id stringlengths 5 6 | input stringlengths 3 301 | output list | meta null |
|---|---|---|---|
2l43qs | why does the us use fahrenheit when the rest of the world uses celsius? | [
{
"answer": "Because most of us are around 5 feet 7 inches and weigh around 200lbs and drive at an average speed of 50 miles per hour and have temperatures of 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit. \nThe US customary system developed from English units which were in use in the British Empire before American independence. Co... | null |
1meqgg | how can a country sell bonds with negative interest rate? | [
{
"answer": "They can't and don't.\n\nThe thing is that inflation happens. So if the nominal interest rate on the bonds is less than the rate of inflation, the *effective* interest rate is negative. They're still a good deal, though, because cash is also affected by inflation; keeping your money in cash would j... | null |
62ya8y | what's the process to get into u.s from mexico legally (immigrate)? | [
{
"answer": "It depends. The US will offer x amount of work visas every year for jobs where there are a shortage of American workers (it could be working on farms or being a doctor), student visas and travel visas (you don't need a visa to visit the US if you are Mexican) \n\nAfter you get your foot in the do... | null |
4wzn0d | Why do some places have two high and two low tides a day, and other places have only one? | [
{
"answer": "In short, this is because the ocean basins aren't uniform and tides don't have the same impact in all areas. Imagine sloshing water back an forth in a bucket- there will be areas that experience more extreme water level change relative to the regular surface level. \n\nThere are certain areas in th... | null |
bzjaoc | what is academic probation and how would somebody get it? | [
{
"answer": "It means your grades are shit and if you don't shape up you're out.\n\nThis is more typical in colleges or private schools since they don't want some slacker tanking their performance numbers.",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": "It's when your grades are poor so the school you go to wa... | null |
2er3kp | What were the intentions of Edward, the Black Prince, preceding the battle of Poitiers (1356), was he looking to confront King John II of France? | [
{
"answer": "Are you referring to the letter Prince Edward sent to the City of London following his victory? Edward doesn't exactly say he was planning on retreating. Instead, he says he was withdrawing to link up with the Duke of Lancaster after abandoning an assault on Tours. After he rejected the French nego... | null |
ztcu2 | How common was it to be executed for being a "witch" around the time of the Salem Witch Trials? | [
{
"answer": "By the time of the Salem trials the witch craze was already well into its decline. It was an anomalous outburst for the time. If you want to know the witch craze in general I can talk a bit about that, though I only really know about the European trials, and only English ones in any detail.\n\nDiff... | null |
26rwh1 | Has the water released by combusting hydrocarbons had any effect on the environment? | [
{
"answer": "Absolutely! Water vapour, like CO2, is a greenhouse gas. Water Vapour released by combustion--but this isn't the sole source for water vapour, of course--helps create a sort of positive feedback loop in the atmosphere, increasing the amount of warming experienced by climate change. \n\nGenerally, W... | null |
67tp73 | If an electric motor is supplied power but restricted in turning (like holding back a ceiling fan) what is happening which would cause it to 'burn up'? | [
{
"answer": "If it has separate windings with a commutator bar, all that current is only going though one winding instead of all the windings taking turns. Also, if a motor is turning, it also acts as a generator from the spinning motion which produces a backvoltage which limits the current.",
"provenance"... | null |
3ysjni | why don't stars appear red but white? It is said that only red colour sustains when light travels a long distance! | [
{
"answer": "Some stars, such as Betelgeuse (in the corner of Orion) are noticeably red. Red stars are usually either dwarves or giants, but we can only see the giants without a telescope.\n\nHowever, the process of emitted light reddening over long distances (either due to absorption by dust or the expansion o... | null |
3sadom | To what extent did Alexander the Great/Hellenism pave the way for Christianity? | [
{
"answer": "This is a pretty complicated question and, largely, is based on an interpretation of the histories of Alexander that is now considered unfeasible. That, however, doesn’t mean that there isn’t some truth to the claim. I don’t have the time to find my sources right now so this is going to be a bit in... | null |
2eyfpl | Why do some smells travel faster and propagate farther than others? | [
{
"answer": "It has to do with the diffusion rate of the molecule. Smells are composed of molecules that bind to the receptors present in the nose; if the nose has a receptor for a certain molecule in the gaseous state, then the gas will \"smell.\" The potency of a smell depends on the concentration of the mole... | null |
qjegb | At what altitude does the sky cease to be blue? | [
{
"answer": "I will answer your question with a question.\n\nAt what point does the red become blue in the following image?\n\n_URL_0_",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": "Sky gets dark at around 30 kilometers. You can see stars during the day at these heights.",
"provenance": null
},
{
... | null |
1so2vn | Is there a lot of variance between people in how much energy they are able to extract from food they digest? | [
{
"answer": "I'm not sure I can answer the question for _all_ aspects of our physiology...however, I will say that there is some fascinating microbiological evidence to suggest that the answer to this question is \"yes.\" \n\nStudies have shown that the bacteria that live in our gut (the **microbiome**) influen... | null |
1jbyki | how do we know the articles from /r/politics and anything the media shows is actually real? | [
{
"answer": "You should treat everything you read with a healthy dose of skepticism. /r/politics is quite bad in that it commonly uses extremely biased news sources. If you read it in /r/politics, chances are it's only one part of the story. Get your news from multiple reputable sources, such as the NY Times... | null |
5ycq05 | How populist was the American revolution? Was it a movent by the elites or did the lower classes support it? | [
{
"answer": "So contrary to popular belief, the \"Founders\" were not the main proponents of separation from Great Britain -- quite the contrary. Most Founders were quite hesitant to pull away. However, populist movements really started to become prevalent by the end of the 1760s. \n\nTo explain, Founders like ... | null |
43k7v1 | why would a country implement negative interest rates (ie. japan) | [
{
"answer": "Yes. That's exactly why they did it. They are suffering a recession right now, and this would stimulate people to take their money and spend it, giving a boost to the economy.",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": null,
"provenance": [
{
"wikipedia_id": "34392",
... | null |
3awpj2 | How common is it for a planet to have a natural satellite like our moon? | [
{
"answer": "Consider the solar system as we know it. Of the 8 major planets, all but 2 (Mercury & Venus) have at least one natural satellite, most have more. Mars 2, Jupiter & Saturn 60+ each, Uranus & Neptune 27 & 14 respectively. Even the dwarf planets have satellites, Pluto has 5.",
"provenan... | null |
1la3d6 | What would happen when light reflects off of a mirror, if the mirror was artificially heated to have a higher net energy than the particle does? | [
{
"answer": "What do you mean \"higher net energy\"? The total heat energy in a given mirror is typically much higher than the energy of a given photon in the visible spectrum.",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": null,
"provenance": [
{
"wikipedia_id": "539354",
"title": "M... | null |
zav98 | Is it possible to for the body to stop identifying an allergen as harmful after years of no exposure? | [
{
"answer": "Actually, yes! Memory B-cells are what are responsible for long term humoral immunity (the kind involved in allergic reactions, among other things). Memory B-cells are some of the longest lived cells in the body, behind maybe neurons and cardiac myocytes, but even then they only live about 20 year... | null |
4yq3nq | In the history of presidential elections in the United States has a major political party ever functionally conceded defeat months before the general election and ran its house/senate candidates as checks on the opposing party's candidates power once they assumed the presidency? | [
{
"answer": "Republicans ran Congressional campaigns in 1996 (Clinton/Dole) explicitly as a check against the presumed Clinton victory. (Clinton was up 8 points in October polling.) The NRCC warned against giving Clinton a blank check and pushed for voters in vulnerable districts to split their ballot.",
... | null |
1llu2k | why do humans drink so much water when compared to cats/dogs? | [
{
"answer": "Humans sweat while most other animals with fur/feathers don't. Obviously you need to replace the moisture lost by sweating. \n\nEfficency of our bodies is another issue. Some animals have more efficient kidneys that concentrate urine stronger than humans. This means they need less water to carry aw... | null |
1am2hh | Is it really possible to "utilize the natural electric currents within the earth" and convert it into "radiant electricity?" | [
{
"answer": "Well, first off, the disinfographic claims that there are electric currents in the ground, but in fact **the crust of the Earth doesn't have significant electric currents**, certainly nothing strong enough to extract useful power from. It's mostly incoherent babble that doesn't mean anything at all... | null |
5yuubs | why have salaries not increased on par with the cost of living. | [
{
"answer": "Our economy is based on an everlasting perpetual growth. In other words if company i.e. Walmart doesn't post profit increase in their year over year sales report it is considered unsuccessful or not profitable and investors start pulling away. One of the easiest ways to do that is to keep your payr... | null |
eudqsl | Flairs, posters, lurkers, lend me your ears! I come to praise our NEW MOD! | [
{
"answer": "Welcome to ~~best-paid~~ ~~most-respected~~ ~~most pleasant~~ ~~least stressful~~ ~~highest-status~~ a job on the internet!",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": "Thank you so much for the warm welcome, u/hannahstohelit and the rest of the mod team! I'm excited to lend my hand in the effo... | null |
31a5rw | What exactly happens when cake batter turns into fluffy, moist cake? | [
{
"answer": "Cake batter includes two chemicals, cream of tartar (or, to give it the chemist's name, tartaric acid) and baking soda (sodium bicarbonate). When mixed together dry, we call it 'baking powder', when sold mixed in with the flour, it becomes 'self-raising flour'. When mixed with water, these two chem... | null |
3svhtz | why aren't siblings born with the same dna? | [
{
"answer": "You have 23 pairs of DNA in your body. One of each pair from your mom, another from your dad. This means you have about 0.5^23 chance of having the same DNA as a sibling, and that's not even factoring in recombination (bits of DNA switching around).",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": ... | null |
d326cy | how do computers transmit and translate video and pictures? does each picture get boiled down to a pixel level with a binary code for each pixel? what about video? it blows my mind that computers can do this. | [
{
"answer": "Every pixel has a colour represented by a binary code. Commonly a byte (8 bits) is used for each of the three primary colours of red, green, and blue, so you need three bytes (24-bits) per pixel. That gives 16 million possible different colours.\n\nPictures are then compressed which allows a big ... | null |
3ras3t | why does taking (something) to the negative power give us 1/(something)? | [
{
"answer": "If you can realise that multiplication is the inverse of division, then it is pretty easy.\n\nFor positive powers:\n\n2^1 =1x2=2\n\n2^2 =1x2x2=4\n\n2^3 =1x2x2x2=8\n\nand so on. For a positive power, you multiply the number.\n\nA negative power has the same pattern, except with division, so:\n\n2^-1... | null |
qyolp | the annoying sound in my ears when i get out of the shower. | [
{
"answer": " > It's like there was a little, tiny flag in your ear which would wave very strongly with every move you make with your head.\n\nIf it's a clicking sound and seems related to swallowing, yawning, or breathing, you may want to ask a doctor about possible [Eustachian tube](_URL_1_) problems. That'... | null |
52b4r1 | Can a collapsing star have such great mass that the black hole formed completely absorbs the supernova and the star simply "goes dark?" | [
{
"answer": "Yes, but it is not really due to the size of the star (given that the star is massive enough to undergo core collapse).\n\nOnce nucleosynthesis in the core of a star reaches iron-56, it begins to consume energy, rather than create it. If the core is large enough, electron degeneracy won't be able t... | null |
ax54wr | How do white bloodcells know what to attack? | [
{
"answer": "This is a fantastic question! Though, I will preface this answer with 1) it is extraordinarily complex and we are still learning so very much about the intricacies and signaling pathways the many different types of white blood cells use to recognize \"self\" from \"not self\" and how they attack, ... | null |
3kh1hm | the difference between deductive and abductive reasoning. | [
{
"answer": "It simply means coming up with ideas to explain things we see. Those ideas then are put to the test and discarded or validated.\n\n- Deduction: Winter is cold. Winter starts next month. So it will be cold next month. \n- Induction: Last winter was cold, the one before was cold, and so on. So next ... | null |
7uhefy | How realistic is the cancer "vaccine" talked about recently? | [
{
"answer": "Paper is available in its entirety here: \n[**Eradication of spontaneous malignancy by local immunotherapy**\n Idit Sagiv-Barfi, Debra K. Czerwinski, Shoshana Levy, Israt S. Alam, Aaron T. Mayer, Sanjiv S. Gambhir, Ronald Levy - *Science Translational Medicine*](_URL_0_)\n",
"provenance": null
... | null |
34x4wg | Why do radar dishes need to spin and scan the area progressively? Can't they design a radar which scans the whole area? | [
{
"answer": "It's due to the antenna design, as directional antenna can have a bigger range and better signal than omnidirectional.",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": "I guess you could think of if by analogy with our eyes. We turn our heads to look at things because we have a narrow field of view.... | null |
1kotmw | What were some tools and technology utilized in the Golden Age of Arctic Exploration? | [
{
"answer": "Neat idea. Good luck!",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": "I only know of Amundsen's expeditions in passing (at the \"Wikipedia\" level), but I've read books by and about pre-flight-era polar explorers. \n\nIn slightly earlier days, Norwegians like Amundsen had been noted for using more... | null |
bwwd2v | what are apertures, f-stops, how does depth of field work, and how does lens measurement factor into the equation? | [
{
"answer": "An ideal lens focuses light from a single plane (called the focal plane) onto its sensor. However, that's not super useful, as we often want to take pictures of things that are thick. As it turns out, there is a region around the focal plane where the image is still well focused. This is called ... | null |
34oh2g | why do i have to wait 30 seconds after i unplug my modem to plug it back in? once it's off, isn't it just...off? | [
{
"answer": "there are various components that still hold a slight electric charge for a few seconds after you disconnect the power cord. leaving it unplugged for 30 seconds or so allows these components to completely drain making the power cycle completely effective. ",
"provenance": null
},
{
"ans... | null |
1t4uaz | What advice can askhistorians give me on becoming a professional historian. | [
{
"answer": "Not to dissuade any new advice, but we've collected past posts in this topic under the FAQ section [History Careers and Education](_URL_0_).",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": null,
"provenance": [
{
"wikipedia_id": "43216976",
"title": "The Historian's Craft"... | null |
9rproh | Why so much variation in the spelling of Irish surnames? | [
{
"answer": "It's a byproduct of British colonialism. During their process of colonisation, the English settlers often took Irish names - of people and places - and Anglicised them. For example, the capital of the Republic is Dublin, based on the viking settlement that used to be there called Dubhlinn (Blackpoo... | null |
qkbsv | Would it be possible to create a stable, artificial ring around our planet (any celestial body, really)? | [
{
"answer": "The issue is the amount of material you're talking about. Realistically you'd want to push asteroids around to form the belt. Then your main issue is what is this going to do to the gravity of the earth/moon system.\n\nLets throw some numbers around for fun. Average asteroid density is about 2g/... | null |
6pkxoc | why do brass instruments only emit a sound when pursing your lips? why can't you just blow into them and make sound? | [
{
"answer": "There needs to be some kind of vibration. Your lips vibrate in the mouthpeice and the instrument basically amplifies that vibration. If you just blow all you do is move air though a bunch of tubes. A saxaphone is brass but is considered a woodwind instrument because they have a wooden reed that em... | null |
2khmos | What type of wood was the medieval trebuchet made of? | [
{
"answer": "In all likelihood most siege engines would have been a melange of cut and scavenged woods, some chronicles testify to ships hulls and masts, and houses, torn apart. However, oak and beech are the most common references in chronicles from Charlemagne (8th c CE) to Froissart (14th c CE), but that wou... | null |
uufd1 | Are quarks affected by magnetic fields? | [
{
"answer": "Yes, though quarks are never found alone.\n\nAnything with electric charge can be affected by a magnetic field.\n\nA proton is made of two up quarks and a down quark; it has a charge of +1.\n\nThe up, charm, and top quark have a charge of +2/3. The down, strange, and bottom quark have a charge of -... | null |
5fut2f | how does my printer know how much ink is in the cartridge? | [
{
"answer": "the inkjet cartridge has a electronic chip inside that counts how many times its asked to jet ink of each color. reach the upper end of that count and you have a good idea when it's going to run out. \n\n",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": null,
"provenance": [
{
"... | null |
jvhga | I have a question for you /r/askscience. Is this some kind of hoax, or can this really work? I'm looking forward to your downvote if it is a duplicate. Reposted from /r/physics | [
{
"answer": "Can you summarize the video for those of us at work?",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": "A simple search in askscience for your post turned up no results (it took a lil bit of digging to find this, and I only kept looking because I knew it was there) so you haven't done anything wrong ... | null |
2z5s23 | Was former L.A. Mayor John Porter a member of the Ku Klux Klan? | [
{
"answer": "Not a historian, but you might look at the [San Diego History Center](_URL_3_) for answers on this. They appear to have some primary sources in their collection, but specifically on this they site Kevin Starr's Material Dreams: Southern California through the 1920's (New York: Oxford University Pre... | null |
wgfqv | How come we can see distant galaxies but just recently discovered Pluto's fifth moon? | [
{
"answer": "Galaxies and stars are very bright, so you can see them from farther away. Pluto and its moon do not emit light and all we see from them is reflected sunlight off their surface. \n\nIt's kindof like how you can see a streetlight from miles away at night, while you can't see the rock 10 feet away. "... | null |
1q2vdg | how much money (usd) would need to be "destroyed" in order to see a significant rise in the value of the dollar? | [
{
"answer": "_URL_0_\n\nThe monetary base went from ~800 billion USD in 2008 to 3.6 trillion 2013 and you had ~10% cumulative inflation over 5 years.\n\nSo if you want to roll back that inflation you'd need to eliminate at least 80% of the monetary base (note that much of the monetary base is electronic), and t... | null |
bgn603 | what is the purpose of that transparent blue strip on the top of the windshield glass of almost every car? | [
{
"answer": "As the sun starts to set it can be shining directly into the drivers eyes. The shade strip lets you block some of that without having to tint the whole window which would make it harder to see out at night.",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": null,
"provenance": [
{
"w... | null |
5uldrh | why primary education is disproportionately a female institution? | [
{
"answer": "That's a pretty tough question to answer, and I think it also depends on the country you live in. \n\nA lot of people think that the reason there are a majority of female teachers is because society puts pressure on girls to go into fields that have a more nurturing nature like teaching, child care... | null |
11j430 | When you lose your memory, or if you have a hard time remembering things, is that because your brain can't "store" the memories properly or because it can't "retrieve" them properly? | [
{
"answer": "The answer really is \"it depends.\" Disruption in both storage (called encoding) and retrieval can both disrupt your ability to recall memories. There is quite a bit of debate about exactly what goes on when you forget something, with some people arguing that the memory trace (typically referred t... | null |
3okz11 | How often do neutrinos interact with us? What happens when they do? | [
{
"answer": " > How often do neutrinos interact with us? \n\nA quick *literal* rule of thumb for neutrinos: 10^11 neutrinos pass through your thumbnail *every second*. It doesn't matter if it's day or night - they interact so rarely that using the earth as shielding won't make a difference. \n\nSo how many of ... | null |
3694vk | Was Joseph Smith sincere? | [
{
"answer": "In short, we can show that Joseph and/or his compatriots were involved in intentional deception, explicit plagiarism, and attempts to bury evidence of misdeeds. I don't think we can ever completely rule out psychosis or an epic level of self-dillusion, but I think it highly unlikely considering wh... | null |
q9sdb | Why do cochlear implants not produce normal hearing, and what would they need to do so? | [
{
"answer": "Your [cochlea](_URL_3_) is shaped like a snail shell. Throughout this shell, there are hairs that are triggered by different frequencies of sound. Hairs near the base fire in response to high frequency sounds. Hairs near the apex fire in response to low frequency sounds. \n\n[This](_URL_0_) is a... | null |
fte4e | If time stops completely at the event horizon, how can black holes grow? | [
{
"answer": "What matters is the mass of the black hole from the black hole's perspective. And from its perspective, matter falls in just fine.",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": "The answer is that it is really complicated. You are correct that for the schwarzschild metric around a black hole, th... | null |
28fqva | in philosophy, what are epistemology and metaphysics? | [
{
"answer": "True ELI5: \n\nEpistemology = \"How do I know shit? What does it mean to know shit?\"\n\nMetaphysics = \"What is this shit? What is shit? What is?\"",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": null,
"provenance": [
{
"wikipedia_id": "22500921",
"title": "Outline of kno... | null |
2zhbk5 | how can we smell spring? | [
{
"answer": "I'd like to think it's more a mass thawing of hundreds of petrified dog turds.",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": "Pollen is just plant spunk. Walking outside in spring is like walking into a huge tree orgy. There really is something in the air, and on the ground, and covering your car... | null |
6ek466 | what's happening inside of a plasma ball? | [
{
"answer": "Inside a plasma ball high voltage is used to strip electrons away from atoms of a noble gas (usually neon or argon). Plasma is a state of matter comprising these free electrons. Light (release of photons) happens whenever electrons change orbitals.\n\nThe stream of electrons are negatively charge... | null |
28zam8 | how could pixar produce toy story back in 1995? | [
{
"answer": "They had 117 computers running 24 hours a day, which could produce three minutes of the movie a week. It was slow.",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": "Rendering 3d video is done through \"render farms\", which are essentially a bunch of computers in a warehouse turning the 3d models cr... | null |
5yvh3n | how do download and upload speeds actually work,(i.e how do they limit the speed of download through your cables) | [
{
"answer": "They limit the speed of the download by limiting how many bits per second are allowed to transfer through the wire to you. Someone, somewhere tracks all the bits that go into your house, and counts those bits. Every second, that count \"refreshes,\" but if that count reaches the max rate, they stop... | null |
1djsdv | how come the zimbabwe dollar inflated so fast? how do people survive in a country with such hyperinflation? | [
{
"answer": "People stop using the currency and move to a barter system (or different currency). That is the resolution as well.",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": "The president Mugabe is an EVIL dictator (arguably the worst on the planet) and he's printing money like crazy to fund corrupt politic... | null |
5llgje | in ww2 movies and rl videos some soldiers salute and some use nazi salute. why is that? | [
{
"answer": "Nazi salute (with straight right hand) was mandatory for civilians but optional for military. Soldiers mostly used traditional salute. ",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": null,
"provenance": [
{
"wikipedia_id": "240483",
"title": "Battle of Britain (film)",
... | null |
2avydb | What happens when I take a USB drive out without ejecting? | [
{
"answer": "When you eject a USB drive, the operating system flushes all buffered data to the drive and closes the software device. This guarantees that everything you wrote to the drive is actually physically written there. If you do not do this, you stand a chance of losing data or corrupting files. \n \... | null |
2iv3v6 | Panzer tanks: "first-class visual and command facilities"? | [
{
"answer": "On a purely technical level, \"visual and command\" references both German radios and optics. Although German tank design was relatively conservative, especially at the start of the war, their tanks incorporated good optical equipment and effective radios. The latter was especially effective at coo... | null |
5or7wg | why do competitions require you to answer a ridiculous question when you enter? | [
{
"answer": "Well, in the UK a competition with a question is regarded legally as a game of skill, even if the question is stupidly simple. Without a question it would be regarded as a lottery, which has very much tougher rules and regulations.",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": "Well, without any ... | null |
9mzp5a | what is treasury yields and why does it cause the market to slide? | [
{
"answer": "First all the quick answers:\n\nTreasuries are US government debt. Yields are how much interest the US government will pay lenders to loan money to them for a certain period of time. 10-year treasuries are the long term benchmark rate, they're the bench mark because they're a very liquid market. ... | null |
48e5e1 | why does urinating feel different when you are sick? | [
{
"answer": "For a multitude of reasons, among them:\n\n+ When sick your system is generating different chemicals from the immunologic system fight, which generate different contents, pH and even smell for your pee, the different contents and pH can irritate the urethra and be painful\n+ Your sensibility usuall... | null |
3wuokw | why did sega drop out of the video game console business? | [
{
"answer": "Because people stopped buying them.\n\nThere is an apocryphal story that Sony released a *Final Fantasy* game the day of the Saturn's release, in a move to deliberately cripple sales of the new system.",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": "The fact of the matter is, they lost.\n\nThe Nin... | null |
4vd7su | Why do some metals turn bright red and white when they are melting? Why don't they just turn to liquid like mercury does? | [
{
"answer": "Because the melting points of most metals are much higher than Mercury and at high temperatures, the thermal radiations all objects gives off (including you, your dog and your chair) shifts into the visible spectrum.\n\nThis is called the [Draper point](_URL_0_). It happens at 525 Celsius.",
"p... | null |
cn6xjl | How do Colloids work? | [
{
"answer": "Colloids aren’t a molecule or additive, they’re a state of a mixture. Specifically, a colloid is formed when the particles (not atomic particles, particulate/macroscopic particles) are too small to settle out. The particles are so small that gravity doesn’t affect them nearly as much as other force... | null |
2q3hq2 | why should someone never refreeze something that has been unfrozen ? | [
{
"answer": "Generally when frozen foods are frozen for sale/storage they are done so in a way that prevents large ice crystals from forming and damaging the food. You can't easily do this at home.\n\nThis was the big advantage that Birds Eye had when it first started - its founder, Clarence Birdseye, realized ... | null |
2k9icr | the ending of the sopranos | [
{
"answer": "Here's a very detailed analysis:\n\n_URL_0_\n\nI personally think you have to pick one of two narratives:\n\n1. Tony was killed by the man in the members only jacket, with the ending tied to prior episodes where the characters discuss the fact that you you never see death coming. The fade to bla... | null |
3fpcdl | why do some sites not allow you to have special characters in your password? wouldn't it be better to always have as secure a password as possible? | [
{
"answer": "There have been news stories about websites getting hacked, and the hackers making off with lots of customer/employee/third-party information. How do hackers normally do this?\n\nIn the younger days of the internet, most sites were vulnerable to an exploit called SQL injection. SQL is a programmi... | null |
105pfj | What sort of judicial system did the Confederacy have during the Civil War? | [
{
"answer": "Someone did a presentation about this in the constitutional law class I took ages ago but I barely remember it. I do remember that at a national level, the [Confederate Constitution took the Article III language virtually word-for-word](_URL_0_) from the United States Constitution. It empowered the... | null |
3jhveu | stock dividends | [
{
"answer": "If a corporation makes a profit, it may decide that it wants to share some of the corporation's profits with its owners (known as shareholders). The profit that is paid by a corporation to its shareholders is called the dividend. The dividend is issued \"per share\", which means that the corporatio... | null |
d4oqx2 | what determines whether a pro sports team is named after a city (dallas cowboys), or after a state (minnesota vikings)? | [
{
"answer": "It is down to the owner plus any special tax break the local community has given them which may also involve promoting the city or state. In addition existing teams in the state may restrict the naming process.",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": "That’s completely up to the team owner(... | null |
1cmgip | If I travel fast enough to red or blue shift radio waves, what would happen to the sound coming from a radio program? | [
{
"answer": "Well, it would change the station first of all... So if you tuned in at 98.5 MHz you might instead tune in at 98.6 MHz. \n\nAfter that I think things should be slowed down, regardless of if it is [AM](_URL_0_) or [FM](_URL_1_). If we had a 10% elongation of the wave, we should also have a 10% slow ... | null |
bzohlr | What makes an explosive effective at different jobs? | [
{
"answer": "Armor penetration effectiveness is usually achieved by concentrating the blast into a small area by what's known as a [shaped charge](_URL_0_). \n\nOther common explosives are [gun powder/black powder and flash powder](_URL_1_) (common in the fireworks industry). The big difference is the speed at ... | null |
1q7zq8 | why do wombat's poop cubes? | [
{
"answer": "Wombats poop on top of rocks and logs near their burrows. The reason for this is not to keep intruders away, but to use as an indicator to know where their home is. Wombats have terrible eyesight however they have an extraordinary sense of smell. The reason for these rubiks poop is because if the W... | null |
2zq7a7 | how does the army/military wash clothes while deployed? | [
{
"answer": "Modern armies generally deploy with enough support machinery to wash clothing, and hand washing is quite effective.\n\nHowever everyone smells like ass anyway. Welcome to the Army.",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": "At the laundry. Deployed at base you still sleep in a bed/cot. De... | null |
7m2k57 | in movie scenes depicting large crowds or groups, do the extras usually have scripted dialogue or do they ad-lib? | [
{
"answer": "They aren't talking at all. They are just pretending to talk. The sound is added in later. If they really talked it would interfere with the main actors dialogue recording. Sometimes directors will give them some motivation (like ask one couple in the background to pretend to argue or something). E... | null |
rmxpp | Do animals get tired of eating the same food day after day? | [
{
"answer": "Modern humans actually a require a great multitude of different vitamins, minerals, and nutrients in order to survive. A lion can eat meat all day everyday and never get scurvy. For humans however, it makes sense from an evolutionary standpoint being as we have such a long list of required nutrie... | null |
382www | why has the euro held its value for so many years, then all of the sudden dropped to almost the same value as the usd? | [
{
"answer": "US Fed has slowed down how much money they are putting into circulation (went interest rates are slowly going up.)\n\nGreece and partially Spain have forced the EU to begin their own QE",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": "I don't care how anyone ELI5 this question but please do it usin... | null |
spssr | the modern "war on women" | [
{
"answer": "Don't have time to respond fully right now, spend 7 minutes watching the video at the bottom. \n\n_URL_0_",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": "There are a variety of issues that have come up that seem to relegate women to second class citizens, two of the biggest being birth control and... | null |
3r0dsl | if one had an electric motor on a car that turned one wheel and three generators on the other three wheels, with two battery banks (one charging and one being used) could i run this car forever? | [
{
"answer": "Nope! Any question that asks \"could I run such-and-such system forever?\" violates the first and second laws of thermodynamics.\n\nMore specifically, you would not be able to recover electricity at a fast enough rate with the three generators to refill the battery powering the motor on the first ... | null |
7c79ka | Why were European states such as Britain, France, Germany and more, able and willing to colonize and conquer places like Africa, the Americas, and more? | [
{
"answer": "Oh dear. I'll be frank with you: the reason why you haven't received an answer to this question is because the answer would be enormous. You could spend the rest of your life studying how these questions apply to but a single group of people - like the Maya - and never arrive at a definitive con... | null |
1q3tuy | What was life like in Spain in the early 70's? | [
{
"answer": "I don't have any sources at hand but I will tell you what I remember from my Spanish High School history lessons:\n\nFranco no longer is the dictator he was at the end of the Civil War, his aging and loosening of the executive power have made him a somewhat ceremonial figure, specially after he app... | null |
2ka6ey | What will I hear if I talk while breaking the sound barrier? | [
{
"answer": "Depends, in a jet it eill sound like you talking, if your head is exposed it will sound like nothing (and you would be screaming neways). What you hear is transmitted through the air (sound is just waves in air). So if the air is contained ans traveling at the same velocity, no change. If it isnt c... | null |
bgdvnn | Is it possible that society actually needs wars as an engine for progress in technology? What does history say about this? | [
{
"answer": "This question is so broad, the answer will depend pretty much entirely on what you want it to be. It would be easy to name many cases in which war produced technological innovations, but just as easy to cite many cases in which it didn't. Whichever point you want to prove, you can pick your example... | null |
3klkpd | What do you end up with if you tear something apart at a 'molecular level'? | [
{
"answer": "Well first, that sounds like garbledeygook ad copy, so I wouldn't put much stock in the scientific value of that TV spot. \n\nAs for what breaking something at a \"molecular level\" would mean, that would depend on the nature of the substance. For crystalline materials, breaking a single crystal, y... | null |
1cyoq4 | why does money exist? | [
{
"answer": "Because it's inconvenient to have to trade water buffalo for skittles.\n",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": "Less flippantly, it exists because resources are scarce. Money helps us decide how to allocate scarce resources.\n\nFor example: there is a limited amount of beautiful, beachfr... | null |
24chw0 | how do intangible currencies like bitcoin and dogecoin have value? | [
{
"answer": "People will accept it for goods and services. Therefore it has value.",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": null,
"provenance": [
{
"wikipedia_id": "55886",
"title": "Local currency",
"section": "Section::::Benefits.\n",
"start_paragraph_id": 18,
... | null |
r6pma | Evolution Debate | [
{
"answer": "[Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution - Theodosius Dobzhansky](_URL_0_)",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": "The best \"proof\" for evolution that I can come up with is the fact that we get sick every year. All viruses mutate and \"evolve\" in order to become... | null |
1mi7am | in u.s., "math". in u.k., "maths". why? | [
{
"answer": "They're both shortened forms of the word \"mathematics\". Americans just shorten the whole word indiscriminately, while the rest of the world keeps the plural *s* and shortens the root of the word. ",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": "Linguists discuss the math vs. maths wording: _URL_... | null |
229yxj | if number of offspring in mammals roughly correlates with mammary glands, why are twins not the predominant birth in humans? | [
{
"answer": "Due to bilateral symmetry (animals being roughly symmetrical down the middle) all mammals, as far as I know, have an even number of nipples, even ones where only one offspring at a time is the norm.",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": null,
"provenance": [
{
"wikipedia... | null |
3ltm0c | How did the combatant nations of WW2 disarm their soldiers when fighting ended? Did lots of soldiers hold on to their weapons, and/or take sidearms home with them? How much military hardware was unaccounted for? | [
{
"answer": "It depended on the country. I can shed some light on the American and Soviet methods of disarmament.\n\nWhen the Red Army began to demobilize large formations of its troops, the Soviet officials told them to hand over any firearms (government issue or enemy capture) or face potentially being sent ... | null |
5a8de6 | why is a fan higher pitched when on higher speeds? | [
{
"answer": "Sounds are based on frequency. The greater the frequency, the higher the pitch of the sound. As the fan is spinning faster, its frequency is greater and therefore the sound is higher.",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": null,
"provenance": [
{
"wikipedia_id": "4045710"... | null |
8s7i6p | why during medical trials both control and subject group are told they are receiving experimental drug instead both being told they receive placebo? | [
{
"answer": "Telling people you're feeding them sugar pills when in fact they're taking an experimental drug with possibly disastrous side effects is considered unethical, as it will make them more likely to shrug off bleeding from their ears and eyes as \"probably just allergies or something.\" \n\nTelling peo... | null |
2bhon2 | - why do most honour killings involve murdering the victim? why not kill the rapist instead? | [
{
"answer": "In such cultures women are viewed as property, to be bought, sold, or traded. The honor killing is in retribution for the perceived dishonor of allowing themselves to be raped, as it damages or destroys their value to their male owner.\n\nIt is fucked up.",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answ... | null |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.