id stringlengths 5 6 | input stringlengths 3 301 | output list | meta null |
|---|---|---|---|
cazmsj | What aspects of a speaker determine it's max volume? | [
{
"answer": "Volume is just an amplitude of the signal which is carried by a sound wave. You can imagine the amplitude as a \"size\" of the sound wave. The more the speaker moves, the more air it pushes, thus producing bigger sound waves that your ears interpret as louder sound.\n\nOr in other words, the capabi... | null |
k6izx | what makes elements perform ionic and covalent bonds?(x-post from askscience) | [
{
"answer": "Ionic bonds are a bit easier to visualize I think. You can sort think about it this way: Atoms are composed of a nucleus with protons and a bunch of electrons. Each proton carries a positive charge and each electron carries a negative charge. Like the poles on a magnet, the positively and negativel... | null |
1jwf1d | What did people do before coffee? | [
{
"answer": "In the Arabian Penninsula and parts of Africa, [khat](_URL_0_) was (and is) sometimes used. it's a leaf that you can chew, and is a stimulant. it's quite common in yemen. while it's not used widely, it's a very common stimulant in the areas where it's been grown historically.",
"provenance":... | null |
e6z4cl | What equipment would ancient Romans use against armoured opponents? ~107BC-395AD | [
{
"answer": "Standard fighting equipment for a post-Marian legionnaire was the gladius, pilum, pugio, scutum, galea, and some sort of body armor, either the lorica squamata, lorica hamata, or, mainly imperial, lorica segmentata. This profile rarely if ever changed in any meaningful way, whether fighting naked B... | null |
5tyqq0 | why was black and white photography very high resolution at it's peak, but soon after when color photography was introduced, it was very bad quality? | [
{
"answer": "Black and White film has one emulsion, color film has three emulsions (RGB). \n\nAccording to [Wikipedia](_URL_0_):\n\n > Photographic emulsion is a fine suspension of insoluble light-sensitive crystals in a colloid sol, usually consisting of gelatin. The light-sensitive component is one or a mixtu... | null |
3larxd | How can a layman tell how reliable a source is? | [
{
"answer": "A good start is to look at the sources used. A respectable work will have pages and pages of works cited at the end. That's not a guarantee, but it is a helpful place to start looking. ",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": "It's difficult for the layman to determine good vs. bad sources ... | null |
9r2lsb | If genetic testing shows Ashkenazi Jewish people have much more relation to the semitic people, where did the Khazar jews end up after the empire collapsed? | [
{
"answer": "This thread has a pretty good compilation of threads on the religion of the khazars\n\n_URL_0_\n\n\n_URL_1_\n\nBy /u/gingerkid1234",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": null,
"provenance": [
{
"wikipedia_id": "34227830",
"title": "Societal and cultural aspects of... | null |
dxbzwq | Books on early fascism's relationship to liberalism and socialism? | [
{
"answer": "Emilio Gentile (whose works have the additional quality of being, some times, available in an English translation) has spent a good portion of his career analyzing the early stages of the ambiguous definition of a \"fascist ideology\" within the environment of what he has defined \"national radical... | null |
sn12o | Can a solar system or star get pulled into a different galaxy? | [
{
"answer": "In around four billion years our galaxy will collide with the Andromeda galaxy (Since galaxies are largely empty space with the odd solid bit - it won't be quite as violent as it might seem - probably).\n\nAssuming that the two galaxies subsequently go on their merry ways (imagine a comet having a ... | null |
1oamak | Is the Higgs field an actual physical field of energy? | [
{
"answer": "First off the Higgs field is as real a field as any other field and was predicted in the 60's. As to whether particles or fields are fundamental or mathematical tools, that is really a philosophical question. ",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": "I'd say pretty much the same thing as /... | null |
1rhwdb | Why is the direction of the torque vector significant? | [
{
"answer": "the in or out direction comes from the right hand rule, which is where you put your right hand on \"r\" and then curl your fingers towards the direction of the force. so lets say that \"r\" is going to the right and the force is upwards, then the torque would be out of the page. so basically the in... | null |
49yoj3 | law of conservation of mass | [
{
"answer": "It's like when you're playing with your legos, buddy. You can take your house apart, make it into a car, move the bricks closer together or further apart. But you can't break the bricks, they're indestructible. Now pretend everything in the world is made of legos which are so tiny that you can't se... | null |
1xklp2 | just seen captain phillips, why are cargo ships sailing around the horn of africa so poorly defended? | [
{
"answer": "International maritime law forbids arming merchant ships.",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": "Captain Phillips is actually being [sued](_URL_0_) by his crew for “willful, wanton and conscious disregard for their safety.” he is not the man the film makes him out to be.",
"provenance... | null |
67yg1m | why can't robots move exactly like humans yet? what is holding engineers back? | [
{
"answer": "My uneducated (somewhat) guess would be rapid fine tuning of balance and equilibrium of a bipedal body.\n\nIf you really try and \"feel\" your muscles as you move, or even stay in place, you can quickly see that a LOT of stabilizing autonomous activity is going on. This is all going on very quickly... | null |
1xg262 | why can't the cellular infrastructure that is in place to provide 3g and lte just be used to create a giant wifi network? | [
{
"answer": "Those networks use different standards to provide their signals. It's not like it's all using the same frequency for all of the various forms of wireless. [Source.](_URL_0_)",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": "WiFi is not the same thing as a cellular network. This seems to be a common ... | null |
1q79y3 | why are "bologna" and "lasagna" pronounced so utterly differently? | [
{
"answer": "In Italian the \"gn\" combination sounds the same for both words.",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": "We've Americanized the pronunciation of *bologna* a lot more than *lasagna*.",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": null,
"provenance": [
{
"wikipedia_id": "... | null |
xqqld | I'm an extremely deep-sleeper, and have massive troubles waking up on time. Is there a scientific alarm solution? | [
{
"answer": "I read about using sunlight/simulated natural light to help people wake up: _URL_0_\n\nI use a similar thing but I go low-tech when trying to wake up my 5-year-old (not an easy task) and just turn on the light.",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": "Do you hit the snooze button a lot? If ... | null |
3gxrgh | how can banks detect if someone else is using your credit/debit card when the amount is small and the location of purchase is near? | [
{
"answer": "What was the store? What was the time? Had you made any other purchases recently?\n\nFraud detection systems work by finding patterns in your spending and flagging things that don't fit the pattern. If it's in a weird city when you're normally at work & not buying things at all, that's going t... | null |
1bw8ws | Why is Napoleon often portrayed with his right hand tucked into his vest? | [
{
"answer": "The pose is quite common in period paintings: \n\nDirectly bearing on the \"hand-in\" posture, and underpinning Nivelon's description of it as \"manly boldness tempered with modesty,\" is Bulwer's \"Sixth Canon for Rhetoricians,\" which claims that \"the hand restrained and kept in is an argument o... | null |
dkn6ah | albinism seems like a very disadvantageous mutation. how has it continued in the animal kingdom? | [
{
"answer": "A mutation can appear more than once in time. Albino animals pretty much never have albino parents, it just appears randomly and likely subsides again as the chances of reproduction are lowered. The parents have instead carried an albino gene, without being albino themselves.",
"provenance": nu... | null |
27766e | what happens when my computer is connecting to/loading a website/? | [
{
"answer": "There's many steps, but here is a simple explanation:\n\nYou send an \"HTTP request\" to the server. HTTP is the protocol commonly used to send/receive data on the internet. Let's just say it's like the format of when you write your address and destination address on an envelope. \n\nThis request w... | null |
7sp6hj | Why is the modern nation of Ghana located far southeast of the medieval kingdom of Ghana? | [
{
"answer": "This question comes up from time to time. My answer in [this thread](_URL_0_) gives the specific context for how the Gold Coast colony came to be named Ghana. Also, [this post from last month](_URL_1_) provides additional context about the oral traditions that Danquah was drawing on to justify the ... | null |
1yjpg9 | Why do old portraits all look so similar? I feel like I have no idea how these people really looked. | [
{
"answer": "You have to remember that portraiture is a very formal event. It takes hours for an artist to paint a portrait and they were quite expensive. People would dress up in their finest clothing to pose for the portrait and put on their most serious expressions (smiling was not considered professional). ... | null |
dlnr4b | Chinese(?) coins | [
{
"answer": "Based on your drawing the first one is from the period of the Daoguang 道光 Emperor, the 8th Qing emperor who ruled from 1820 to 1850. The second is from the reign of the Shunzhi 順治 Emperor, who was the third Qing emperor, ruling from 1644 to 1661. The side with Chinese characters just says the name ... | null |
enmjub | How are artifical sweeteners digested by the body? | [
{
"answer": "It depends on the sweetener. They are very different molecules. \n\nAspartame, brand name Equal, is basically a tiny protein molecule with an alcohol molecule stuck on the end. It gets broken apart into its component parts and they are digested separately. This generates about 4 calories per gram--... | null |
scbm6 | I have some hypothetical questions about magnetic spheres. | [
{
"answer": "Based on what I can understand of your question you are horribly misunderstanding magnetism.\n\nReason: Your spheres are impossible.\n\nWithout a path to complete what I generally hear termed the \"magnetic circuit\" you are effectively looking at some sort of magnetic monopole type structure which... | null |
153cgf | Why don't we create a small scale nuclear reactor to power cars individualy? | [
{
"answer": "The cost is far too high for it to be reliable and consistent, and the waste produced would be difficult to manage, depending on the type of fuel used.",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": null,
"provenance": [
{
"wikipedia_id": "22151",
"title": "Nuclear reacto... | null |
5i6hfk | in terms of microeconomics, how does piracy of digital goods affect supply, demand, sale, price, etc.? | [
{
"answer": "Within a narrow context, piracy has two effects. It depresses or increases potential demand for a product at the rate at which the file spreads through a population. There's less than 1 to 1 correlation between the number of people with an illicit copy who drop out of the demand population. The num... | null |
5shonw | why do emojis show up differently on ios vs android devices? | [
{
"answer": "Well consider it like a different font type. It still conveys the same information, but it is a separate style. ",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": "When your phone sends text back and forth, it's encoded as numbers. These are standard, so 33 is !, 65 is A, and 128512 is 😀. All your... | null |
4k3gb4 | Did the Romans have some concept of 'standardized spelling'? | [
{
"answer": "I think this depends entirely on what era you're looking at.\n\nSo far as I am aware, there wasn't an institution in Rome that said \"Ok, everyone, amicus is a second declension noun, not a fourth declension one!\" I'm not sure how linguists would approach this issue, so I can't speak to how everyo... | null |
1rl3rq | if someone were to dip a live electrical wire into the ocean, wouldn't everyone swimming in the ocean at that time be electrocuted? | [
{
"answer": "No. Electricity moves from one place to another place, along the path of least resistance. It doesn't spread out and electrocute everything that happens to be in the same body of water.\n\nIn the case of an electrical wire in the ocean, it'd likely prove dangerous to things within a few feet of i... | null |
272cs2 | why did we domesticate chickens for the use of eggs and not other birds? | [
{
"answer": "We do. Duck eggs are very common in Chinese cuisine, for instance. The real stuff, though. Not the N American version. ",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": "Most likely because they tend to be slow, their eggs full of protein and they can't fly. Chickens are probably a lot easier to do... | null |
10raxw | Does the "subconscious" really exist? | [
{
"answer": "You may be interested in this BBC Horizon program [\"Out of Control\"](_URL_0_) which explores the subject of the subconcious mind.",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": "Yes. In fact your 'conscious' is a relatively small percentage of your brain activity. And also in fact experiments ha... | null |
23xftf | Does tourettes exist in all languages and if so does it manifest itself differently in different cultures? | [
{
"answer": "Verbal tourettes is just a very small part of the disorder at about 12% of the individuals who have it and of those only a small percent expel curse words. Most manifestations occur in physical repetitive motions such as tapping or twitching and can be as grand as siting down repeatedly. So yes i... | null |
3ls0k8 | How close to the Moon would you have to be before you would fall to the Moon instead of to the Earth? | [
{
"answer": "For the sake of simplicity lets assume that we're talking about two generic masses, M_1 and M_2, separated by some length R, with a small test mass, m, inbetween them, and no other masses around. What you're asking for is the point at gravitational forces on m are in equilibrium. \n\nIn general we ... | null |
5ji039 | What would it mean if we proved that P = NP, or P != NP ? | [
{
"answer": "Well, proving N = NP would say that *all* of the problems that can be verified in polynomial time could be solved in polynomial time. For example, sudoku. It's very easy to verify that a sudoku solution is correct: just loop through all of the \"groups\". But it's not that easy to solve it. \n\nWh... | null |
flhzx | Why are mid-air manifestations of electricity jagged? (i.e. sparks, lightning bolts etc.) | [
{
"answer": "This was a really interesting question that I didn't know the answer to so I looked it up. [This Scientific American article](_URL_0_) does a pretty good job of explaining it.",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": "Path of least resistance?",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": ... | null |
495sni | "Photons" of different EM spectrum? | [
{
"answer": "All electromagnetic waves are made of photons -- visible light, radio waves, X-rays, gamma rays, ultraviolet light, infrared light, you name it.",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": null,
"provenance": [
{
"wikipedia_id": "477175",
"title": "Radiant energy",
... | null |
3z1jth | why is being deaf or blind much more common than say having no taste, touch, or smell? | [
{
"answer": "Because you only have two eyes and two ears whereas you have billions of touch taste and scent receptors, it would be impossible for them to all fail so the only way you can lose these senses is if the area of the brain that processes them is damaged.",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer":... | null |
2js1tm | how can the un give sanctions for nuclear weapons to some countries and not to others? | [
{
"answer": "The nuclear nonproliferation treaty recognized the then-nuclear states as legit, and called on them to disarm to some degree (which they haven't) and tried to prevent nuclear capability from further spreading. It's called, creatively, The Treaty for the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) of... | null |
3fasgu | What language/script is this? Where can I have it translated? | [
{
"answer": "To supplement what has already been said by u/farquier and others, the script is [Hebrew Cursive](_URL_1_), which was used to write Yiddish before modern Hebrew became popular. It's still used today, both to write Yiddish and Hebrew, and is basically what all handwritten Hebrew is today. You can ... | null |
hrbcr | What oscillates in light? | [
{
"answer": "Light doesn't have a medium that it travels through. For a long time people thought that it did (and they called it the luminiferous aether), but experiments show that it doesn't exist.",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": "The thing that oscillates is the electromagnetic field of the ph... | null |
doq3ze | Medieval French translation help (again!) | [
{
"answer": "Looks like an ancient french version of the actual « cuillère » (\"spoon\").\n\nSource : french and historian",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": null,
"provenance": [
{
"wikipedia_id": "31596997",
"title": "The Medieval Translator",
"section": "",
... | null |
6o8fgk | Who were the Desert Fathers? What was their impact on early Christianity? What happened to them and the desert monastic movement? | [
{
"answer": "The desert fathers emerge toward the end of the fourth century as Christianity transitioned from a fringe cult to an accepted community in the pantheon of faiths. While earlier Christian communities had faced persecution and martyrdom, in this new period asceticism became the hallmark of true commi... | null |
2cxylb | how did my plane yesterday depart late but it was able to reach the destination before it's original scheduled arrival time? | [
{
"answer": " > Did the pilot just put his foot down?\n\nYes, plus you may have encountered better than average conditions. The average flight time is calculated using the average conditions. By the definition of \"average\" half the time, conditions are better, meaning that they may not have experienced cloud... | null |
22687x | How did Taiwan handle the massive influx of Chinese refugees following the Chinese Civil War? How did the Kuomintang "set up shop", so to speak? | [
{
"answer": "In the memoir of Taiwanese author [Chiung Yao](_URL_0_), she said because her father was an intellectual and easily found another professor job, her family received a Japanese style house the size of twenty [\"tatami\"](_URL_1_) from the university. Her family was still extremely poor despite being... | null |
2sacag | Why did the Tlaxcalans allow Cortes to remain in Tenochtitlan/Mexico? | [
{
"answer": "If I may add a tangent to this question - what rewards did the Tlaxcalans receive from the Spanish after the Aztecs were defeated? ",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": "There's two big misconceptions that are commonly held about post-Conquest Mexico: that Hispanicization progressed rap... | null |
22uwym | moving matter from a neutron star | [
{
"answer": "If you were to bring a chunk of neutron star matter to the Earth, it would expand. Before I can explain this I have to explain what's actually going on in a neutron star. \nWhen a star 'dies' it collapses in on itself and blows off its outer layers of gas. The core that's left is called a stellar ... | null |
ddjj4o | we see ordinary city pigeons in most major cities, but never in between (e.g., chicago and denver but not in north dakota). how do they get there? | [
{
"answer": "1. Pigeons and doves are the same thing. People tend to call them pigeons in cities and doves in the country. They are common in cities and in rural areas. North Dakota has seven types of pigeons/doves.\n\n2. City pigeons are often domesticated pigeons that were released back into the wild (in this... | null |
54zjxf | it is said that there are more possible games of chess than there are atoms in the observable universe. how is something like this calculated? | [
{
"answer": "I don't think there is an easy way to calculate the exact number of games. One can estimate though and get a ballpark figure. Claude Shannon, father of information theory, was the first one to publish his ballpark estimate. It is based on the assumption that, on average the number of moves availabl... | null |
2gtxy8 | since a country can print its own currency indefinitely, why can't the us for example just arbitrarily pay off all its debt that way? | [
{
"answer": "Yes. The more money in circulation, the less it's really worth, period.",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": "Printing more money makes the money worth less, i.e. inflation.",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": "Let's imagine \"Purchasing Power\" as a cake. Lets imagine \"Doll... | null |
30mue4 | How did Egypt become so thoroughly Arabised? | [
{
"answer": "Egypt was under the control of the Arabs directly for six consecutive centuries, and then under the control of people who likely used Arabic for government functions due to the varied origins of the Mamluks themselves. So, in short, for almost a thousand years it was under the control of administra... | null |
70nven | Has the U.S. Military ever conducted assassinations of foreign leaders in the past? | [
{
"answer": "Going off that, of the assassinations done by either CIA or military was it widely known who did it or did people think it was different countries? ",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": null,
"provenance": [
{
"wikipedia_id": "12213023",
"title": "Rebel Armed Fo... | null |
3l32wn | terryology. | [
{
"answer": "He's just mixing up multiplication and addition. He thinks 1 X 1 is the equivalent of holding up one index finger for each hand and seeing 2 fingers. He also said everyone thinks √4 is 2, so √2 must be 1, but it's not *because we're told it's 2,* which proves that he knows nothing about simple ar... | null |
1h9pxq | what is the difference between a bison and a buffalo? | [
{
"answer": "Basically \n1. The bison are native to North America and Europe.\n2. The buffalo is native to Africa and Asia. African buffaloes are wild animals while Asian buffaloes are mostly domesticated.\n3. Bison have thick shaggy coats, though they shed these during summer, while the buffalo has short and s... | null |
a0f116 | how to best describe/explain ionization energy and electron affinity? | [
{
"answer": "Ionization energy is the amount of energy that must go into an atom to remove an electron. As you remove more electrons, the amount of energy required becomes larger and larger because of the effective nuclear charge. This pulls the electrons closer and closer to the nucleus, which results in highe... | null |
55gczv | What happened to the Rockefellers fortune? | [
{
"answer": "This is a complicated question because when people see that the brothers had such a large sum they automatically assume the same thing you did. That wealth typically creates more wealth. The trouble is no one takes into account the time value of money. Which states that money today is more valuable... | null |
9okjl4 | what would happen if a massive planet came very close to earth, as in, would our gravity change? | [
{
"answer": "The planets would disrupt each others orbit, draw each other closer together and then shoot apart again, over and over and over like this for years as gravity ripped chunks off of each with every pass, each time getting closer together. \n\nThose chunks would hit both planets turning them into lif... | null |
5babn8 | which one is more environmental friendly - eating with a disposable plate and cutlery to save water; or eating with normal plate and wash them with water and soap? | [
{
"answer": "Trick question. Eating with compostable dinnerware and silver ware is best.\n\nPlastic plates and utensils are worst. Hand washing is better. Using a dishwasher when full is better. ",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": "Washing your dishes is more environmentally friendly. The water is ... | null |
73hcgu | why do animals in a particular ecological niche often look so similar even if they are completely unrelated? | [
{
"answer": "This is a concept called \"convergent evolution.\" Basically, if the pressures on one creature were such that flight was advantageous to survival in a particular environment, those same pressures could easily select for similar variations should they happen to randomly arise in another species. \... | null |
fgkgaf | non-native speaker here, why is "biannually" considered to be twice a year, but "biweekly" only once every two weeks instead of two times per week? | [
{
"answer": "\"Biweekly\" can refer to either twice a week or two times a week. The same for \"bimonthly\" (i.e. once a month or two times a month).\n\nThe issue stems from the prefix *\"bi-\"*, which is inherently ambiguous in that it can mean either **occuring twice** or **occuring every two**.\n\nEnglish off... | null |
4ntosg | why are people/businesses moving to the south and not detroit? | [
{
"answer": "A lot fewer unions in the south is a big part. Also rules and regulations setup over decades that are unfriendly to new business in Detroit.",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": "Another thing that hasn't been said is weather: people don't like winter and the ice and snow it brings to yo... | null |
8ivlfa | Would a helium filled balloon float on Mars? | [
{
"answer": "You can solve this with the ideal gas law, pV = nRT. Pressure x Volume = #molecules x ideal-gas-contant x temperature. \n\n\nMars' atmosphere is made of carbon dioxide, which has a molar mass of 44g/mol. Air, which is basically an 80-20 mix of nitrogen and oxygen, has a molar mass of 29 g/mol. Heli... | null |
3jruq8 | Japan and the UK were allies in WW1. What happened to this alliance post WW1 and pre WW2? | [
{
"answer": "Japan's entry into the First World War was a highly measured response. Japan acted against German interests in the Pacific, most notably invading the German concession at Tsingtao. Japan did not put its economy on a wartime footing and only after repeated entreaties by the British did she send some... | null |
bidy74 | how do glute muscles become weak? | [
{
"answer": "The same way any other muscle gets weaker. Over time and extended periods of low use, they deteriorate and lose mass.",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": null,
"provenance": [
{
"wikipedia_id": "8055330",
"title": "Muscle coactivation",
"section": "Sect... | null |
216qhy | why is fertilizer the primary ingredient in many homemade bombs? | [
{
"answer": "It's the nitrogen//nitrogen-based chemicals in the fertilizer. The nitrogen stuff is great for growing crops... but it's also good for explosives.\n\nYou can search for \"nitrogen explosive compounds\", but read here this one example of why:\n\n_URL_0_",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer"... | null |
c91rpz | how is it that someone (like myself) is allergic to almost every antibiotic? what makes the body hate them so much? | [
{
"answer": "Essentially an allergy is an immune response to a foreign substance. \n\nFor you, the antibiotics has 'proteins' antigens which trigger the white cells of you immune system to attack them. This appears as massive inflammation due to degranulation of mast cells releasing imflammatory proteins etc. T... | null |
gljcj | Is cancer a preventable disease? | [
{
"answer": "Yes. Nutrition plays a big role. For instance, [selenium prevents prostate cancer](_URL_0_).\n\n[Here's a book](_URL_1_)",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": "Sometimes yes, sometimes no.\n\nI mean, the obvious: don't smoke anything if you want to lower your risk of mouth/throat/lung can... | null |
2aryiq | What is the maximum rate of rainfall possible? | [
{
"answer": "I've observed rain falling at a rate of 3 inches per hour before over a long period of time many years ago during a hurricane. That unit is without respect to area. Over 1 square mile that is [ 63360 (inches per mile) x 63360 x 3 ] = ~2,350,000 cubic feet of water per square mile per hour. Yes, clo... | null |
9b0ii6 | Do the Strong and Weak Forces have a field like Gravitation and EM? | [
{
"answer": "Yes, but unlike gravity and EM, their fields have very short interaction lengths. They are mediated by W+-/Z bosons and gluons, respectively. ",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": "The strong force has 8 gauge fields (the gluon fields). The weak force has the complex W field (so there is... | null |
1p4kfg | What are some lesser known epidemics of the past? | [
{
"answer": "The bubonic epidemic no one ever hears about: [The Plague of Justinian](_URL_0_). \n\nIt is estimated to have killed over twenty-five million people, only 25% of the casualties caused by the Black Death, but the PoJ was the first recorded instance of a (confirmed) Yersinia pestis epidemic. ",
... | null |
43xvog | why can you only know an electron's position if you give up on knowing its momentum and vice versa? | [
{
"answer": "Imagine you wanted to take a detailed and clear photo of a mosquito buzzing around your room. You'd have to zoom in really close to get such a picture. Imagine then that you've zoomed in far enough so as to be able to clearly see the mosquitoes features and decide to snap a photo. What do you see? ... | null |
omav3 | Are thoughts physical objects? | [
{
"answer": "Thoughts are to your brain like Walking is to your legs.\n\nThoughts are an emergent property of brain activity, just like walking is what happens when you legs work.\n\nYour brain is a physical thing, your legs are a physical thing. Thoughts aren't, walking isn't. Can you pick up \"walking\" and p... | null |
3fzshs | why on mobile devices can i find nothing except live and cover songs on youtube? | [
{
"answer": "Youtube checks the user-agent header and blocks certain videos from appearing on mobile. Music videos seem to be a popular choice for such filtering. I don't know why it's done, but you can get around it.\n\nYou need to change your user agent header so you appear to be coming from a desktop browser... | null |
1py4v4 | why is the distribution of elements on earth not uniform? | [
{
"answer": "there is difference between coal and minerals. coal is now there, where were many trees/plants.\n\nminerals were \"pushed\" near surface by few things (like volcanos or seismic movement) so from this is irregularity.",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": "Basically because each element is... | null |
et2i2j | when smoking, why does your throat hurt only when you breathe in air? | [
{
"answer": "You're breathing in hot air and chemicals that get absorbed by your lungs and cooled down by the time they're breathed out.\n\nYou should probably look into quitting it's super unhealthy :).",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": null,
"provenance": [
{
"wikipedia_id": "2... | null |
d9vt3n | Why can Phosphate have five bonds? (More than an octet) | [
{
"answer": "First off, I want to say that d-orbitals are not involved in the bonding of hypervalent main group compounds like PCl5. The central atoms in molecules like PCl5, SF6, etc. still obey the octet rule. Many introductory resources claim otherwise, but there is ample computational evidence that that thi... | null |
81powv | The New Testament largely covers the final three years of Jesus's life; is there any more known about the first 30 years of his life? | [
{
"answer": "The simple answer is no.\n\nApocryphal sources exist but are universally pretty late. Even the length of Jesus' ministry isn't exactly known. We assume it was a three year ministry because of the Gospel of John, but the interesting point there is that the Gospel of John isn't a common source for in... | null |
3qwcl2 | how wind can push my car sideways when my wheels are pointed straight forward? | [
{
"answer": "Eh? When does your car move sideways?",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": null,
"provenance": [
{
"wikipedia_id": "263198",
"title": "Opposite lock",
"section": "",
"start_paragraph_id": 3,
"start_character": 0,
"end_paragraph_id... | null |
avy48o | why is it that there are plenty of tropical small islands throughout the pacific (guam, us virgin islands, etc) but there are hardly such islands in the atlantic ocean? | [
{
"answer": "The pacific ocean is a hotbed for volcanic activity. Under water volcano explodes, creates an island, plants and animals move in. Pretty neat",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": "There are a few volcanic hotspots that just happen to mostly all be in the Pacific. As the tectonic plates m... | null |
5wx6g9 | how do night contacts work? | [
{
"answer": "My understanding is they reshape the eye. The degree of how concave or convex the lens of the eye causes near sightedness or far sightedness. Sleep contacts temporarily shape your eyes back to neutral. ",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": null,
"provenance": [
{
"wikip... | null |
thjts | based off of this photo that keeps going around reddit what would actually happen to the moon and this person. | [
{
"answer": "Alot of shrapnel, if not that then the lack of oxygen after a couple of days.",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": null,
"provenance": [
{
"wikipedia_id": "4357802",
"title": "Reagan Wilson",
"section": "Section::::Career.\n",
"start_paragraph_id... | null |
1xzirz | The lack of a strong socialist party in the US linked to the absence of feudalism? | [
{
"answer": "I think the contention that feudalism was a heavy contributor to socialism is a pretty weak one. What is Lipset's evidence for that assertion? I think the rise of socialism is a heck of a lot more complex than \"the struggle against feudalism and the ravages of industrialization took on a class con... | null |
21qt5m | why do we still take test and learn the same as how people did in the whole of history when technology has advanced so far? | [
{
"answer": "Learning has advanced a great deal since formal education began. There are some things that have become redundant, and some things may seem useless. For instance, why bother learning that there are 4 quarts in a gallon when I can just look it up? But many people, myself included, would argue that a... | null |
3hv6j3 | why is norway so horrendously expensive? | [
{
"answer": "It is difficult to transport anything to Norway because the land is very difficult to traverse and the sea can be incredibly rough. However though it does have large income from oil it also has an extremely generous social welfare system and that means high taxes and that means expensive goods and ... | null |
b3u5x9 | Prior to the rise of Ataturk, what made someone in the Ottoman Empire a “Turk”? | [
{
"answer": "Short answer: ethnicity and language (both in place well before the 19th century), plus some negative experiences with other nationalities (mostly in the 19th-20th centuries, triggering the rise of Turkish nationalism.) When you read the memoirs of the future political and military leaders of Turke... | null |
x3vdo | I hoped this isn't looked down upon in this subreddit, but I think that it's inevitable. Either way, I'm curious. How accurate are the age of empire games? | [
{
"answer": "Off the top of my head:\n\nAge of Empires 3 is completely made up.\n\n* Specifically, there were no Ottomans in the New World and no Russians except on the Pacific Coast\n\n* The Ottomans did [invade](_URL_1_) Malta in 1565. New Brunswick is a real place.\n\n* The [Sepoy Rebellion](_URL_2_) really ... | null |
7m9evl | if trees initially were non-biodegradable, and a fungus adapted to degrade them could the same be done for plastic? | [
{
"answer": "Sure and we are working on it. But its a slow process and we are producing literally thousands of tonnes of plastic every day. \n\nRecycle.",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": "Yes! Exactly this is being done, and micro-organisms have already been bred that (for example) love to eat spi... | null |
1g9n08 | what is software and how does it all work? | [
{
"answer": "That's a **very** broad question, so rather than go into detail, I'll just give some very high-level answers, and you can ask for clarification as needed.\n\n > how does software work?\n\nSoftware is simply a set of instructions for a computer to follow. The \"how\" is fairly complex, but it boils ... | null |
1u2p2s | why do different regions of usa sell varying octanes of gas? i can buy 85 octane in idaho, but can't find anything less than 87 in arizona. | [
{
"answer": "Elevation.\n\n\"Octane\" is a description of how much compression the fuel can be put under before it spontaneously ignites. The higher the octane number, the more pressure the fuel can take before it just ignites. An engine wants to take the fuel/air mixture as close to this point as possible (but... | null |
tat36 | what causes laziness? is it a physical condition? | [
{
"answer": "Recent studies show a link to [dopamine](_URL_0_) which is a brain chemical. ",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": "A lack of feeling of self-efficacy or not feeling that your actions are effective in producing the results you want. ",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": "I gue... | null |
214xta | What was the basis of the Nazi war machine? How did the managed economy of the Nazis work? | [
{
"answer": "The Nazis did not nationalize all off industry; now they forced Jews to sell their businesses for peanuts to non-Jewish owners, under the policy of Aryanization/Arisierung - that was in 1938.\n\nHowever they placed limited on what owners could do with their property, effectively the nazi state mana... | null |
1i628l | how to talk to children | [
{
"answer": "Use simple words, but otherwise talk to them the same way you'd talk to a regular person. If they don't understand, they'll let you know - they're kids.\n\nAlso, some people tend to talk to children like they're stupid. They're (usually) not. They just don't have your experience or command of the E... | null |
apsr8l | did thousands of people die trying 'food' that we now know is poisonous? | [
{
"answer": "Probably. And more than a few avoided food that we know is fine. Many people in Europe in the 1400s thought fruit was slightly poisonous and shouldn't be given to young children. Many people used to think tomatoes were toxic.",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": "Probably more like tens ... | null |
phqs3 | When people say some metals are "better" at conducting electricity what does this mean, do they conduct faster or more efficiently? | [
{
"answer": "Both. The conductivity of a material is the constant that relates the current per unit area to the applied electric field. σ = J/E. So using a more conductive material you could design a circuit that moves the same amount of current using a weaker field (more efficient) or moves more current at t... | null |
1f6i12 | 3g/4g. | [
{
"answer": "Awesome question!\n\nBasically, telecom companies install cell towers, which allow you to connect your phone with a wireless connection. Similar how you connect a laptop to a wifi access point, you connect your phone to a cell tower.\n\nIf you're close to the tower, and your phone is set up to conn... | null |
fjz4f | Does "smell" expand at different rate, due to surrounding temperature? | [
{
"answer": "Absolutely. When you smell something, molecules from whatever source you're smelling are in your nose. But they had get there from the source - they had move. As it happens, temperature is actually a measure of molecular motion; when things get hotter, the molecules are moving faster. And if the mo... | null |
2ejkw8 | Why did American snipers in World War 2 were given the Springfield 1903 when the M1 Garand uses the same type of ammunition and is Semi-Automatic? | [
{
"answer": "Short answer. Because that's what they had on hand. \n\nShort answer number 2. Because nobody had bothered developing the M1 as a sniper platform until late in the war.\n\nLong answer. Well, nobody was bothering with the M1 until late in the war. Seriously, that's about the gist of it. None of th... | null |
4bbtwe | why are asians buying real estate all over the world, causing a housing crisis in various cities? | [
{
"answer": "Because ownership of real property is, for the most part, a fundamental part of the country in which they are purchasing it in. \n\nThey do not have the ability - or confidence - to put their cash into a fixed asset that can reasonably be assured to keep its value in their own country, in particula... | null |
1kt2rm | why can we tell an airplane is pitched up when looking straight down the aisle. | [
{
"answer": "Cause of your ears. Your ears have, on the inside of your skull, structures in them that are filled with fluid. The insides of these structures are lined with little sensory nerves that \"tell you\" where the fluid is. Since gravity pulls the fluid downward, these organs tell you which way is down.... | null |
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