Question: Why some manufacturers can offer devices with insane GPS precision? I thought this was reserved for military.

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 Why some manufacturers can offer devices with insane GPS precision? I thought this was reserved for military.

"Military grade GPS precision" was (the absence/reversal of) an encryption algorithm being applied to the GPS signal to make it very slightly incorrect in a reversible manner. During one of the Bush administrations, don't quite remember which, the troops invading Iraq didn't have enough military GPS units to go around so their families started sending civilian ones in care packages. Since not knowing exactly where those troops were was a problem, the encryption algorithm was turned off. Since this proved to have significant economic benefits, it wasn't turned back on except around strategically important NATO locations such as powerplants and military bases. Precision has only improved since then, though I was under the impression centimetre precision wasn't available just yet so it may be those line marker robots combine GPS with some other positioning system. Visual recognition can give millimetre precision in real time in arbitrary surroundings while being powered by something that fits on a quadcopter, and is used by some vacuuming robots. Laser rangefinders and retroreflectors can give similar precision for measuring the distance between the Earth and the Moon. Source: hearsay.


Question: how does the gas/fuel industry work?

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 how does the gas/fuel industry work?

Gas stations receive daily shipments of gasoline, an usually only hold a day or two's worth of fuel underground at any given time. I used to run a gas station, and during the summer months my gas station would almost run out several times a day. That fuel comes from a rack somewhere near by. Think of it like a warehouse for gas, where a lot of fuel can be safely stored onsite away from people. There are about 5 racks within an hour of my old station, and they supplied every gas station in the area, regardless of what company is on the gas station. If something happens at the closest rack, then the second closest has to pick up the slack and do double duty to supply its normal stations and the other stations that are running out now. If the problem goes on for long enough, or affects multiple racks, like a hurricane in the gulf shitting down refineries, then stations will run out while waiting for their next shipment.


Question: How much does it really matter where I buy my gas? Are “name brand” gas stations any different?

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 How much does it really matter where I buy my gas? Are “name brand” gas stations any different?

Some "name brand" gas companies include fuel system cleaning additives, but you can buy an occasional bottle of fuel system cleaner at an auto parts store for pretty cheap, and it will do the same thing. Assuming that you use the correct octane level for your engine, fuel from just about any station should work similarly.


Question: How do they remove caffeine from drinks like coffee or tea? Are they not naturally caffeinated?

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 How do they remove caffeine from drinks like coffee or tea? Are they not naturally caffeinated?

No they are naturally caffeinated. There are four different ways to decaffeinate a drink. Methylene chloride processing - the chemical is a solvent for caffeine Ethyl acetate - this is called 'naturally decaffeinated' because the chemical is found in many fruits, same as above it is a solvent. CO2 - at very high temps and pressure the co2 reaches a supercritical state where it acts as both a fluid and gas and the smaller non polar caffeine molecules bond with the co2, this leave most of the flavor molecules as such having more flavor. Water processing - this is basically steeping the drink (typically coffee) and then is passed through a carbon filter to remove the caffeine in the liquid.


Question: Why are older fathers more likely to have daughters rather than sons?

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 Why are older fathers more likely to have daughters rather than sons?

I won't get into the genetics of it because people still don't understand that very well, but it is basically evolution. Sons historically required parents to be present because their reproductive future is based on their inheritance of family wealth and status while daughters have depended of physical appearance and maturity, which can only be controlled by aging. This means that sons are at a disadvantage if their parent parents die before reaching sexual maturity ( this is more likely since the parents are old) but daughters continue to age and at are no evolutionary loss. The sons of older parents did not get as good a shot at reproduction and therefore the genes responsible for this trait declined in number, leaving the gene for producing females as older parents to skyrocket in comparison. It's not just older fathers though. Mothers and fathers are equally responsible. In contrast to this, young parent are slightly more likely to have sons for the opposite reason, and about 54%. Percentage of having sons for parents over 40 is around 35% by the way.


Question: How do chemist do experiments with boiling water when there's no such thing as a "real" boiling point?

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 How do chemist do experiments with boiling water when there's no such thing as a "real" boiling point?

This is actually a really neat exploration of what we scientists call "confounding factors". These are details about the set-up of an experiment that can affect what our measurements say, but don't actually affect the underlying scientific principle. There is a "real" boiling point for water that depends only on the atmospheric pressure, but what a thermometer might say can depend on how well heat transfers into the water, where the thermometer is placed, or how well the water is stirred. A well-designed experiment has carefully considered these confounding factors, and controlled for them by either changing the apparatus (the actual device used in the experiment) or by the scientific model we use to interpret the results. On a more practical level, scientists account for these factors when discussing their experiments by specifying the conditions with great detail, so that if there are other scientists who must use other conditions, they can adjust their own experiments.


Question: What's happening in your brain when you miss someone?

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 What's happening in your brain when you miss someone?

I always liked the explanation Data from Star Trek TNG gave: "Even with humans, friendship is sometimes less an emotional response than more of a sense of familiarity. As I experienced certain sensory input patterns, my mental pathways have been accustomed to them. The input is eventually anticipated, and even missed when absent." ~ Lt. Commander Data on his friendship with Tasha Yar.


Question: How are atoms/molecules able to create a living organism?

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 How are atoms/molecules able to create a living organism?

My opinion but probably "we don't really know" is close to the truth. We don't have any issues talking about dead or alive when dealing with animals, insects, plants, bacteria etc. But as you get smaller and smaller and simpler and simpler, this transition from "non living" to "living" isn't as simple. Are viruses alive? Are prions alive? We know the constituent molecules that make up living organisms. We are also capable of synthesizing them in labs. We can also demonstrate that some of these molecules can be formed naturally in the environment. We even understand how these molecules function in living beings. But ultimately, we are not yet at a point where we can make a "living" organism from scratch. On another side of things, there is AI (and associated robotics). I believe there are some estimates that our best AI today is not equivalent to that of a cockroach (maybe we're close) At some point, we may have to answer the question of whether we can produce AI that is sentient. We might be closer to AI sentience compared to our ability to build a living organism out of atoms/molecules.


Question: How does Cholera force food and liquids through the body so quickly, and why can't nutrients be absorbed?

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 How does Cholera force food and liquids through the body so quickly, and why can't nutrients be absorbed?

Cholera is caused by a bacteria that nestles itself in the small intestine, which is where the majority of our nutrients are absorbed. Once in place, the Cholera bacteria starts excreting a Toxin. This toxin gets inside the cells of your intestine and causes them to burst, which in turn releases the cell’s innards into the intestine, of which a big part is salt (sodium). Water and sodium are ying and yang. Where sodium goes, water is sure to follow. So you’ve got a bunch of extra sodium being leaked into your intestine, which is pulling water out of your digestive track lining. This water is then excreted in the form of (in copious amounts) watery diarrhea.


Question: How does the space station replenish O2 after space walks?

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 How does the space station replenish O2 after space walks?

The airlock has an air pump which removes the majority of the air before the door is opened. Otherwise the sudden decompression wouldn’t allow any emergency stop if something was leaking. When the sensors indicate a lower amount of air inside they send up pressurized tanks in the resupply missions to refill.


Question: Why do doctors order blood tests before low risk surgeries?

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 Why do doctors order blood tests before low risk surgeries?

Blood tests tell a lot about your health and what could or is wrong with you, by having a blood test the doctor knows what could be wrong and it can help to know what drugs to give you if you need any while you are under. it can also help reveal any underlying conditions that would make the surgery dangerous. even a low-risk surgery has a risk so the more information a doctor has the better they can treat you if something goes wrong


Question: How can the way a prescription drug work be unknown?

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 How can the way a prescription drug work be unknown?

It's actually not all that surprising - in many cases it can be a lot easier to demonstrate that a drug works than it is to figure out exactly how it works. The former essentially involves giving the drug to a large enough number of people with condition X and seeing how this treatment group compares with a control group. The latter is...complicated. Most drugs function by binding to some biomolecule, which is often a protein (for anti-infective drugs this will be a biomolecule belonging to the bacteria/virus/whatever, whereas for other drugs it'll be a human biomolecule). This binding can do various things depending on the specific situation, like blocking the activity of an enzyme (which then increases the concentration of something that enzyme normally destroys, or prevents the formation of something that enzyme normally synthesizes) or serving as a substrate for the enzyme to synthesize another molecule that has some physiological effect. It can often be incredibly difficult to figure out which proteins/biomolecules are involved here. The human body contains something like 20,000 proteins alone (unmodified, not accounting for the modifications that occur like the addition of sugar chains), which are present in slightly different forms in a very wide range of concentrations depending on numerous factors (e.g., age, sex, race, genetics, health, disease state, tissue type). It's very challenging to identify all these proteins, their relative concentrations over time under various states, and functional significance from biological samples (there are several subfields of science devoted to this, many ending in "-omics"). Nor is it always clear how these proteins interact to form the biological pathways that keep us alive, or how a particular drug fits in and exerts its various effects. This can be further complicated where the drug interacts with especially complex systems such as the brain, the detailed functioning of which is still very much unknown. Some information can be inferred from things like animal models, in vitro tests, or experimental observations of the binding between a drug and particular biomolecule target (e.g., by crystal structures, solution structures, or fluorescence imaging), but it can be very tough to determine the exact mechanism of action in some cases. Depending on the drug you're referring to, I suspect that there is some theory/evidence existing about its mode of action, e.g., which biochemical pathway it's thought to interfere with. It might not yet have been comprehensively figured out...but there's probably some clues out there somewhere.


Question: Why does Oxygen displacement (via inert gas) knock people out in seconds but people can hold their breath much longer?

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 Why does Oxygen displacement (via inert gas) knock people out in seconds but people can hold their breath much longer?

Normally when you breath in air, the pressure of the oxygen in your lungs causes it to enter your blood stream and bond with the hemoglobin which carries it around and then when it gets back to your lungs it gives off its higher level of CO2 to the air in your lungs which has a lower level of CO2 When you breath in pure nitrogen it works like the high CO2 levels leaving your blood to join the low CO2 levels in the air, except that its all the oxygen in your blood leaving to join the low oxygen level air. The pure nitrogen in your lungs effectively sucks the oxygen out of your blood stream! Normally you burn through oxygen at some fixed rate and when the CO2 builds up high enough your lungs begin to burn and make you need to take another breath, but the nitrogen pulls the oxygen out of your blood **wayyyyy** quicker than you would normally use it. After 30 seconds you have basically no oxygen left in any of your blood because its all left to play with the nitrogen, and you don't realize because your CO2 levels never built up so your body never warned you you were about to die. You'd likely pass out after 15-20 seconds. After 60 seconds you have brain damage due to severe lack of oxygen(like wayyyyy less oxygen than drowning) And after a couple minutes you're dead and so is anyone who came in to retrieve you.


Question: Why is the formula for Coca-cola a secret? Can't they analyse a sample and determine the amounts of each ingredient?

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 Why is the formula for Coca-cola a secret? Can't they analyse a sample and determine the amounts of each ingredient?

[ URL_0 ]( URL_0 ) An interesting case related to this. A top Coca Cola exec tried to sell the formula to Pepsi for mad cash. Pepsi snitched em up to Coca Cola and the FBI immediately. The messaging around that which Pepsi put out was that they wanted to play fair. But what would Pepsi gain from producing a product identical to coca cola? Nothing. It would be tantamount to confessing that Coca Cola was making a superior product all along and demolish their product differentiation and their unique selling point that they were not coca cola. Honestly I think the whole secret recipe thing is just really good marketing. Makes this sugar water look like some kind of miracle elixir.


Question: Is there a specific psychological reason people don't like hearing their voice?

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 Is there a specific psychological reason people don't like hearing their voice?

(I’m not 100% sure this is the correct answer) It’s not that we don’t like to hear our own voice, but rather, we don’t like to hear recordings of our own voice. Every time we speak, we hear our voice. But we also hear it through the vibration of our skull, which makes it sound deeper than it really is. But in our mind, this is how our voice really sounds. When we hear a recording, we hear our real voice. To everyone else, it sounds normal. But to us, it sounds really high pitched. This is because we are used to hearing ourself with a much deeper voice than we really have. Something similar happens with mirrors. We are used to seeing ourself with a mirror, which flips left and right. Now, I should point out, nobody has a completely symmetrical face. But for most people, you don’t really notice the asymmetry. So, we are really used to seeing our own reflection. This means that any small change to our face would be really obvious to us. It also means that when we see our face how it really looks - and not flipped, like in a mirror - we immediately notice all the asymmetries and think we don’t look good in the photo. This is why many phones use a flipped image for the selfie camera


Question: VPNs. Are they for people to do illegal stuff on? How do they work? Why would I want one or not?

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 VPNs. Are they for people to do illegal stuff on? How do they work? Why would I want one or not?

A VPN can be used to form a private tunnel trough the internet for protecting the data you need to transfer. Imagine you are making a video game and your team is spread around the world in different countries. Your team members need access to the game source code, which is of course a tightly guarded secret so your competitors cannot steal your cool new groundbreaking video game. Making that source code available to the internet, even if it's protected by a password, is dangerous. There's a possibility of someone cracking your password or intercepting the data as someone on your team accesses it. What you want is that only people inside your private network can access the source code. You cannot have a physical private network because your team is not in the same location, so you create a Virtual Private Network or VPN for short. By having access to your virtual network, your team can safely access the source code trough the VPN tunnel without anyone being able to intercept it. Edit: Thanks u/derpdederpmustang


Question: How would an interplanetary civilization measure time?

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 How would an interplanetary civilization measure time?

If they have FTL travel without timey-wimey effects, they'd probably use the standard time on the home planet. If multi-racial, they would probably decide which species' system is used through war or diplomacy. If their FTL travel DOES come with time dilation, then they would probably not be traveling to and from frequently enough for them to use a standard system. Any communication would take years just to send a message and get a reply. Any dealings between colonies would probably work on an "It'll get there when it gets there" system.


Question: What is the difference between Auschwitz 1, 2, and 3?

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 What is the difference between Auschwitz 1, 2, and 3?

These three camps were part of the Auschwitz camp network but they were built at different times (Auschwitz 1 was built first, then 2, then 3). Auschwitz 2 was a combined concentration camp and "extermination" camp (where they committed mass murder), and Auschwitz 3 specifically provided labor to a chemical company called IG Farben.


Question: Why is cannibalism so bad for our health?

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 Why is cannibalism so bad for our health?

Diseases often have trouble jumping from one species to another. The closer related to you your food is (evolution wise) the smaller the gap the disease needs to jump. This is why eating bushmeat from apes is more risky than eating some less closely related animals. The above is true especially for viruses. Parasites are another problem. One thing that has been big in the news are prions. Prions aren't really living things at all. They are just certain types of proteins which cause the proteins inside of you to become like them by their mere presence. In particular the prions everyone is worried about are ones that are inside your brain and nerves. If you eat another humans brain who has such a prion disease you will become infected yourself. Normally this is not such a big deal as people aren't in the habit of eating each others brains. However in cultures where cannibalism was practiced, such disease can become a problem. One example is Kuru also called the laughing diseases which used to be found among cannibals in places like New Guinea. Another example is mad cow diseases which became a problem when stupid people got into the habit of feeding cows the ground down remains (including brains) of other cows. In fact mad cow became such a big problem that enough cows with it ended up in the food chain to possibly infect humans despite the species gap. Creutzfel-Jacobs is what the disease is called that many think is what happened if you eat cannibalistic cow brains. The TL;DR of all this is that if you plan to eat humans make sure to only pick healthy looking ones, stay away from their brains and avoid eating any known cannibalis who seem to have the shakes.


Question: Why are different people's "attention span"/ the amount of time the commit to something different? And how can I improve mine?

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 Why are different people's "attention span"/ the amount of time the commit to something different? And how can I improve mine?

Turn off your phone, and pick up a book. Read until you've finished the book. Turn your phone back on. If you choose to live in a world of constant interruption, you are teaching your brain to agilely jump from topic to topic every 15 seconds. This gives you a 15 second attention span. If that's not what you want, stop training your brain that way. It will be hard, because a lot of advertisers make a lot of money taking advantage of your short attention span. Who's the boss of you? You or them? That's a question you have to answer for yourself.


Question: How does music and copyright work on platforms such as Twitch, YouTube, and movies?

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 How does music and copyright work on platforms such as Twitch, YouTube, and movies?

There is no such thing as plagiarism in real life. Whether you give credit or not is completely irrelevant as to whether your use of a copyrighted work is infringing. Either you have the right to use it, in which case you don't need to provide credit (unless that's part of your license agreement), or you don't and its infringing. Whether you make money from your use of the work is also irrelevant. Either you have the right to use the work, in which case you can make money with it, or you don't and its infringing. "Fair use" is a concept in copyright law that covers a handful of very specific situations. There is only one of these situations that a normal person could ever find themselves in and that's fair use to review a work. If you're making a video in which you review something else you can give a description of that thing and use very brief snippets of it in your video. What the internet thinks is "parody" is actually satire. Parody requires that your mockery of the work be for political purposes. Satire is any other form of mockery. Its very, very difficult to create a mockery of a commercial work in such a way that it would be considered a parody. Satire is explicitly not protected as fair use. People are able to upload videos to the big video hosting sites because those sites have agreements in place with the major content publishers concerning what can be uploaded and how that content can be monetized. Typically if you upload content that you don't have the right to use then the video gets to stay up, but any money it makes goes to the rights-holder. Twitch's agreements allow content producers to have music playing in the background of their livestreams so long as it is incidental to whatever they're streaming. However, the videos of those livestreams get muted. If you want to be able to monetize someone else's copyrighted work on youtube you can do so, but you need to get a license to use the work (which means paying the rights-holder). There are a couple of big rights clearing houses that handle licensing. ASCAP and BMI are the main two for music, but a lot of smaller ones have popped up recently. Things like movies and TV shows typically aren't licensed to individuals.


Question: How were the values of constants such as e and pi historically determined, and why do these constants find themselves in so many formulae?

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 How were the values of constants such as e and pi historically determined, and why do these constants find themselves in so many formulae?

As you probably know, pi is intimately connected with circles. Whether you regard pi as the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter or the ratio of its area to the square of its radius, etc., pi can be seen to be connected with circles. It should come as no surprise that you can find pi whenever you're working with circles. Circles come up all the time in math even if you have to squint pretty hard to find the circle. For example, many of the occurrences of pi have to do with trigonometric functions like sine, cosine, and tangent. These functions can be thought of as relating an angle (which is really part of a circle under a loose definition of "part" and "circle") to the ratio of sides of a right triangle having that angle. These functions come up in geometry and trigonometry, of course, but they also come up in waves. (For some motivation here, look at the graph of the sine function). Waves are very important in physics for a number of reasons, notably electromagnetic radiation. (Whether this is really a wave or a particle or both or neither is the topic of a whole other eli5, but suffice it to say that even in answering this question properly you come to things called wave functions.) f(x) = e^x is a unique function because the "slope" of the function (technically the derivative if you know a little calculus, if not imagine drawing a straight line that just touches the curve at one point, almost bouncing off, and taking the slope of that with rise over run) at a point is equal to the value of the function at that point. This is one of the reasons e crops up everywhere because it represents exponential growth. When the rate at which something is changing is related to the amount of something there is at a given time, look for an exponent. Of course lots of numbers could be used for an exponent, but because e^x's slope equals its value (rather than being proportional to the value like 2\^x, for example) e is often how mathematicians will write the equation. Since a^x == e^(ln[a] x), for any positive a, any time you see an exponent you could rewrite it in terms of e. (For an explanation of this fact consider the rules of exponents and that ln(x) is the inverse function of e^x, so e^(ln x) == x and ln(e^x)== x). Another reason the two numbers come up so often is actually a deep connection between trigonometric functions and e^x. In order to understand this relationship properly you need to understand Taylor series. A Taylor series is an infinite sum. By that I mean the sum has an infinite number of terms, not that the value of it is infinite. It turns out that if the things you're adding shrink fast enough you can add an infinite number of things and still get a finite number. Anyway, what a Taylor series does is approximate a function by an infinite sum of polynomial terms. Intuitively, you can approximate a function around some value, a, by looking at the value of the function at a, f(a). This works for that point, but probably not for points near a like a+0.000001. To get a little better, you can approximate a function by a straight line passing through f(a) but having the same "slope" at that point. To get a little bit better still you could approximate the function by a parabola, g, which has the same value at a, the same slope at a, and the same slope of the slope at a. That is g(a) = f(a), g'(a) = f'(a), and g''(a) = f''(a). You can keep this process going forever and you do a better and better job of approximating the function. Ok, where does e come into this? Well, back before we mentioned that the slope of e^x at x is simply e^x. That means when we were taking the slope and the slope of the slope, etc., we kept getting things that look like e^x. I didn't mention it above but in order to use all of those slopes you have to scale by some constants that don't really matter for our purposes at the moment. In any case, e^x 's self similarity means that the Taylor series for it at x= 0 looks like this: x^0/0! + x^1/1! + x^2/2! + x^3/3!... which is one of the prettiest Taylor series you can have. All right, that's e, but what does that have to do with sine and cosine? Well, sine and cosine have similar properties to e^x. The slope function of sin(x) isn't sin(x), but it's cos(x). And the slope function of cos(x)? Well, that's just -sin(x). This means that the slope function of the slope function of sin(x) is -sin(x). It's not quite self-similarity, but it's pretty close to it. Because sin(0) = 0, the value at zero of the slope of the slope of sin(x) is also 0, and this holds true for any even number of "slope function of"s. You can make a similar argument for cos(x) but with odd numbers. Well, this means that the Taylor series for sin(x) around x=0 ends up being x/1! -x^3/3! + x^5/5! -x^7/7! + x^9/9!... and cos(x)'s ends up as 1/0! - x^2/2! +x^4/4!... Well, if you squint you might already be able to see a connection between sin(x), cos(x) and e^x, but we'll drive forwards a bit more. I'll assume you're familiar with i, the imaginary unit, the square root of -1. Some people struggle with imaginary numbers because they don't show up too obviously in ordinary life, but, believe it or not, they're there. You just have to look for them. If you don't like imaginary numbers you probably won't like what happens next, but it's pretty cool. It turns out we can make sense of something like e^(ix) even though that seems a little strange. How can we make sense of it? Taylor series! e^(ix) == (ix)^0/0! + (ix)^1/1! + (ix)^2/2! + (ix)^3/3!... A little bit of algebra will let us factor that series into something like (1/0! - x^2/2! +x^4/4!...) + (ix/1! -ix^3/3! + ix^5/5! -ix^7/7! + ix^9/9!... ) == cos(x) + i sin(x). Whoa, that was crazy! It is from this fact that we have e^(i pi) = -1 since e^(i pi) == cos(pi) + i sin(pi) = -1 + 0 = -1. One of my favourite surprising occurences of pi is in the probability distribution for the standard normal, or Gaussian, distribution. This distribution is the famous bell curve you may have heard about. The Central Limit Theorems in statistics tell us that the sum of lots of little distributions approximate a normal distribution if you sum enough things. It's this theorem that helps explain why things like height of males or height of females within a population tends to follow something that looks like a bell curve. When you try to get a formula for this magical distributions others converge to you end up working with infinite series again and for detailed reasons that probably can't be eli5'd e pops up again. Through this e, pi pops up too! Now we have the circle constant showing up for population structure statistics. That's pretty weird at first glance. Now for how they could be calculated. One way to calculate pi is to draw a circle, measure its diameter, measure is circumference, and divide the circumference by the diameter. This works well enough for getting an approximation like 3.14 but it's tough to get an approximation too much closer than that because you're relying on how well you can draw a perfect circle and how well you can measure. Another way pi was calculated, historically, is a method famously associated with Archimedes. Imagine drawing a triangle with all sides and angles equal. A polygon with all sides and angles equal is called a regular polygon. Now imagine that the triangle has its points lying on a circle. We'll call this a circle circumscribing the triangle. It may not be obvious that you can draw a circle like that, but you can. Now imagine the same circle, but we'll draw a triangle around the circle with the edges of the triangle just touching the circle. Now we'll say the circle is inscribing the triangle. If you think a little bit, it should be clear that the perimeter of the inner triangle is less than the perimeter (or circumference) of a circle. Similarly, the perimeter of the outer triangle is greater than the circumference. It turns out you can do the same thing for regular polygons with any number of sides. The more sides you have, the closer the shapes will look to a circle, and the closer their perimeters will be, but the circle that's inscribing one and circumscribing the other will always have a circumference in between their perimeters. There's a fairly nice way to calculate the perimeter of a regular polygon and the diameter of its inscribing/circumscribing circle without doing any measuring. That means we can pick some really big number of sides and get two perimeters that are very close together. Once we've done that, we know that the circumference is somewhere in between. Now we just divide the estimated circumference by the calculated diameter and we have an estimate for pi. This method was popular for over 1000 years, but it was eventually beat out by methods involving infinite series (which probably have something to do with circles if you squint hard enough and look for trigonometric functions). Human knowledge of e is a lot younger than human knowledge of pi. We've only known about e since somewhere around the 1600s. Because of this, there's less history about how it was calculated. There are lots of ways to calculate it just like there are lots of ways to calculate pi. Almost all of them look at infinite series in some way. If you've been paying attention you might see that you could use a Taylor series for e^x (around 0) evaluated at x =1 to calculate e. This method works reasonably well and it's relatively simple so it's a good way to think about it. There are lots of other ways to calculate it, though, and I'm guessing this wasn't the first way it was done, but maybe.


Question: How do we know what the structure of molecules look like? It's not like we can check everything under a microscope, can we?

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 How do we know what the structure of molecules look like? It's not like we can check everything under a microscope, can we?

There are quite a few methods! Mass spectroscopy helps to determine how molecules are broken up and their weight, which can be used to piece things together. X-ray crystallography determines the location of atoms directly. Model calculations can be used for structure prediction/reactivity. Infrared spectroscopy tells you about bonds. NMR spectroscopy determines the environment of specific atoms in a molecule. There are more methods as well but those are a few of the main ones :)


Question: What is a Chaos Theory and how does it work?

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 What is a Chaos Theory and how does it work?

If you were to try and model how the planets move around the solar system, you would find that you could create a very accurate model despite not necessarily having perfect information about everything in the solar system. There's a bunch of asteroids floating around, the mass of the planets and the sun are close approximations, etc. But even if your info is off a little bit, all that really does is change the final result an equally tiny amount. This is how we tend to think things work - a small change to initial conditions results in a roughly equally small change to the end results. Not all systems behave this way however - take a [Double Pendulum]( URL_0 ) for example. In the gif, you see three double pendulums of identical construction, starting from nearly the same position - so close in fact that you really can't tell the difference. But very quickly that initial difference in position causes each double pendulum to take drastically different trajectories. This wild difference is the result of the starting position being off just a teeny tiny amount. A system like this is highly sensitive to initial conditions. This is a "Chaotic" system.


Question: how did water appear in Earth and how did we end up with such vast amount of it?

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 how did water appear in Earth and how did we end up with such vast amount of it?

Water is Hydrogen + Oxygen, two of the most abundant things on Earth. Much of the Earths crust is made up of Oxygen, bonded to other things like Iron to make minerals. Since a lot of Oxygen existed on the primeval Earth, and Hydrogen is the most abundant thing in the Universe, having water was inevitable. So where did it come from? Either the Earth was formed from material that contained a lot of Oxygen and Water, or the early Earth was bombarded with Comets and Asteroids that contained Oxygen and Water.


Question: If the phases of the moon are due to the Earths shadow, why is the half moon a straight line/perfect semi circle, instead of a rounded shadow?

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 If the phases of the moon are due to the Earths shadow, why is the half moon a straight line/perfect semi circle, instead of a rounded shadow?

Unless you're looking at a lunar eclipse, the part of the moon that's not lit up is not in the Earth's shadow, it's in the moon's shadow. The bright portion is facing the sun, and is therefore illuminated, and the dark portion is facing away from the sun, and therefore not illuminated.


Question: Why is the meat of different animals so different in color? e.g. beef and chicken (or, taking it one step further, salmon)

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 Why is the meat of different animals so different in color? e.g. beef and chicken (or, taking it one step further, salmon)

it's a mixture of factors. Redness is determined by a protein myoglobin; red meat animals like cows tend to have higher concentrations of myoglobin. These are animals that generally have a low of slow-twitch muscle because they utilize muscles for a long period of time but without any rapid bursts White meat animals like chicken have less myoglobin because they have fast-twitch muscles primarily. They tend to move and stand a lot less, and when they do, it's in quick bursts. Fat composition can also affect appearance of meat. You might have seen pictures of really expensive cuts of beef like wagyu or kobe, which are filled with white streaks everywhere, and might have a slightly more pink color. This is because they tend to have a higher fat content which is apparent in the meat. And diet, outside of providing fat and muscle sources, can be a big factor in the coloration of the meat. Wild salmon are pink because of their diet of shrimp and krill, which contributes Astaxanthin, a molecule which gives that pinkish color. In fact, farmed salmon, which may not be fed a shrimp/krill rich diet, generally have some variety of greyish-white color, and are colored pink to look more natural.


Question: Why and how are crows so intelligent?

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 Why and how are crows so intelligent?

Crows are not "so intelligent", compared to people or whales. However, when compared to other birds they are much smarter than the average bird. Birds have a small brain (to save weight) and much of their brain is taken up with hardware control of their wings (because flying is hard to do). A bird that's evolved a smarter brain is unusual, and that makes crows unusual for birds.


Question: Why do some elderly people move their mouth a lot, as if they're chewing on something?

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</answer>
 Why do some elderly people move their mouth a lot, as if they're chewing on something?

The chewing motion is found almost exclusively in people who have lost teeth. On rare occasions, certains tranquilisers or antidepressants may cause a side effect called tardive dyskinesia, an inability to control what are ordinarily voluntary movements. These movements are as likely to involve the nose as the mouth or jaws, though. In most cases, the chewing motion is a neuromuscular response to the lack of teeth: an attempt by the oral cavity to achieve some from equilibrium. In particular, sufferers can't position their upper and lower jaws properly. With a full set of ivories, the teeth act as a stop to keep the jaws in place.


Question: How do investors/traders profit from short selling? Ie. profit from the drop of value in public companies' share price.

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 How do investors/traders profit from short selling? Ie. profit from the drop of value in public companies' share price.

Someone short-selling with a brokerage usually shortcuts the process, but the basic transaction is this: The short seller borrows a share of stock, promising to return a share of stock at a later date. They then sell it. Eventually, they will have to re-acquire a share of the same stock and return it to the original owner, but if the price drops in the interim, they make money on the difference between the price they sold it for and the price they have to buy it back for.


Question: Why don’t plants get dusty?

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 Why don’t plants get dusty?

I’m pretty sure that even real indoor plants do accumulate some dust; at least mine do - although they don’t accumulate it as much as other surfaces. The plastic or fabric leaves on fake plants may have a surface that attracts or retains dust, due to stickiness or static electricity. Also, real plants do move slightly on their own, to follow the sun - either daily or seasonally. This slight movement might be enough to reduce the amount of dust that accumulates.


Question: What is the anti-trust paradox?

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 What is the anti-trust paradox?

Once upon a time local retail stores dotted your town. You went to an electronics store for TV's, the grocery store for food, and the general store for toilet paper. Each individual store has it's own physical store, management, and supply chain adding overhead and cost to the customer. Then Wal-Mart happens. They buy one big building and stock it with food, toilet paper and electronics. In a single trip you can get buffalo wings, beer, a 60" flat screen, shit paper AND the toilet for the ultimate SuperBowl Thunderbox. Because they're so big, they can negotiate lower prices with their manufacturers. Because their stores carry such variety, they can fill a single truck with that day's goods from their warehouses instead of partially unloading 6 different trucks from 6 different suppliers. This cuts labor and overhead expense. That means you can buy the exact same things at Wal-Mart a drastically lower price than you could from the local guys. Cheaper goods is good for society right? The problem is that their business model only works BECAUSE they're big. If you want to compete with them for the lowest price on shit paper, you would have to build an equivalent amount of warehouses and retail stores with a world-class logistics chain before you even make your first sale. It's such a large up-front investment that it would be virtually impossible to start a proper rival. Since the other guys can't compete, Wal-Mart puts them out of business. Now Walmart can double their prices on toilet paper, knowing there's no way someone could beat them in a proper competition. That's a monopoly, and that's bad. Benevolent monopolies are good, but they are also a fantasy. If someone owns 100% of a space, they're going to maximize their profits. Competition by definition breeds inefficiencies, but it also serves as a check against both businesses. They each have to provide an equivalent level of service for an equivalent level of price to keep justifying their value to the consumer. If left un-checked, monopolies like Amazon, Disney, or AT & T can make it impossible to compete against them making it possible to profit from hurting society.


Question: how was asbestos created, why is it dangerous?

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 how was asbestos created, why is it dangerous?

Asbestos is a natural material, it is mined from the earth. It is dangerous because when it breaks, it realeases extreamly fine fibres that get stuck in your lungs and your body can't remove them. When too much builds up in your lungs, it causes all kinds of trouble, most commun being mesothelioma, which is a type of cancer.


Question: If you are you because you got half your DNA from each of your parents, why are older/younger siblings not physical carbon copies of each other?

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 If you are you because you got half your DNA from each of your parents, why are older/younger siblings not physical carbon copies of each other?

The half I get from one parent (say my mother), is not equal to the half my siblings got from my mother. Say my mother has {a,b,c,d} I could have gotten {a,b} from her, while my sister got {a,c}, and my brother got {b,d}. similarly for genes from my father, and you get completely different genomes for all of us.


Question: Why do US politicians consider Russia such a huge threat?

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 Why do US politicians consider Russia such a huge threat?

For decades, the Russian-led Soviet Union was a huge threat to the US and the Western World. This belief is still strong. Since Russia recovered from the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia is actively working against the US-led World Order. The US and its allies believe in a unipolar world. The US as the strongest nation to lead the others and make everybody adopt representative liberal democracy, capitalism and free markets. For this, the US created and supported several international organisations like the UN, the IMF, etc. Russia believes in a multi-polar world with several equal leaders. So they don't want the US to meddle in what Russia considers *her* corner of the world. Russia has little regard for Western rules like territorial integrity and has often acted militarily against its neighbours like Georgia or Ukraine. This is the general animosity between them. Now for some current issues: Some of Russia's neighbours are US allies (for example Estonia and Latvia), US politicians are concerned that Russia might act against them. This would either result in War with Russia, or the US abandoning its Allies which would seriously harm US influence in the World. Also, Russia and the US have mutually exclusive aims in the Syrian Civil War. The US wants to remove Assad, Russia wants to keep him in power. The US accuses Russia of specifically bombing non-Islamist rebels and civilians, thus committing war crimes. Lastly, there are current allegations and indications that Russia might have interfered in the last Presidential Election of the USA and might do the same in other Western elections. There is also the whole mess of the ties to Russia of President Trump and members of his administration. Some US politicians are scared that Russia might have blackmailing material against President Trump, or even that he might be conspiring with them. TL;DR: Russia is the main country defying the US right now and is alleged to have meddled in their elections. Edit: Guys, please don't downvote other comments because you disagree with them. /u/aescolanus wrote a clear comment without any personal attacks, or other reasons to downvote him. He didn't break any subreddit rule. If you disagree with him, do so via comment. If you think he states something wrong, ask for sources and/or disagree. Disagreement on political topics without hate or personal attacks is rare enough on Reddit. Don't downvote it into oblivion! So please remove your downvotes for his comment, and leave him an upvote for a well-written, thematically relevant comment.


Question: Why is the national debt in Japan so high?

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 Why is the national debt in Japan so high?

The Japanese have been fighting a deflation-driven recession since the early 90s. What that means is that people spend less money, the economy shrinks, and people get laid off. This makes people fearful, so they spend even less money, and the economy shrinks more, and more people get laid off. It's a viscous circle. We know the best way to break out of that circle is for the government to step in and jump start the economy by: (1) spending lots and lots of money, and (2) loaning money out to anyone who wants it. The government keeps spending and spending until the economy gets health again. This takes some will power, because there's a strong temptation to take the foot off the gas too early. The problem is that the Japanese keep doing it wrong. They spend some money, not enough to jump start the economy. So they end up with the worst possible outcome - huge debts and an economy that won't get better. And then they try it again and fail for the same reason. And then again, and again, and again. To add to this, Japan has very stable debt as A. most of it is domestically owned by Japanese citizens and B. Japan, like the U.S has a good credit rating


Question: what is currency depreciation? Why does china do it and why will it help them undermine tariffs?

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 what is currency depreciation? Why does china do it and why will it help them undermine tariffs?

I'll try to answer this as best as I can. If anyone spots a mistake here and there, feel free to correct me! *deep breath* So here goes. There is a difference between currency depreciation and currency undervaluation. **Currency Depreciation** refers to the lowering of the price of a currency relative to another, through natural market variations (Example: More tourists from China wants to go to the US, and therefore need to buy USD. The value of USD goes up, and China's RMB goes down). **Currency Undervaluation** refers to the artificial act of either 1. purposefully controlling the exchange rate to be at a cheap/low rate through Federal Reserves, or 2. the natural demand for the currency is at a lower level than what it should be, for whatever reason. I believe your question refers to currency undervaluation, as you mention the US trade deficit and China's position towards tariffs. In China's case, for the past 50 or so years, the RMB has been at a semi-fixed rate relative to the USD. This stems from the fact that China was a developing country during its initial "opening up". The artificially maintained low exchange rate was internationally approved as part of the policies that encourage developing economies to grow. The low currency value makes the goods that China makes cheaper relative to the US, encouraging demand in both US and China for Chinese goods. This allows the economy to develop and "boost" trade output. In the current era, China is arguably no longer a developing economy; their manufacturing scale surpasses the US, and we have been seeing them shift away from a manufacturing-based economy to a more tertiary (finance, IT, services) sector economy. However, this does not mean that China is producing less manufactured goods. The low price of Chinese goods has instead meant that the US cannot compete with China in terms of of sheer output and manufacturing cost+efficiency. Therefore, China has been accused of exploiting their low currency value to "dump" goods and making sure that their gross output in terms of trade has somewhere to go (the US market), when they are in fact no longer considered a developing economy. Tariffs, which are additional costs for manufacturers/importers, will ensure that Chinese goods will become more expensive in the US. This increased price of Chinese goods will theoretically "offset" the low-value of the RMB, bringing the total price of a good back in line with what the US believes it is worth. The administration hopes that this will help US manufacturing regain their competitiveness, as the total price of Chinese goods will now be higher, or at least similar to, the price of US goods. Snap forward to 2018, we now see that China is actually trying to increase their currency value (Currency Valuation) in order to encourage the RMB to become an internationally supported and traded currency. However, the trade war with the US has put that temporarily on hold, as increasing the RMB's value right now would mean that Chinese goods are EVEN MORE expensive after the tariffs, which would be a major blow to China's manufacturing industry. The US has been calling for China to raise their RMB value for a long time, as that can better reflect the true value of Chinese products. Unfortunately, even if the Chinese government is willing, the current administration's tariffs mean that they cannot raise the RMB as that would destabilise their own economy too much.


Question: What are left/right political views?

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 What are left/right political views?

It started in the French Revolution in the late 1700s. During meetings, anti-monarchists sat on the left side of a room and monarchists sat on the right. That turned into a metaphor for all sorts of different viewpoints, not always consistently. Usually right-wing is associated with establishment, military, religion, inherited wealth, and conservatism, and left-wing with radicalism, diplomacy, secularism, working-class, and progressivism, but not always.