything written up until recently](_URL_0_).\n\nYou'll have to hunt for the relevant sections, but its my go-to list for all AS stuff.",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": null,
"provenance": [
{
"wikipedia_id": "23628648",
"title": "Angl... | null |
1kedlm | Admiral Yi Sun-sin is often portrayed as almost single handedly defeating Hideyoshi's invasion force. How true is this? Just how much did his command affect the outcome of the war? | [
{
"answer": "Admiral Yi Sun-Sin was certainly a naval genius and a major factor in repelling the japanese invasion of Korea but he wasn't the only factor that led to a Japanese defeat.\n\nFirst of all hideyoshi never went to Korea himself but rather dekgated the invasion to his generals. What was poor planning ... | null |
qp8vi | - how do catalysts work without being consumed? | [
{
"answer": "They lower how much energy is required for the reaction.\n\nLets say you're trying to get over a wall. It would take a lot of effort to try to climb over it. Now lets introduce a ladder. It would make getting over the wall easier without changing the end result. The ladder never changes throughout ... | null |
1me358 | Is there a standard distance for measuring decibels? | [
{
"answer": "Out in the field, the measurement is often taken where the sound is going to be commonly perceived. Distance plays a big factor in sound, see the [inverse square law](_URL_1_). \n\nBut, a lot of equipment is measured in anechoic chambers which allows us to know how many decibels the actual piece of... | null |
6wl8h8 | Did germany have a plan to invade the US or they just hoped Japan was enough to invade the US ? | [
{
"answer": "At no point in the war or before did either Germany or Japan in anything approaching a serious manner consider attempting a landing on the US mainland. \n\nThe Kriegsmarine was simply a broken force in so many ways, from design, to organization, to political leadership. It bounced between multiple ... | null |
8vv8lg | why are interest rates for bank-funded credit (personal loans, credit cards, etc.) much higher than government bonds? | [
{
"answer": "You're comparing the cost of someone else lending you money (and thus absorbing all the risk of you defaulting) with you lending someone else money. Naturally, the interest rate to borrow money is going to be higher than the interest rate you're going to get from privately lending someone else you... | null |
4jk8y4 | Why was Confucius named Confucius? | [
{
"answer": "Confucius stems from the 16th century latinization of the Chinese honorific \"孔夫子/Kong Fu Zi\" \n\n*Source: 'Catholicism and Confucianism: An intercultural and interreligious dialogue' by Peter Phan*\n\n\nedit: also OP just a bit of a correction, in mandarin the philosophical school of Confucianism... | null |
5eqj7f | [Thanksgiving question] Who invented pie and why don't we honor them? | [
{
"answer": "I believe the general consensus is that it was a Greek invention (Aristophanes mentions pastries in The Clouds, so 5th Century BC at least), but the pastry was used to carry and preserve the contents, rather than being designed to be one edible article. The convention of eating the crust came far l... | null |
3ofb78 | How restricted was hunting by ordinary citizens in the Soviet Union? | [
{
"answer": "People living in the countryside could legally own hunting rifles, particularly after the Civil War. It wasn't necessarily easy to get a permit and you basically had to prove that it was a necessary part of your work/livelihood. It was highly regulated, and there were times (right after the Revolut... | null |
2k18cq | why is 0 plural? like 0 seconds or 0 apples. | [
{
"answer": "Everything that is not singular (i.e. only one of them) is plural, including zero.",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": "Because everything that is not singular is plural, 0 is not 1. ",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": "Because zero refers to the exclusion of all of the app... | null |
271g1v | Based on the time periods and geography in the mythology around King Arthur, what type of sword could Excalibur have been if real? | [
{
"answer": "Perhaps a variant of the Roman spatha. The spathas resembled a lengthened gladius, and increasingly supplanted the latter as more and more Franks, Saxons, Goths, etc were recruited in the Western portion of the Empire as auxiliaries and cavalry grew in prominence. In an account of the botched 1st c... | null |
255tot | when they find a fossilized piece of a skeleton, how do they determine what the rest of the animal looked like? | [
{
"answer": "Sometimes scientists are fortunate enough to be able to base their reconstructions on complete skeletons, but most excavated skeletons have missing pieces. Fortunately, individuals of the same species, as well as those of closely related species, tend to be similar. This allows scientists to combin... | null |
2lto8v | "Hannibal was recalled to Carthage when the Romans attacked it" - how exactly did they 'recall' him? | [
{
"answer": "Carthage and Hannibal were in contact throughout the war. Hannibal sent his brother Mago back after Cannae to ask for money and reinforcements, both of which Carthage sent and Livy records that Hannibal received them. Hannibal was also aware that Hasdrubal was going to cross into Italy prior to his... | null |
2woizf | Why are vegetables / fruits better than multivitamins? | [
{
"answer": "There are at least two reasons why multivitamins are not sufficient: (1) the vitamins/minerals in them are not identical to those you obtain from fruits and vegetables, and (2) there are likely to be a lot of nutrients that you miss because we can't synthesise them or we're just not aware of them a... | null |
2osnh7 | why is it that in most species, especially birds, that it is the male who is more "dressed up and colorful" but with humans it's the other way around? | [
{
"answer": "How do you consider women more dressed up and colorful than men from a biological standpoint?",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": "[There is a ton of info available on why birds have colored plumage](_URL_1_), but humans do also do similar selections but not with color. \n\nThe issue i... | null |
d2ad1d | why do call center agent's voices sound so distorted and how are they often able to fix the problem? | [
{
"answer": "If you have a call center person who you're talking to and their voice is muffled or garbled, the chances are good that the problem is in the position of the microphone on their headset. Call center people aren't talking on normal phones, they're using headsets with a stalk type microphone. If th... | null |
duag3a | when we switch off a phone and switch it back on after say 5 hours, the clock has automatically set according to the time, how is this possible? if it didnt have power how did it have memory? | [
{
"answer": "Most phones have a very very small secondary battery inside just to keep the little internal clock going. The battery is just powerful enough to keep the clock ticking, but nothing else!",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": "Like computers, cell phone have a Real Time Clock RTC. Even whe... | null |
vbqs6 | Where and why did humans start using utensils to eat rather than their hands? | [
{
"answer": "That's a hard one to nail down, and I'd be very interested to see if anyone knows. I've read that forks are known from ancient Greek times, and spoons from ancient Egyptian. As for knives, they could date back to people first using cutting tools and may have been used to spear cooked meat and preve... | null |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.