id stringlengths 5 6 | input stringlengths 3 301 | output list | meta null |
|---|---|---|---|
1lgq31 | When fish take out oxygen from water, do they leave behind hydrogen? Or how does that work? | [
{
"answer": "Fish take oxygen (O2) that is *[dissolved in the water](_URL_1_)*, not the oxygen from the water (H2O) molecule.\n\nFurther, taking out oxygen from water is a chemical reaction, not a nuclear one. While it takes a lot more energy than filtering out oxygen gas from water, [you can do it with a batte... | null |
c1dxcb | Why did soldiers in the Civil War assume aliases? | [
{
"answer": "I haven't read much about the use of aliases during the American Civil War, but something called \"bounty jumping\" was indeed a practice people engaged in, and this would likely involve the use of an alias. So during the war, one could earn a bonus for voluntarily enlisting in the army (the idea b... | null |
1s4aew | how do they get bottles to break over people's heads so easily in movies? | [
{
"answer": "It's usually sugar glass. Here's [the wiki for it](_URL_1_)\n\nIndyMogul also [has a good how-to video](_URL_0_) if you want to make your own.",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": "Fake bottles. The sound of breaking glass is dubbed in later.\n\nBreaking a real bottle over somebody's he... | null |
67hl5n | why are we more attracted to a person when they're tan? | [
{
"answer": "Are we? This seems much more like a personal preference than a universal truth. I searched for your question and found an answer [here](_URL_0_). ",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": null,
"provenance": [
{
"wikipedia_id": "541499",
"title": "Indoor tanning",
... | null |
4tdi19 | The Emperor of China was believed to be the ruler of all under heaven. If so, what were their opinions of foreign rulers? | [
{
"answer": "Your understanding is exactly right. Even until the late 1800s the majority of the Chinese literati felt outraged as the notion that their Emperor is addressed as an equal by foreign entities. I will give you a few examples:\n\n1) The rivalry of China and Japan could be traced to the point where Ja... | null |
2py1em | when a large animal at a zoo dies, what is done with its body? | [
{
"answer": "according to a roommate who worked at a zoo, they are often fed to other animals. ",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": "When elephants recently died in my city they simply trucked the bodies to the city landfill and buried them. ",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": null,
... | null |
162n3o | What are the rarest cells in the human body that have an important function? | [
{
"answer": "Long-Term Hematopoetic stem cells - These are hematopoetic stem cells that single-handedly have the power to recreate your entire bone marrow and hematopoetic system; we do not know exactly how many of them are there in each human individual, but in mice, for example they just constitute 0.00019% o... | null |
15tgze | why do phone calls consume the most battery on a cell phone? | [
{
"answer": "The answer to both questions is related.\n\nTransmitting a reasonable facsimile of your voice through radio waves is data-intensive. Compare, for example, the size of a digitally-compressed music file (~5 megabytes) to the size of the transcript of its lyrics (1 kilobyte, less than 1/5000 the size... | null |
ek7gs9 | What are the effects of the smoke generated by the fires in Australia? | [
{
"answer": "It's the worst.\n\nOf anything the Australian environment could have gone through in 2020, you could not have picked a worse possible thing than giant mega-fires that cover the entire country. Or perversely, a more perfect thing could not have happened that would so rapidly speed up the effects of ... | null |
3asnpd | scary movie decisions | [
{
"answer": "Understanding this is as simple/complicated as understanding the nature of art and catharsis itself.\n\nIf the end goal is to stimulate a psychosomatic response in the viewer, certain tropes prove effective towards that end goal. They're not painting rational life portraits--they're just storytelle... | null |
2979ch | What happens when a bee or wasp hitches a ride in your car, then gets out of the car a long distance from home? | [
{
"answer": "According to a study by the Australian National University, bees are very good at finding their way home, even over long dustances, and often rely on the position of the sun, the polarisation of light in the sky, the panorama view of the horizon and landmarks including towers, mountains or lakes.\n... | null |
1l9qpz | Why is it not yet economically viable to genetically engineer an organism to produce motor fuel from waste materials? | [
{
"answer": "There are certainly gas-producing organisms that generate methane from garbage, and in fact there are efforts to commercialize this kind of technology (look up 'biogas').\n\nThe problem is these processes are not very efficient. The molecules you are talking about have an extremely high energy dens... | null |
9j03tu | Why can't phone chargers/ charging ports have a higher voltage, thus charging faster? | [
{
"answer": "They do. Various \"QuickCharge\" technologies use higher voltage output (compared to the default 5V) on the charger to allow for faster charging.\n\nSince almost all phones (and other mobile devices) use a USB port (micro-USB or USB-C) for charging, most manufacturers tended to stick to the USB spe... | null |
vv7uh | What are some historians' opinions on Jan Gross' book Golden Harvest which is about Polish collaboration with Nazi atrocities against Jews? | [
{
"answer": "I'm not a historian, nor have I read the book, but.. Fear makes otherwise decent people do terrible, terrible things, like collaborating with Nazis. You could point fingers at basically any country that was controlled by the Reich for a period of time and find collaborators, even among the Jews the... | null |
6rupfq | how come a sound gets longer the more of it there is? | [
{
"answer": "Sounds dont get longer the more there is, if you look at the video you can see that the videos arent all playing at the same time, there's a delay in some which can be seen by the wave like motion of the videos in the later parts of the video.",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": null,
... | null |
3nsh68 | what would happen if the federal reserve/congress placed a forever permanent "cap" on the amount of dollar bills in circulation? | [
{
"answer": "Just based on a supply and demand logic, I imagine that money would get more valuable...a dollar bill would be equal to a greater amount of commodities. As more \"things\" were produced but the amount of money remained the same, it would seem to me that one unit of money ($1) would be worth an inc... | null |
d5qbfr | how do record players and records work? they constantly spin, but if you lift the needle off and put it back down it knows where it left off, right? or am i way off there and it does actually skip ahead if that happens | [
{
"answer": "It goes down near where it went up but not precisely, the rotation is variable, but the arm is normally still in the position across the record (from the edge to the centre). Basically the needle follows the grove on the record which is a tight spiral moving in towards the centre, with the bumps in... | null |
rzc85 | What's worse for your body: a bottle of soda, or a bottle of beer | [
{
"answer": "A little bit of alcohol might actually be good for you.",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": null,
"provenance": [
{
"wikipedia_id": "754199",
"title": "Beer Bad",
"section": "Section::::Writing and acting.\n",
"start_paragraph_id": 10,
"... | null |
8wq7mb | why do people put gold on food, other than the purpose of showing off how rich they are? | [
{
"answer": "It's shiny, and it's not really all that expensive. Stamp-sized pieces of gold leaf cost less than a dollar each. It's just to look cool.",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": "Flaunting wealth is often one reason. However, if you consider food to be an art form, putting gold on the plate... | null |
38u5pz | What happened to people in jail during the Great Depression? If the public could barely afford to live how could prisoners? Did any of them die from starvation or were they all adequately fed? | [
{
"answer": "I have an add-on question. How true was it that the average person 'could barely afford to live'? I've heard anecdotal stories from older relatives of small southern towns being basically unaffected by the depression.",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": "I think you are going to need a ... | null |
1k1hn1 | Does Earth experience a tidal force from Sun? | [
{
"answer": "Yes, we experience a tidal force from everything, it's just question of magnitude.\n\n[The tidal force from the Sun is about ~~3%~~ 44% as strong as from the Moon](_URL_0_), because unlike the basic gravitational force, the tidal force drops like 1/r^3\n\nEdit: 44%",
"provenance": null
},
{... | null |
l8qaj | single variable calculus, specifically the differentiation of elementary functions. | [
{
"answer": "Do you mean taking derivatives using the definition, or using the tricks and rules you can memorize to make it easier/faster?",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": "I will give it a shot, though I am not for sure what kind of answer you are looking for.\n\nEvery equation can be graphed. ... | null |
7k9u0r | why after a good long cry can't we take a big deep breath without that huh-huh-huh tracheal contraction? | [
{
"answer": "Intense crying can cause less oxygen to enter the brain, therefore the contractions are like yawning, it’s supposed to allow more oxygen to enter. \n\nSource: I’ve cried once. And took an anatomy class once.",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": "I haven't done the \"internet research\... | null |
3hnkza | why is it ok for generic brands to blatantly rip off brand name companies for their own profit? | [
{
"answer": "Its not, I cant call my cereal frosted flakes. I cant use the image of tony the tiger. But There is nothing to stop me from making \"Frosted cereal shards\" putting them in a blue box and having my mascot be a lion, why would there be? ",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": "Its not,\nFir... | null |
18shle | Who are some of the better known Chinese artists? | [
{
"answer": "The answer is that we know quite a lot about many of the great Chinese masters. However, the history of art in China goes back a deal further than europe. So provenance becomes a major issue. This is particularly the case with the monumental landscape masters of the 10th and 11th centuries. I will ... | null |
pjkp8 | magnet torrent links. what are they? | [
{
"answer": "A magnet torrent link is a unique set of numbers and letters that describe a specific file, like a fingerprint. Torrent clients can use this fingerprint to ask other clients if they have a file with the same fingerprint. If they do, they can send it from them (peer) to you (peer).",
"provenance... | null |
1a8u20 | How did it come to be that all of the genes relating to sex are on the same chromosome? | [
{
"answer": "They aren't: the genes that **trigger** (specifically, SRY) the male phenotype are on the Y chromosome, but males also have a complete set of female DNA, and ~~many~~ almost all of the distinctly male characteristics are side effects of this trigger alone. And even this is a little bit of a misnome... | null |
wxu0g | Do bra-less women have lower rates of breast cancer? | [
{
"answer": "_URL_0_\n\n*Factors not likely related to risk*\n\n*Although not as well-studied as the factors described above, based on the research to date, the factors below are not likely related to breast cancer risk.*\n\n*Bras/underwire bras*\n\n*Scientific evidence does not support a link between wearing a... | null |
1snkgp | why some metals glow brightly when hot (i.e., steel or iron) when others just look like liquid metal (i.e., aluminum or mercury)? | [
{
"answer": "They all glow. If it seemed like they didn't then either they were at different temperatures or the lighting wad different. ",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": "Aluminum and mercury will glow too if you get them hot enough. Pretty much everything glows (incandesces) at the same temper... | null |
bdmmbx | how do wammy bars (on guitars) work? | [
{
"answer": "Basically you use the bar to add extra tension to the strings to shift the pitch as you play.",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": "The correct name is a tremolo bridge. When you push on the bar it removes tention from the strings causing lower notes. Some of them (floating tremolo bridg... | null |
1oz5qu | why do some people have no sense of rhythm whatsoever? | [
{
"answer": "Im not very educated with this, but I see no one has commented. I think it mostly has to do with how developed certain parts of the brain that have to do with that are. Sorry it's not much.",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": "As an audio engineer, I've broken this down a few times. The... | null |
7dwq9u | Does the Cambrian Explosion coincide with the move from ocean-based to land-based life forms? | [
{
"answer": "In general it is presumed that the Cambrian Explosion happened essentially in the ocean and maybe to some degree in lakes and rivers. According to wikipedia (_URL_0_) land plants began spreading 490 mya ago and I am quite sure that multicellular animals on land needed those for nutrition.\nAnyways,... | null |
8cfa0p | how can rocket boosters push things foreward and navigate in space when there is no atmosphere to use? | [
{
"answer": "You would need an atmosphere for things like paddles and propellers. Because they have to push air to work.\n\nRocket thrust is different. Equal and opposite reaction, right? The rocket fuel or exhaust goes out the back *and pushes the rocket forward*. The force only has to act on the rocket, not a... | null |
ncljj | Does evolution ever stop? | [
{
"answer": "Correct, since Evolution is a slow process in which the traits of a given generation are passed on (due to their survival), as the Environment changes, so too would the requisites of survival change. \n\nConsider an organism that exists in an ecosystem that is devoid of outside influences: \n\nAs ... | null |
r9ksv | What was the average day like for an allied soldier in post WWII Germany before the rise of the Soviet threat? | [
{
"answer": "I've not done research in the matter, but my grandfather volunteered to stay on occupation duty with the Canadian Army. \n\nFrom what he said the days were fairly boring. He was around Baden, so not a Nazi stronghold like Bavaria. The people were broken, trying to rebuild some semblance of life ... | null |
8w1ehd | why are some men able to grow a beard and others not? is growing a beard a sign of of wellness? | [
{
"answer": "some of it is diet but more of it is gentics. Asians for example tend to have a lot harder time and are less likely to grow a full on beard as you see it other races\n\nfun fact it was seen as very special if you could in many asian cultures ",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": null,
... | null |
13t3d5 | What sort of tactics did the Muslim armies use during the Crusades? How different were they to the Crusaders? | [
{
"answer": "The first big difference I can remember from the top of my head is that the western cavalry was heavily armoured knights on heavily armored horses - the stereotype of heavy cavalry, in other words - while the Muslim forces they opposed tended to more lightly armored cavalry, which had significantly... | null |
4k6mk4 | [Physics] Where does the mass come from in fusion or fission? | [
{
"answer": "The mass difference comes from the binding energy of the nuclei, via E=mc^(2).",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": "E=mc^2. To fuse particles, you need to supply a high enough energy for fusion to happen (hence why this only naturally occurs in stars).as you supply energy, you also supp... | null |
2i7yh7 | why does boiling contaminated water make it drinkable? | [
{
"answer": "The heat kills bacteria and other potentially icky things in the water. It's not fool proof but it's better than nothing.",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": "It kills the bacteria that are in the water. It doesn't necessarily destroy all the toxins that might be in the water, though,... | null |
fxxdtp | how do they fix power lines when a tree falls on them? | [
{
"answer": "They shut off power to the line and then rebuild it. Power lines are kind of like tinker toys. You just replace the parts that need replaced. Everything from the wire to transformers. If a pole is broken, they cut it off and plant another one.",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": "I can’... | null |
9ghem4 | Where does rust go? | [
{
"answer": "This depends on the metal! When iron combines with oxygen in the atmosphere, the resulting iron oxide compounds take up much more space than just the metal did, but more importantly they don't have much structural strength. This means that the growing layer of rust on the outside cracks and flakes,... | null |
509uwv | Can gravitational lenses (or a series of them) turn a light source back on itself? | [
{
"answer": "This can happen near black holes, where the path of light can be bent so much that it passes the event horizon. However, to modify the path of a distant star back to its direction of origin would require the perfect setup of perfectly placed black holes which is so unlikely as to never happen.",
... | null |
1wu30e | how american football divisions and pre games work (not the rules of the sport) | [
{
"answer": "Pregame, are just exhibition games. They are sometimed used to help determine who gets the last few spots on a team's roster. Divisions are groups of 4 teams. There are 4 divisions per conference. Every team in a division plays eachother twice, as well as 8 teams outside of their division. This is ... | null |
2z4b5f | Am I seeing the history of the sun? | [
{
"answer": "Yes but using that logic you are seeing the history of everything. because there is a delay between the object you are looking at and the light hitting that object, reflecting off, and hitting your eye. Similarly there is a delay between when your nerves endings in your eye or skin are triggered an... | null |
eb0c3l | why does putting clear (scotch/packing) tape on a frosted window let you see through it? | [
{
"answer": "Frosted glass is simply glass with a (chemically) roughened surface which causes the light passing through the pane to diffuse in all directions, instead of letting straight through.\n\n(Scotch) tape is essentially a clear plastic surface coated with a thin layer of transparent adhesive. When you s... | null |
426gcc | During the American Revolutionary War, 42,000 English Redcoats deserted. Where did they go? What happened to such deserters stranded in foreign territory? | [
{
"answer": "Can you please link this because I can not find that 42,000 English redcoats deserted from an army that averaged about 39,000 soldiers in the colonies during the war?",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": null,
"provenance": [
{
"wikipedia_id": "2425430",
"title"... | null |
1pvry3 | What happened to the indo-greek states? | [
{
"answer": "There are two possible answers to this:\n\nOne is that local nobility eventually usurped and displaced them.\n\nThe other is that they assimilated into the local culture.\n\nThe evidence for the later is primarily through Greek style coinage that lasted quite a while, and left a legacy for even lon... | null |
3iwilw | what, if any, consensus is there on michael jackson's multiple charges of alleged child molestation? | [
{
"answer": "The evidence is really much the same as it was before, which is to say that there is not enough evidence to convict someone beyond a reasonable doubt.",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": "If you consider a \"consensus\" to be what the judicial system of the US has produced than there's ... | null |
69d23e | what causes the "helicopter blades" sound effect when i'm driving down the freeway at a certain speed with a window open a certain amount? | [
{
"answer": "Pressure oscillations. The incoming air compresses the air inside the cab. But because of inertia of the moving air, it compresses it more than the air in the cab can handle, so the inside air rebounds like a spring.\n\nThis happens over and over and you get the whup-whup-whup-whup of the oscillat... | null |
1cmeku | How do we determine the habitable zone of a star that is lightyears away? | [
{
"answer": "We can calculate the average temperature of a planet given its size, [albedo](_URL_0_), distance from the star and the star's luminosity. The habitable zone is simply defined as the range of radii in which water would be liquid at this temperature.",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": nu... | null |
2z48nk | When and how came humans to the concept of right and left? | [
{
"answer": "There are actually cultures, because of their language, that do not use left, right, etc. and only use cardinal directions, like North, South, etc.\nOne of these is an aboriginal tribe that speak,\"Guugu Yimithirr\".\nA bunch of deaf kids in Nicaragua invented their own sign language that didn't in... | null |
16irez | Has a childless hereditary ruler ever died while his wife was pregnant? | [
{
"answer": "Succession laws [were not uniform across medieval Europe](_URL_0_).\n\nDisclaimer: not a historian.",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": "John I of France (who did not live long) and Alfonso XIII of Spain succeeded posthumously. There are other examples in the earlier middle ages, and a ... | null |
e0kj69 | where exactly is dna? | [
{
"answer": "So DNA it's in the nucleus of a cell, all of the Eukaryotic organisms, that's all of the animals, plants, fungi, have their DNA stored in the nucleus, think of DNA as a really long wire, actually 3 football fields kind of big (if my genetics professor is to be believed) and it's super thin, all of ... | null |
40uu0n | why does someone get cold right after turning off the shower, but can be out in real cold weather when out of a jacuzzi? | [
{
"answer": "As someone who spent part of a winter vacation in an outdoor hot tub in Garmisch, Germany... it's still ridiculously cold when you get out.",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": null,
"provenance": [
{
"wikipedia_id": "147020",
"title": "Hygiene",
"sectio... | null |
1xx1mv | how is it so many poor countries are expensive. | [
{
"answer": "I'm pretty sure it's not normal to \"eat out\" outside the US. It's for rich people and tourists.",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": null,
"provenance": [
{
"wikipedia_id": "1160702",
"title": "Superprofit",
"section": "Section::::Criticism of Leninist... | null |
84ip8g | Why do dispersion affects differents colours in different ways? | [
{
"answer": "Frequency cannot change at an interface, that would mean you have a discontinuity in energy flow. See for example an animation like this:\n\n_URL_1_\n\nIf frequency changed at an interface then the black lines, representing a maximum of the electric field and thus a maximum in the energy of the wa... | null |
75ec4o | What did Pre-Columbian Native America trade routes look like? Where were they, what goods did they carry, how far were goods traded, and who did the traveling along with the goods? | [
{
"answer": "While you wait for an answer you might be interested in the [\"Pre-Columbian Trade and Contact\"](_URL_1_) section of our [FAQ on Native American History](_URL_3_). \n\nIn particular, you may be interested in [this answer](_URL_2_) by myself, /u/Mictlantecuhtli and /u/retarredroof, [this answer](_U... | null |
2ox3lh | can a rigid blimp only be inflated with hydrogen, or will helium work too? | [
{
"answer": "Both will work. Hydrogen will work better because it can fill the same volume with less weight, but it will also be worse because it is prone to explosions when exposed to oxygen and sources of ignition (see: Hindenburg).\n\nHelium is preferred when available, but in the Hindenburg's case the Germ... | null |
30agyq | why do so many public drinking fountains just dribble water out? | [
{
"answer": "low water pressure. the lower fountain works better because the pipe supplying the water is shorter, so it has less distance to travel.",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": "There is a regulator on the drinking fountain to adjust the height of the water fountain. Periodically it needs to... | null |
eyfha5 | what is the purpose of the "circular net" in front of microphones of recording studios? | [
{
"answer": "Hold your hand in front of your face and make a 'p' and 'b' sound. You'll notice that a puff of air comes out when you make those sounds. As you might know, air blowing into a microphone is a no bueno, so these filters stop that air from reaching the microphone without entirely cutting out the freq... | null |
1p2l9c | why is ireland not united? and do most irish want it to be? | [
{
"answer": "There has been about 100 years of fighting over this very question.\n\nVery simplified history here: \n\nNorthern Ireland was created in 1921 after an uprising of Irish Republicans lead to a peace treaty between Ireland and the UK which partitioned the country between the Irish Free State (later th... | null |
f84gn8 | Who was enslaving and who was trading 6th century Anglo-Saxons? | [
{
"answer": "So while the exact veracity of this anecdote is impossible to verify, I can talk a little bit about the slave trade in Northern Europe at this time in history. \n\nSlavery was an integral part of the Anglo-Saxon world, as well as other cultures and groups in the North Sea world. Scandinavians, Sa... | null |
1v3wku | Why do we freeze for a split second when something startles us or makes us jump? | [
{
"answer": "The freezing response is mediated by a circuit involving the amygdala and a part of the brainstem, the periaqueductal gray. This circuit can coordinate the typical motor output: freezing, jumping, yelping, etc.\n\nAnyone can come up with plausible-sounding evolutionary \"explanations,\" but this ca... | null |
3udsf0 | How did the people of England respond to the Declaration of Independence? | [
{
"answer": "I read a paper a while ago from Stephen Conway that deals with changing perceptions of the relationship between Britain and the Thirteen Colonies during and after the War of Independence. Bear in mind that while his perspective is useful in answering your question, it may not represent the full pic... | null |
b3z42k | why do snail shells grow with them, but hermit crabs have to keep trading up? | [
{
"answer": "Snail shells are actually a part of the snail. The more calcium they eat, the quicker they grow. Hermit crabs aren’t born with a shell, so they have to move into a new one as they grow",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": "Snails shells are part of their bodies so they grow with the snai... | null |
3d97hd | I was once watching a TV documentary about Rome with my dad. One of the experts started to talk about the orderly way Romans did combat, my dad turn to me & said it reminded him of how the riot police used to operate back when he was one in the 1980s. Is it just a confidence the two are similar? | [
{
"answer": "I'm not really sure what you are asking. Are you asking if modern riot tactics can be traced back to the idea of a body of infantry moving as a tight group? Or are you asking if modern riot tactics are deliberately modeled after Roman formations, as in someone sat down and said \"let's emulate Roma... | null |
b35yx9 | How thick does a layer of gold need to be to be fully opaque? | [
{
"answer": "Gold has a resistivity of about 2.44 x 10^-8 ohm-meters. Visible light has frequencies between about 400 and 700 THz. So, using a [skin depth calculator](_URL_0_) the skin depth is only a few nm. For \"fully opaque\" you probably want somewhere between 3 and 5 skin depths.\n\nSo 100 nm is probably ... | null |
82327t | how small is an atom? | [
{
"answer": "There are more atoms in a grain of sand than there are grains of sand on every beach on earth.\n\nI feel using anything but an analogy makes it very hard to understand ",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": "If an atom is magnified to the size of a grain of salt, a grain of salt is the si... | null |
2y62k8 | How did wrestling become staged? | [
{
"answer": "Wrestling has a long history in Europe, going back to Ancient Greece where wrestling was a pretty popular sport in the Olympiads and it continued on throughout history Early Modern Era, Modern Era, etc. Although very different wrestling from what we think of when we think \"wrestling\", and I mean ... | null |
33k57v | what has caused such a divide between u.s. citizens and their police force? | [
{
"answer": "An uneducated public who only reads 144 character tweets for the entire story. A lack of understanding that a few officers fucking up doesn't make us all evil, heartless, bastards with a God complex. \n\nThe medias refusal to show POSITIVE stories and constant push to make every single story negat... | null |
9pjcg3 | why do humans hear a musical "beat" in repetitive sounds? | [
{
"answer": "The human brain is highly adapted to pattern recognition. Our neurons like to overlay “filters” over things to see patterns from random noise. Do a repetitive sound will sound like a beat and rows of different colours look like stripes. ",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": "There’s actu... | null |
ec3bea | how come the human genetic code can fit roughly in ~1.5gb of data yet we turn out such complex organisms? furthermore, the code that separates us from other mammals can fit on o floppy disk. | [
{
"answer": "The complexity of the universe does not need to conform to *our* understandings of what complexity and simplicity are. \n\nIn other words, it is irrelevant whether something in the universe is complex or simple *by our standards.* Who cares that it's so complex to us? It is easy to imagine DNA bein... | null |
3cunvm | why didn't evolution make females just as 'horny' as men. | [
{
"answer": "as far as i know women are just as horny as men. evolution is great, isnt it?",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": " > Producing as many offspring as possible\n\nNope, human infants are high-maintenance (i.e. you need to take care of them for a few years), so just popping out babies is... | null |
1ggx2w | the difference between pixel- and vector-based images | [
{
"answer": "Raster images (those made up of pixels) have a fixed size. It's like taking a piece of graph paper and coloring in the squares. If you want to make a picture bigger, you only have as much information as was in the original pixels. This makes the image blocky or fuzzy when you zoom in or try to b... | null |
91wywa | how does an artist “go platinum” in today’s world of spotify/apple music? | [
{
"answer": "They changed the rules for platinum, so now a certain number of digital track purchases, or a larger number of digital on-demand plays, counts as equal to 1 album sale.",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": null,
"provenance": [
{
"wikipedia_id": "55391579",
"tit... | null |
1iemup | why does everyone believe everything snowden leaks as truth? | [
{
"answer": "I suppose, in part, because there is no one or no thing to disprove him. There's also the motivation question: That is, why would a person make up all of these things just so that he could get stuck in a Moscow airport and have his passport revoked?",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": "... | null |
u4dp0 | What were Nazi Germany's plans post-WWII in the case of an (unlikely) Axis victory? | [
{
"answer": "Territories in the east were to be governed as something like German colonial provinces called *Reichkommissariaten*, whose inhabitants would be mostly killed off by an engineered famine called the [Hunger Plan](_URL_0_), with the survivors being used as slave labour on German farms or forcibly rel... | null |
7vvds2 | fast fourier transform (fft), and/or discrete fourier transform | [
{
"answer": "Not sure if you're after an explanation of what it does or how it works - I don't think I quite get the maths enough to explain the latter....\n\nI always think about an orchestra. If you have never heard any of the instruments before when you listen to the orchestra you will still hear the sound t... | null |
6fsx28 | the reason and use of the serial numbers on cash bills/currencies and why coins do not have such | [
{
"answer": "The printers on currency use the numbers to keep track of how much is printed, so workers can't wander off with some of the product. Coins are heavy, and the amount that could be pocketed wouldn't be worth nearly as much.",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": "Not only what u/WRSaunders ... | null |
f1zzcl | how/why do migraines make your eyes extremely sensitive to light? | [
{
"answer": "Migraine sufferers have a problem with a specific part of the nervous system the opthalmic division of the trigeminal nerve that causes pain around the eye.\n\nEli5 translation: The brain has 12 major wires. And one specific wire(trigeminal) which also has small wires connected to it: opthalmic(aro... | null |
18ewl1 | Was the Holocaust rational enlightenment carried out to its most twisted ends? | [
{
"answer": " > I feel as though the Holocaust has its roots in something other than antipathy towards Jewish people.\n\nWhy do you feel this way? What's your justification for this idea?\n\n > I can elaborate on this more,\n\nYou should - as it is, it doesn't really follow at all.\n\n > but placing more bla... | null |
2edvau | What's the earliest recorded condemnation of racism anywhere in the world? | [
{
"answer": "Here are some reminders of our rules:\n\n* An in-depth answer is usually more than a sentence or two.\n\n* Suppositions and personal opinions are not a suitable basis for an answer in r/AskHistorians.\n\n* Regardless of the quality of the source you are citing, an answer should not consist only (or... | null |
3yjg5x | With advances in many fields of Medicine including the transplant of synthetic hearts and 3d printing of various body parts making cheap prosthetics possible, why haven't we seen significant advances in prosthetic cartilage for damaged joints and herniated disks? | [
{
"answer": "There are some basic problems with such prosthetics. Cartilage is way more complex than it seem. Research is not this far yet and you don't want to endanger people with stuff that doesnot work as expected. Another major problem is, that the body doesn't like when new tissue is injected. The human b... | null |
15p5zm | why/how one can hear the voices of the actors on a tv show/movie so clearly without any extraneous noises in the background. can it really all be edited out? | [
{
"answer": "In movies the dialogue is sometimes recorded in a studio separately and much of the background sound is special effects added by people called [**Foley artists**](_URL_0_)",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": "The actors have mics following them everywhere on the set. The mics pick up th... | null |
hy2v8 | What would it look like if I constructed a cube made of one-way mirrors, so a person could see into the cube but the inner walls were reflective? | [
{
"answer": "The way one-way mirrors works is that the glass reflects part of the light, while transmitting some. This work _both ways_. The reason it _acts_ as a one-way mirror is because the side that looks like a mirror is much brighter than the other side. (For example, the interrogation room is brightly li... | null |
c9pzai | What calendar is used for older dates? | [
{
"answer": " \n\nPracticing historian here. (Moving a lower level comment up and expanding some) \n\nI work in the period both before and after the Gregorian calendar was adopted in the Spanish Empire (1582). Yes you could adjust dates for events occurring under the Julian calendar but then you would be using ... | null |
3qk7sf | Where can I find a truly complete history of the British Isles? | [
{
"answer": "The task is certainly massive. Just one comment, as you say there are many and based on my experience I find myself better off with a good generic history that typically would awake my interest in certain periods worth going deeper.\nTo start with? BBC has a good history program.\n\n_URL_0_\n\nOthe... | null |
12li2v | Why do my leftovers stick if I don't wash my plate soon after eating? | [
{
"answer": "The moisture in the leftovers kept them from adhering to the plate. When you leave it out, they dry up and stick to the surface.\n\nBasically, on a very small scale your plate is not a smooth surface, it has peaks and valleys and such. With moist things like sauce, the food particles flow all over ... | null |
s27fp | why 720p hd is 1280x720 but hdtvs are 1366x768 | [
{
"answer": "*Your* HDTV is 1366x768. Many HDTVs are 1280x720 as they should be.\n\nThe reason your HDTV is a strange resolution is because it was cheaper for the manufacturer to do so (the factory was already making similar screens).",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": "1024x768 panels already exis... | null |
7nw7wq | how do major airports recover from mass flight cancellations? | [
{
"answer": "It's not the airport that has to recover, it's the airlines. That makes a big difference and aids in explaining the issue.\n\nLet's say Delta has one flight per day between two cities. On Monday, they cancel the flight, stranding 250 passengers. Tuesday's flight has 15 open seats, so they re-book ... | null |
fzdt79 | how does metadata work and what is written behind files? | [
{
"answer": "Metadata depends on the file. For recordings, such as pictures and video, metadata will typically include things like date, time, and camera settings. Metadata in other files such as application ZIP files and movie files will often contain copyright, licensing, and distribution information. \n\nCam... | null |
1qslry | what are the differences between the xbox one and ps4? | [
{
"answer": "Sony is a hardware company.\n\nMicrosoft is a software company.\n\n",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": null,
"provenance": [
{
"wikipedia_id": "32401",
"title": "History of video games",
"section": "Section::::2010s.:Eighth generation consoles (2012–pr... | null |
3s9tku | how solar power works, from the pv to the inverter and the lightbulb lighting up! | [
{
"answer": "A PV cell converts light energy into DC electrical energy. \n\nAn inverter converts DC to AC, by switching the DC off and on 60 (or 50) times /second. It usually uses a transformer to convert the chopped AC to 120 (or 240) volts. \n\nIf you are using only DC you may not need an inverter, but most s... | null |
4baapd | what is fantasy football and how is it different from video games and gambling? | [
{
"answer": "Fantasy football is not like a video game mainly because you don't physically play. It is a lot like betting on horse races. In the beginning of the season you join a league. With friends or with random people. There may be a buy in or some other kind of ante or there might not. You then draft foo... | null |
47oi0a | how can we listen to the sound of two black holes colliding if there is no sound in space? | [
{
"answer": "They detected gravitational waves (variations on gravitation), not sound waves. There are no sounds involved.",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": "That sound was generated based on other emissions, and is an artificial approximation. Think \"how it could be heard if that was sound waves... | null |
1exg9w | What happens at the limit of a laser pointer's reach? | [
{
"answer": "The '2 mile reach' is very arbitrary. I would imagine they define 'reach' as the largest distance without appreciable divergence of the beam. Beyond 2 miles the photons will still continue their journey at the same angles they left the pointer at.\n\nI guess there will be a small amount of scatteri... | null |
3b3nvl | how come d-day came as a surprise to the nazis? | [
{
"answer": "The allies completely controlled the Atlantic by that point. The Germans had little in the way of subs or other things out there still to gather intelligence.\n\nAdditionally, there was some espionage and planting of false evidence. The Allies intended to lead the Nazis to believe the attack would ... | null |
4tv6nl | When and why did karate become a popular thing to teach children in the west? | [
{
"answer": "I hope this is OK, I'm not a professional historian, but I was a karate-ka for about 20 years. And part of that was reading. So I hope I can provide an in depth answer that satisfies requirements. A lot of my reading comes from Randall Hassell's \"Shotokan Karate: Its History and Evolution\" and... | null |
2ijk2f | If oxygen can bond with 2 other atoms, how can ozone exist? | [
{
"answer": "well, in the case of Ozone (O^3 ) one oxygen binds with 2 other oxygens. so, i don't have the chemistry behind the conditions needed to bind 3 oxygens together, but I can tell you it requires more energy to bind 3 oxygens than to bind 2 hydrogens to oxygen. \n\nYour question is unclear. You're b... | null |
fr5bf | Is it impossible for a planet the size of Jupiter to not be a gas planet? | [
{
"answer": "Yes, a large enough planet will be a gas giant. All planets are made out of star-stuff which is mostly hydrogen (~90%) and helium (~9%) (the same stuff in gas giants). Rocky (terrestrial) planets will lose a large fraction of hydrogen and helium, as the light elements move faster at a given tempe... | null |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.