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1lmmix | how did wwii flak guns know when to explode? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1lmmix/eli5_how_did_wwii_flak_guns_know_when_to_explode/ | {
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"They have a pressure sensor built-in that knows when the height is right.",
"There were also AA shells that contained proximity fuses that were so top secret that the US only shot them over water, so they couldn't be recovered and examined by the enemy.\n\nEdit: _URL_0_",
"First they'd estimate or determine the aircraft's altitude. Sometimes this came from prior encounters (*they come in at 15,000 over those hills*), or [radar](_URL_6_) if the aircraft passed within tracking distance of a station, or [special scopes](_URL_4_) or sheer guesswork (shooting from the hip, so to speak).\n\nThey'd feed this information into [the director](_URL_5_), an electromechanical computer which the bigger guns could use to automatically compute changes in elevation or speed, and it would predict the aircraft's position based on the movement of tracking instruments. \n\nThey'd use the output to set the fuses (some were based on [atmospheric pressure](_URL_3_), some were based on [proximity](_URL_2_), some were based on [literal fuses that burned at a set rate and exploded after a set time](_URL_7_)) and they'd fire off the shells.\n\nIf the math was right, the shells would reach a point close to the aircraft and explode, sending shrapnel out in all directions, ideally causing damage to critical systems or personnel.\n\nIt had a relatively low success rate. Only [36 percent of aircraft that came in range of shipboard AA guns was destroyed](_URL_1_), despite firing [tens of thousands of rounds](_URL_0_)."
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"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proximity_fuze"
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"http://whitect321.webs.com/ww2facts.htm",
"http://www.history.navy.mil/library/online/antiaircraft_action_summary_wwii.htm#II",
"http://articles.baltimoresun.com/1993-01-11/news/1993011049_1_fuse-proximity-smart-weapons",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuze#Barometric_fuzes",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Height_finder",
"http://www.antiaircraft.org/directors.htm",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radar_in_World_War_II",
"http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/596138/time-fuze"
]
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pj9g6 | what does " < subject > 101" mean? | How does this numbering system work? What does each individual digit convey?
Please provide examples of courses numbered something other than 101. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/pj9g6/eli5_what_does_subject_101_mean/ | {
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"The 100 conveys that it is a first year class, the final 1 represents that it is also the first class in that curriculum - e.g. \"Economics 101\" would be the first freshman economics course. This numbering system isn't universal, but it's usually what is represented in media.\n\nMore informally, it just means a general introduction to a topic.",
"If you see it outside of a college/university context then it's just a colloquial way of expressing that something is a basic explanation for or introduction to a complex subject."
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9d0p5p | why a muscle twitch almost always stops when you look at it. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9d0p5p/eli5_why_a_muscle_twitch_almost_always_stops_when/ | {
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"Tremors can be distinguished by whether they happen when you are actively doing something (action) or not (rest). A rest tremor can go away when you try to touch it or move the area to see if you can look at it. I've had a rest tremor in my shoulder since I was a teenager and it does what you say. It only appears when I'm resting or not raising my arms. I've had it described as random nerve firing from an injury. \nWhen you focus on the area, you flood the area with nerve signals, so the background noise can go away.",
"I disagree entirely. I can sit and watch a muscle twitch for a long time.\n\n(however, I don't get them very often)"
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54yiiw | how to drive a manual. | I know how to drive manual but I don't exactly know how to explain certain things like why exactly does the engine stall and why you need to go a certain gear depending on the speed and what the clutch does exactly. Please explain in simple terms for most people to understand. Thank you! | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/54yiiw/eli5how_to_drive_a_manual/ | {
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"I'll give it a shot. \n\nClutch- it is the go-between the engine and transmission. When the clutched is fully released it allows the engine to spin free of the transmission. As you engage the clutch you engage the link between the engine and transmission. You can kill the engine because you stop it from spinning as the transmission is not spinning. \n\nYou select gears depending on where you want the engine's rpm's to be at. To high of rpm's you will blow the engine, to low you stall or won't generate enough power.",
"I'll try the gear Part. A Motor has a Fixed Output power =Turns per Minute • angular momentum. For now lets assume A Motor it self cant really Change either. \nAngular momentum is Force Times length. With a Long lever you need less Force.\nTurns per Minute is Just what it Sounds like, how many Times per Minute does something complete a full Turn.\nNow lets assume the Motor is turning a gear, and that gear is connected to another gear on a wheel by a Chain. Just like in a very Simple Bike.\nThe Motor turns the 1st gear at its inherent Turns per Minute and angular momentum. At the outside of the gear where it connects to the Chain you Can calculate with what Force it Turns (the \"length\" of the lever is the Radius here).\nThat is also the Force the Chain feels.\nNow suppose the 2nd gear on the wheels is much smaller in diameter than the First. It has a smaller \"lever\" than the First, but still the same Force (the Force doesnt Change throughout the Chain). So it has less angular momentum. But at the same time its circumference is much smaller too, so it also rotates faster!\nConversely if the 2nd gear is much bigger than the First, it has a longer lever with the same Force ( so more angular momentum), but does Not Turn as quickly.\nLet's use the Bike example again. It's much harder to get moving in the First place than it is to keep moving (you need more Force, ergo angular momentum).\nIn reality the 2nd gear isn't Just One gear, there will be multiple gears, some larger, some smaller. \n(Excuse the spelling, new cellphone with apparently no English language insralled)"
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324tql | why are police officers not held personally liable when brutality or misconduct victims are awarded financial settlements? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/324tql/eli5_why_are_police_officers_not_held_personally/ | {
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"Short answer: Because they don't have money. You can sue a cop, get awarded $10 million and all he has to do is declare bankruptcy. You end up with $0.\n\nThat is why most people sue the PD and/or City since they can afford the payouts."
]
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cfh86s | why aren't species that have huge populations, like humans or bugs, having a commensurate number of mutations and thus branching off new species? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/cfh86s/eli5_why_arent_species_that_have_huge_populations/ | {
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"2 reasons. First is that simply, not enough time has passed. Modern humans have existed for about 200,000 years. That's simply not enough time for speciation to occur. The second is that we don't exist in isolated populations, which is how speciation occurs. Humans from all over the world are constantly exchanging genetic material by producing offspring, so, with few exceptions, there are no isolated population that exists to diverge."
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2hrpj5 | what is my cat doing when it's looking at nothing? | Sometimes, he'll stare intently at the ceiling and moves his head all over the place, seemingly following something that isn't there. Can he hear something I can't? See something I can't?
I tried googling this, but the only real answers I got were "paranormal activity," which I don't exactly believe. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2hrpj5/eli5_what_is_my_cat_doing_when_its_looking_at/ | {
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"Imagining or thinking would be my guesses.",
"Looking at something that you regard as \"unimportant\"",
"Perhaps you have mice or insects in the walls and your cat can hear them?",
"Could be something as simple as dust or a shadow. Mine loves staring at and following/trying to attack sunlight shining through my curtains. ",
"About \"see something I can't?\"\n\nYes, cats can see more wave lengths of light than humans, for example UV-light."
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3i27o9 | why are well known actors rarely used in horror movies? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3i27o9/eli5_why_are_well_known_actors_rarely_used_in/ | {
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"Because horror movies are usually rated R which brings in low box office money. The studios know this so they have a terribly low production budget for horror flicks. The directors can't afford to hire a-lister. "
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nfgjn | communism. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/nfgjn/eli5_communism/ | {
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"In capitalism, you work to create goods, then you can sell these goods for other goods or money. The market is not very regulated by the government, and citizens have a say in what they do with their money. In communism, everything you create goes to the government. This is then distributed to the people equally based on what the government determines is their needs and loyalty to the government is paramount. Communism has never really worked on a large scale because it is easy to corrupt because power is so centralized, but we have never really seen true capitalism either.",
"Society recognizes certain things as ownable. For instance, in modern society you can own a video game console, while you cannot own a section of river. The thing is, this concept is a *lot* less natural than some people imagine. People used to believe you could own another person, and many Native American populations thought our concept of land ownership was absurd.\n\nThe core of communism is related to a concept known as the **means of production**. This includes factories, farmland, and in general everything used to make stuff. Capitalism takes it for granted that you can own the means of production; that is, you can own a factory, and pay people some portion of your profits to operate it. Communism disagrees.",
"In capitalism, you work to create goods, then you can sell these goods for other goods or money. The market is not very regulated by the government, and citizens have a say in what they do with their money. In communism, everything you create goes to the government. This is then distributed to the people equally based on what the government determines is their needs and loyalty to the government is paramount. Communism has never really worked on a large scale because it is easy to corrupt because power is so centralized, but we have never really seen true capitalism either.",
"Society recognizes certain things as ownable. For instance, in modern society you can own a video game console, while you cannot own a section of river. The thing is, this concept is a *lot* less natural than some people imagine. People used to believe you could own another person, and many Native American populations thought our concept of land ownership was absurd.\n\nThe core of communism is related to a concept known as the **means of production**. This includes factories, farmland, and in general everything used to make stuff. Capitalism takes it for granted that you can own the means of production; that is, you can own a factory, and pay people some portion of your profits to operate it. Communism disagrees."
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19yh1o | why do you have to save a document again after printing, even though you did not alter anything? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/19yh1o/eli5_why_do_you_have_to_save_a_document_again/ | {
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"The printer settings may be embedded in the document; for example the page layout may depend upon being landscape or portrait. Even if you didn't change this it may trigger a cue to save changes in case you did because the programmers were stupid/lazy.",
"Sometimes this will happen if a) you have page numbers in your document, *and* b) you've set the option to update fields (such as page numbers) before printing.\n\nAlthough *you* haven't changed the document, your software has, because it updated the page number fields when you pressed the Print button - whether they needed updating or not."
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8g8gcb | why do parents need to force their children to eat? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8g8gcb/eli5_why_do_parents_need_to_force_their_children/ | {
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"It's not about forcing them to eat. It about forcing them to ready right. Left up to children they will eat only candy and snacks. That's why parents want their kids to eat all their actual food on their plate (veggies and grains) before letting them go and eating dessert. The fact that some parents over proportion is unrelated. ",
"In general, they don't. Few young kids will voluntarily starve themselves to death.\n\nGetting them to eat *at times convenient for the parents*, though, can be a test of wills. Or the types of food the parents want them to eat at the given moment. Or to do it without blowing bubbles in the milk or smearing mashed peas on the wall.",
"Because we live in a world with unhealthy food available that children would prefer.\n\nIf only healthy food were made available to them there would be no need to force them to eat. They wouldn't starve to death.\n\nThey refuse to eat healthy food because they are not hungry after eating unhealthy food, or because they know these kind of food will be available before their next meal. ",
"Also sucrose will make them feel full so if you give them juice all the time instead of water they won't feel hungry for what they feel is not-sweet bs food.\n\nLots of parents make this mistake. Juice is sugar water. Hardly better than Coke. Even the good stuff. Give your kids water most of the time."
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97hequ | why is usa's independence day more well known than india's? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/97hequ/eli5_why_is_usas_independence_day_more_well_known/ | {
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"Just the fact that people know more about America. I mean, the USA is probably the most well known country.",
"Because US TV and Film is much more popular internationally than Indian TV and Film, and the American Independence Day tends to come up in it fairly often. ",
"It's not specific to independence days, basically everything about the US is better known than the equivalent thing about India in countries other than India and its neighbors. The US was one of the two world superpowers during the advent of the age of mass media, and it continues to be the most powerful country in the world, which means its media is consumed around the world and properties about it are more available and relevant to most of the world.",
"India is the kid in class that tends to keep to himself and speaks when spoken to. America is the kid that runs around showing off his new airplane and helicopter toys and always invites himself to the parties no one told him about. "
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c99fwl | why does touching ice sometimes feel the same as touching fire? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/c99fwl/eli5_why_does_touching_ice_sometimes_feel_the/ | {
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"A burn is a transfer of heat that causes damage to your body. When people touch something hot, the heat flows from the hot thing to your skin. When you touch something cold heat flows out of your body into the ice. \n\nIce has a temperature change of 66 degrees Fahrenheit. This is enough to cause a burn given time. A cold glass doesn't quite have this change. It also might not be able to transfer heat as quickly as ice but I don't know the numbers off the top of my head",
"I'm not 100% sure on this so might want to verify it. The reason that extreme cold and extreme heat feel the same is because the transfer of heat, whether in or out, is felt by the same neural system. Touching something that exchanges large amounts of heat triggers your thermal sense to send what you can think of as a thermal alarm to the brain. \n\nHope this explained it simply enough, and I also hope I recalled it correctly and didn't just lie to you.",
"There are two sensations your nerves sense, related to this. \"Extremeness of temp\" and \"hot or cold\".\n\nAn experiment I've seen is one where you have a pliable metal tube of icy cold water wrapped around your arm. You also have a tube of warm water coiled around your arm, tubes are parallel so you feel both at once.\n\nYour body senses \"extreme\" from the icy cold tube. It senses \"heat\" from the warm tube. Apparently the default if not sure of warm or cold is to register warm. Therefore it registers, \"I'm burning!\".",
"It's two 'overlapping' sensory systems.\n\nOne tells you if something is hot or if it's cold.\n\nHowever you have another sense that provides much more rapid information that is simply \"extremely different temperature\". \n\nOne is a sensory input that gives you information, one is a sensory input more directly tied to a reaction. If something is extremely hot/cold you will almost immediately want to stop touching it. This is an extremely useful sense to have since it prevents damage. You don't really need to know which kind of extreme it is rather than \"extreme=damage\".\n\nA good example of this is during a lot of school camps here you will be required to go through a test. To participate in anything involving water you must jump into a freezing cold river from a height and be able to swim to the nearby riverbank. \n\nWhen you jump in, you will be shocked by \"extreme temperature GTFO\", but if you can ignore this and keep your senses you then have to navigate \"this is very cold\". You will see quite a stark difference between the two in that situation."
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3vmith | how the cold war wasn't just posturing like how north korea pretends to be at war with the us? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3vmith/eli5_how_the_cold_war_wasnt_just_posturing_like/ | {
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"North Korea is seen as a joke, a little threat of a little country, that's not what it really is, but that is how it's perceived. The USSR however, was considered a huge threat, with its size and power. We're VERY lucky the cold war didn't cause a nuclear war.",
"I'd say that the fact that the USSR enslaved half of Europe as vassal states, spread communism through Asia, controlled politics in the middle east, and had the power to annihilate the earth at the push of a button is the shortest answer. North Korea is just shaking down the world for aid and can't feed their people "
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ezy5up | why do electronics care about voltage and amperage, if they're getting the right wattage? it's the same amount of energy over the same amount of time | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ezy5up/eli5_why_do_electronics_care_about_voltage_and/ | {
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"Devices have resistance (and impedance). This means that if you provide power at too low a voltage, the fact that you could provide enough current to meet the power requirement doesn't help because you're not providing enough voltage to overcome the internal resistance.",
"Because it's not. The wattage is the voltage times the amperage, but how much amperage actually flows is heavily dependent on the voltage. The current rating on a supply is just the maximum.\n\nAlso, things like transistors use the electrostatic forces that form with voltage and so the wrong voltage gives the wrong forces and it does not work.",
"I like to use water/plumbing as my analogy for Electronics. In the analogy, water pressure is analogous to Voltage, and flow rate is analogous to amperage. So, to turn the question around, why would you care about specific water pressure and flow rate? Think of a shower with a relatively low flow rate, but an insanely high pressure. Now instead of a shower, you've got a waterjet cutter that cuts through your porcelain tub and the floor below. Or, how about instead of a shower you've got no water pressure, but a very high flow rate? Something like a massive tub full of water that dumps on your head all at once? You don't have enough time where the water is flowing to take an effective shower."
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5cuhjt | what happens to the air in a room that is not being ventilated for a while? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5cuhjt/eli5_what_happens_to_the_air_in_a_room_that_is/ | {
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"Dust settles. Any odor emitting matter in the room will saturate the air with its smell. A really closed sealed room with a creature in it might lose enough oxygen to be a danger. Closed spaces without ventilation can be a danger. The danger is not visible and may fool unsuspecting people. A place without oxygen, or with some dangerous gas can quickly overcome.\n\nMost rooms have enough leaks to be safe.\n\n",
"I can tell something about air quality. I have a CO2 sensor at home. Not a CO sensor - they're different.\n\nSo, my average bedroom in a relatively modern highrise building, once all windows are closed and I stay mostly in that room - CO2 concentration raises quickly. It gets ~1200 ppm of CO2 in about two hours. It doesn't raise much after that tough. Values over 700ppm are considered poor. I do not feel much difference though."
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f1hz80 | does continuing to “fight” actually affect the outcome of a cancer diagnosis? | When someone is diagnosed with cancer, we often see comments like “keep fighting, you’ve got this!”. Is there any scientific basis behind this actually having an effect on the outcome / survival and remission rates? What exactly are they doing when they’re “fighting” that helps to beat the cancer? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/f1hz80/eli5_does_continuing_to_fight_actually_affect_the/ | {
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"The human body can do some pretty surprising things, and keeping one’s motivation up is at least good for morale. It’s not out of the question that refusing to give up can indeed help fight off cancer. The flip side to this is that people who “give up” do indeed have higher mortality rates, cancer or no.",
"Using metaphors similar to fighting or war has been found to be damaging to patients. While getting through treatment with a positive mentality helps, cancer gives no fucks. \n\n\n_URL_0_",
"Kind of a meta question with a whole lot of variables to consider...\n\nLet’s take an example of a cancer with a high mortality rate, such as glioblastoma or pancreatic cancer. Primary GBM remains incurable, median survival without treatment is 3 months from diagnosis, with treatment is 15 months. Five year survival rate is 5%. Treatment consists of surgical resection, radiation, and chemo, and all the side effects that go along with it. So objectively, those who choose treatment (“fight”) get a median difference of 12 months over those who don’t. For pancreatic cancer, five year survival rate of those diagnosed who are amenable to surgery is 7%, for those unnameable it is 10%. (Newer treatments may increase these numbers in the near future.)\n\nHowever, on the flip side, take that same pancreatic cancer patient nearing the end of his/her life, and ask them if they’d prefer hospice care, focused on comfort and quality of life over curative goals and quantity (moments over minutes) and studies show that such a patient will live on average 29 days longer in hospice over those that choose to “fight” on.\n\nThe treatment for an aggressive cancer can be incredibly damaging to the body, and the side effects often worse than the cancer itself. I’ve seen so many patients choose to fight when the fight was already lost, basically clutching on to this nebulous hope that by “not giving up” they’d find a way back to living their life as it was before they ever knew about cancer in the first place. And I’ve also seen patients so afraid of living the rest of their life in a battle against this disease that they give up the battle early, when there was still ground to be won. To this day, I’ve never been able to make a general rule about when it’s appropriate for someone to keep fighting, and when it’s time to throw in the towel. It’s always case by case. \n\nBut I do know that we all make choices throughout life, whether to go to college and where, whether to get married and to whom, where we live, and work, and play, and whether or not to have or adopt kids, etc. But with cancer, the choice between fighting and not may be one of the last choices, and it’s theirs to make. And at the end when so many choices are being taken away from you, maybe that choice is the most empowering thing you have. Choosing not to fight is just as brave as choosing to, often more so. So who knows, some live longer by fighting, and others live longer by not. \n\nThe people and families that switch their mindset from fighting for time to fighting for quality at the most appropriate moment, in my experience have the better outcomes, subjectively. In a way though, you could say that both of these categories of people are still fighters nonetheless.\n\nHope that helps...\n\nEdit: thanks for the gold, my first one!",
"Not exactly right to the question, but there is a recognized condition known as \"psychogenic death\" in which someone simply gives up due to death seeming inevitable. This causes them to basically withdraw into themselves, and death comes as a result. This is often why people who have a spouse pass also pass away relatively quickly. So in a way, continuing to fight seems like it can in fact lead to a different outcome in some cases.",
"Fighting is a real thing but not for any mystical mind over matter reason.\n\nBeing seriously ill is hard work. Basic things, like eating, hygiene, exercise, taking meds, and reporting issues to your doctor are hard when you are in pain, weak, fatigued, delirious, or depressed. Life-saving treatments, like surgery and chemo, can get delayed by a minor infection or a bad lab results, things that better self care would have prevented, and people sometimes die waiting for something minor to clear up.\n\nIt is not unusual for patients to become discouraged and not pursue their treatment and care as aggressively as they might. Given a choice between an aggressive treatment and an easier, but less effective one, they go with easy. Or sometimes they just give up and stop trying. If a patient has to be nagged into taking care of themselves, they are not fighting.",
"No, the idea that people can fight cancer is pure fucking selfishness, it is so completely wrong it makes me sick to my stomach. Regardless of how hard people try, sometimes cancer doesnt give a fuck and it kills you anyways, and then when someone \"loses the fight\" it is seen as THEIR OWN FAULT, which is absolutely horrible for self esteem and severely stresses people out which makes it more likely that cancer will kill you. \n\nStress is one of the biggest factors in regards to cancer. If you are stressed out, your immune system will shut down because your body is preparing to run or actually fight for your life. Your immune system is responsible for destroying cancer cells but it isnt perfect, and regardless of how hard you try, sometimes the immune system and chemo just isnt enough.\n\nBy forcing this idea onto people that its their fault if they are dying, and that they just need to try harder, only makes people more stressed out. In turn this lowers the immune system and you are even less likely to survive. \n\nThe notion of \"fighting cancer\" is due to the pure selfishness of everyone around the individual.\n\nBecause they want to believe they are doing something kind, because they dont want the person to leave them, because they want to believe that there is hope, because they are too selfish to simply be there with the person even if it is hopeless. People care more about themselves and how a person with cancer affects them, they want to believe they are helping so that they can feel good about themself but it only makes things worse because they dont even consider what the person with cancer is going through and how those words might affect them in a bad way, especially when you are already struggling to live. \n\nPutting these kinds of expectations on people is just cruel, and the best way to help, is just to try and get rid of as much stress as possible so that the body can do what it is designed to do.",
"As a cancer surviver I don’t understand where this ‘fighting cancer’ is coming from. That oncologists might see it as a battle is understandable, but that it has shifted to the patients themselves is strange. Maybe someone started it as a way of giving people hope that they are not powerless when diagnosed, but as some others here have said, it has a nasty backlash that the patient is made partly responsible for when things don’t turn out well."
]
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1cqq9j | why is dzhokhar tsarnaev, the captured boston bomber, not going to be read his miranda rights? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1cqq9j/eli5_why_is_dzhokhar_tsarnaev_the_captured_boston/ | {
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"I have not hear any official statement that they are not going to read him his rights, only that they have not read them yet, things take time and they have time to do this right."
]
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[]
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||
3g5ey9 | marine biologists... what the heck is a portuguese man o' war? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3g5ey9/eli5_marine_biologists_what_the_heck_is_a/ | {
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"Not a marine biologist but [this](_URL_0_) would probably be a worthwhile view."
]
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"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRk3VqE9Zoc"
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||
1f0xny | the reasons behind the gfc | Hi guys, just wondering if someone can explain the recent Global Financial Crisis to me like I'm dim witted. Because I am. Thanks a million in advance! | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1f0xny/eli5_the_reasons_behind_the_gfc/ | {
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"Going to have to be a bit more specific there, since that acronym can stand for many things.",
"I very strongly recommend taking the time to listen to This American Life's [The Giant Pool of Money](_URL_1_) episode, followed by their episode about [Toxie](_URL_0_) the toxic asset. You'll get a very clear easy to understand well-illustrated deep explanation of some of the most important aspects of the financial crisis.\n\nWhat those episodes won't quite explain is the most important part, which is \"systemic risk\". I'll add some edits to this comment to try that...\n\n-----\nEdit:\n\nLet's say you lend Bill lots of money, and he agrees to pay you back $100 each month. You lent him so much money that he's going to be paying you back $100 a month for decades, but he's reliable and you know he'll get the money because he's got good skills and always finds a job.\n\nChris wants to borrow lots of money from you for a similar deal, and you think Chris will be reliable too, but you don't quite have enough money to be comfortable doing it. You've got the money Chris wants, but if you lend it all to him now, your savings account will be a bit too low for your comfort. What if something comes up?\n\nBut Alice, who has plenty of money to lend, is willing to loan you some money now and she's asking for a lower interest rate than Chris is willing to pay. Excellent! You borrow from Alice, and you lend to Chris too. Now every month you're getting $100 from Bill and $120 from Chris and you have to pay Alice $90, which you do. It's like you have this extra income of $130 per month (100 + 120 - 90), and you get used to it and depend on it.\n\nNone of you ever get together and tell each other who you're borrowing from or lending to. You don't write it down where anyone else can see. So what you don't realize is that Alice didn't actually have as much money as you though - actually, she borrowed some of it from Bill. Bill has no idea that you and Alice even know each other, he just knows he borrowed from you a while ago, and now that he's saved up a bit more than he needs to pay you back every month, he lent some of it to Alice to make a little bit of interest. Better than just leaving his money sitting in a mattress. Alice used that money to lend to you, at an interest rate a little bit better than what she's paying Bill.\n\nNow think of this happening all over the place. More people are borrowing and lending from each other, each of them based on mistaken assumptions about who's got enough money to lend, who's got enough money to pay back, and all of the without knowing what anyone else is doing.\n\nThen the economy goes bad, and Bill loses his job and can't find another one, even though he's highly skilled. He runs out of money. Try to figure out the consequences.\n\n(Next topic would be credit default swaps :) If this post gets popular enough that I think other people are reading, I'll write a comment about those. )\n\n-----\nEdit2: Implied but kind of glossed over above, is that possibly the biggest cause of the financial crisis is *unregulated* financial products. That's what I'm describing above. It wouldn't be nearly so much of a mess the there were rules requiring everyone in that story to write down how much money they have, who they lent to, who they borrowed from, and on what terms, all in one place, that everyone could look at, and some enforcers to make sure you were telling the truth and who'd send you to jail if you lied and used those lies to trick people into borrowing or lending they wouldn't have done if they'd known the truth.\n\nIf we had something like that, it wouldn't be so murky either, and you could figure out exactly what the consequences were of Bill losing his job. In my story, he might've borrowed from or lent to other people, and you won't know 'til you ask him personally, but then you also have to go ask each of those other people who they borrowed from or lent to, and you might not even know if they're keeping good track of their finances or just guessing based on their faulty memory."
]
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[],
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"http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/418/toxie",
"http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/355/the-giant-pool-of-money"
]
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|
2h3gzv | why is the taste of chocolate ice cream so overpowering than other flavors? | Whenever I add a small amount of chocolate to my neapolitan ice cream, it always ends up tasting like chocolate only. why? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2h3gzv/eli5_why_is_the_taste_of_chocolate_ice_cream_so/ | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"Its because most chocolate ice cream is made from the mess up batches of other flavors. A little brown die and some strong chocolate flavor hides all. Especially in Neapolitan where the ice cream is usually cheaper. "
]
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[]
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|
3xamgv | what the difference is between inserting your credit card and swiping it | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3xamgv/eli5_what_the_difference_is_between_inserting/ | {
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"The swipe reads the magnetic strip (the black band) while inserting it accesses the embedded chip. The chip being the newer of the two designs.",
"When swiping your card all of information is contained on that magnetic strip and can be easily skimmed. Chip cards are inserted into a machine and they create a random number to encode the transaction which is sent to your bank. No personal information is in that random code and it is very hard to decrypt it. This is used so that a hacker cannot make a duplicate card as it is almost impossible."
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4yoqwe | what is happening when my dream coincides with what's about to happen at the same time around me via noise or a feeling? | Sometimes I'll wake up and my dream was overlapping with a sound or a moment that was about to happen in my real life.
I just woke up to my boyfriend coughing in the shower but moments before I had a dream someone was choking.
Does this sort of thing happen to anyone, I hope I'm explaining it right | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4yoqwe/eli5_what_is_happening_when_my_dream_coincides/ | {
"a_id": [
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"An educated speculation will be that since our dreams are occurring in our brains , they are very fast, a five minute realtime can be maybe an hour dream time (if I'm not mistaken) \nYou hear the noise in realtime and you brain registers it and quickly forms a dream around it, so when you wake up you're under the impression that you were dreaming something that was in sync with the sounds from realtime "
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f4pd32 | how does electricity determine what earth is. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/f4pd32/eli5_how_does_electricity_determine_what_earth_is/ | {
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"Earths surface is an electric conductor. So \"earth\" means quite literally \"electrically connected to planet Earth\".\n\nIf you put some soil in an insulated bucket then it's no longer connected and therefore not \"earth\". It's not always easy to determine how good the electrical conductivity of a given surface is, so wearing boots guarantees a minimum insulation. \n\nI have no idea about the electrical conductivity of concrete, me guess would be that it very much depends on the actual material being mixed into the concrete... but I really don't know.",
"There has to be a potential (voltage) difference and the materials (including you) must conduct electricity. That's all.\n\nIf you have one source that's x Volts and another is more or less than x Volts, there will be current, and probably fireworks, unless the resistance is high."
]
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5e18bf | what does "dating" exactly mean in the us? | Foreigner here, trying to improve my English.
So in my country we use "to date" when you casually go out with someone but you wouldn't call that a relationship. You can use "dating" even when you haven't had sex with the other person yet.
I've heard Americans call a serious relationship "dating", though. Like "we're getting married, we've been dating for a while". In online biographies of famous people you can find "he/she dated X between 2014 and 2015" which clearly refers to a relationship.
So what does dating exactly mean there? When you say "I'm dating X" does it mean you went on some dates or you're in a relationship? And if it can mean both, how do you tell them apart?
Basically, if I went on a couple dates with this girl and I said "I'm dating her" would that be understood as she's my girlfriend? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5e18bf/eli5_what_does_dating_exactly_mean_in_the_us/ | {
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"As far as I know, it means everything you mentioned. People commonly refer to it as both a serious relationship and as a more casual scenario. It is not a very precise word. ",
"Basically it means \"going on dates\" and is kind of neutral on what the status actually is. Like you can go on a date with someone you just met but also will go on dates with people you are in a relationship with. Once people are married they tend to not think of being together as \"a date\".",
"Dating is a relationship but it could be casual or it could be serious. Basically if you go out with someone more than a few times you are dating them. Sex is common in a dating relationship but it is not required in one. Many people do not have sex when dating or they wait till they have been dating for a while before having sex. \n\n",
"Dating someone in the US can mean anything before marriage where sexual, romantic, and/or marital interest exists. ",
"Dating doesn't have to mean sex is involved. I don't have statistics, but there are lots of religious Americans who don't have sex outside of marriage. They're certainly in the minority in my experience, and I live in a very conservative region. But they exist.\n\nDating almost always implies exclusivity. At the beginning of a relationship it may not be exclusive, but usually after a few weeks the couple makes a decision to either commit to one another exclusively or end the relationship. Long-term nonexclusive dating is something I have only seen in TV and movies."
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khetx | i really don't understand how american television is organised. eli5? | Like, in Australia we have standard free-to-air channels. With digital now there's about 15 channels that you can pick up for free, which you can pick up all over the country. Mostly. Some major cities may also have community stations too. And then there's Foxtel/Austar which is anywhere between about 25 and 100 extra channels, depending on how much you pay per month.
Sounds simple enough to me.
How does American TV work? What is cable? Are there free-to-air national channels?
ELI5! | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/khetx/i_really_dont_understand_how_american_television/ | {
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"Most places in America have between 3-15 local stations which either run their own programs or pay fees to carry programs provided by one of the big national networks (ABC, CBS, NBC, Telemundo & FOX), syndication networks like The CW, or the federally-funded PBS. That's what's free. \n\nCable and satellite charge a monthly fee to deliver countless additional channels, usually priced on a \"tiered\" system. For example, you may pay 29 dollars for \"basic cable\" which gives you around 30 channels including ESPN, CNN, Comedy Central, etc.\n \nIf you want more specialized channels like Bravo, Turner Movie Classics or the Independent Film Channel, those are usually on a 2nd tier called \"expanded basic\" which costs another 10-15 dollars. \n\nFinally, uncensored premium channels like HBO, Showtime and Cinemax are usually individually priced. Hope this helps.",
"There is only one publicly funded station, which is free to air. It generally shows educational stuff (I feel like Sesame Street is a thing that got exported to Australia, that's where it's showed). It's called PBS (public broadcasting service).\n\nThe other free-to-air channels are privately owned. In every larger city, there are several privately owned stations. Most are \"affiliates\" of a national \"network.\"\n\nThe network is the one that makes almost all the big budget shows (House, CSI, Grey's Anatomy) that get exported overseas. The affiliates give money to the network for the right to air those shows in their cities. There are 5 major national broadcast (free-to-air) networks. \n\nSome cities have 5 broadcast affiliate stations, a PBS station, and one or more stations with no network (called \"independent\"). I live in a pretty big city, and there are at most 15 free to air channels. If you want to get more than the few free-to-air channels, you'll need a pay TV service. \n\nYou can either get pay TV through a satellite service (DirecTV and Dish Network are the two big ones) with a dish, or have what we call cable TV, which is basically a wire carrying a lot of channels that goes straight into your home.\n\nThose channels are often specialty channels (history, sports, food, science, for women, or whatever). Which I'm guessing is pretty similar to Foxtel/Austar. Some of the satellite/cable channels make their own shows. They have fewer content restrictions, so American shows with nudity or the word \"shit\" most likely come from those. Like Mad Men or Justified or Curb Your Enthusiasm or The Walking Dead or Weeds or something like that. No idea which ones are big enough to make it over there, but I'm guessing one or two of those made it at least.\n\nNot that it matters, but you for scripted shows, you can usually tell a broadcast network show from a cable show by the number of episodes they make in a year. Network shows usually make about 20, cable shows usually around 13. ",
"Prior to cable, a typical American city would have three network affiliates, one each for CBS, NBC, and ABC. These are private, they exist to make money, and they have commercials. The affiliate would air network programming including national news, and would also air syndicated programming (purchased shows), locally produced shows, and local news.\n\nThere would be one public station, which would air national and local public TV shows and typically ran without commercials.\n\nSome cities might have a local station, which would air syndicated stuff and locally produced shows only.\n\nFox appeared later and became an additional network affiliate.\n\nCable is on top of that and also varies by area.",
"Most places in America have between 3-15 local stations which either run their own programs or pay fees to carry programs provided by one of the big national networks (ABC, CBS, NBC, Telemundo & FOX), syndication networks like The CW, or the federally-funded PBS. That's what's free. \n\nCable and satellite charge a monthly fee to deliver countless additional channels, usually priced on a \"tiered\" system. For example, you may pay 29 dollars for \"basic cable\" which gives you around 30 channels including ESPN, CNN, Comedy Central, etc.\n \nIf you want more specialized channels like Bravo, Turner Movie Classics or the Independent Film Channel, those are usually on a 2nd tier called \"expanded basic\" which costs another 10-15 dollars. \n\nFinally, uncensored premium channels like HBO, Showtime and Cinemax are usually individually priced. Hope this helps.",
"There is only one publicly funded station, which is free to air. It generally shows educational stuff (I feel like Sesame Street is a thing that got exported to Australia, that's where it's showed). It's called PBS (public broadcasting service).\n\nThe other free-to-air channels are privately owned. In every larger city, there are several privately owned stations. Most are \"affiliates\" of a national \"network.\"\n\nThe network is the one that makes almost all the big budget shows (House, CSI, Grey's Anatomy) that get exported overseas. The affiliates give money to the network for the right to air those shows in their cities. There are 5 major national broadcast (free-to-air) networks. \n\nSome cities have 5 broadcast affiliate stations, a PBS station, and one or more stations with no network (called \"independent\"). I live in a pretty big city, and there are at most 15 free to air channels. If you want to get more than the few free-to-air channels, you'll need a pay TV service. \n\nYou can either get pay TV through a satellite service (DirecTV and Dish Network are the two big ones) with a dish, or have what we call cable TV, which is basically a wire carrying a lot of channels that goes straight into your home.\n\nThose channels are often specialty channels (history, sports, food, science, for women, or whatever). Which I'm guessing is pretty similar to Foxtel/Austar. Some of the satellite/cable channels make their own shows. They have fewer content restrictions, so American shows with nudity or the word \"shit\" most likely come from those. Like Mad Men or Justified or Curb Your Enthusiasm or The Walking Dead or Weeds or something like that. No idea which ones are big enough to make it over there, but I'm guessing one or two of those made it at least.\n\nNot that it matters, but you for scripted shows, you can usually tell a broadcast network show from a cable show by the number of episodes they make in a year. Network shows usually make about 20, cable shows usually around 13. ",
"Prior to cable, a typical American city would have three network affiliates, one each for CBS, NBC, and ABC. These are private, they exist to make money, and they have commercials. The affiliate would air network programming including national news, and would also air syndicated programming (purchased shows), locally produced shows, and local news.\n\nThere would be one public station, which would air national and local public TV shows and typically ran without commercials.\n\nSome cities might have a local station, which would air syndicated stuff and locally produced shows only.\n\nFox appeared later and became an additional network affiliate.\n\nCable is on top of that and also varies by area."
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4isw9k | why does nebraska dnc have both a caucus and a primary? what's the benefit of doing that for them? | ---
For those who may be unaware, the Nebraska Democratic primary is nonbinding and has no bearing on the delegates attending the DNC in July.
| explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4isw9k/eli5why_does_nebraska_dnc_have_both_a_caucus_and/ | {
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"The state requires that primaries be held but the party decided to use a caucus for the presidential race. Essentially coming back to the whole 'political parties can decide things however they want' angle. However, while the Clinton/Sanders part is meaningless, the primary today still has local and state level votes (which is why the state would require it, anyway).\n\nMy ballot today had, in addition to the presidential nominee, nominating a candidate running for the House (although he was unopposed), nominations for two county-level elections for utilities board positions, and a measure about allocating money for flood control."
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1nkokz | federal vs state parks in america - why does the federal government own parks? can it give it to the state instead? | Why are any parks, located in states, federal property?
States own reserved open space, right? Why can't they own all of it? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1nkokz/eli5federal_vs_state_parks_in_america_why_does/ | {
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"The federal government actually owns about 30 percent of the total U.S. landmass, including over 60 percent of Alaska. Most of that federal land is concentrated in the west. The federal government owned the land mostly from when the states were territories, though the federal government can purchase and sell land, as well.\n\nIn some cases, when a state became a state, the federal government reserved portions of the land that fell within the state's border. In others, the federal government said it would provide upkeep of the land while the state was young to be released later. Then \"later\" never really happened for a variety of reasons. One major reason, the western states are a mess of difficult geography. Look at a map of Kansas, for example, it's cut into rectangles: big flat fertile land is easier to survey and sell or give away to homesteaders than Nevada's deserts and Colorado's mountains. There were also concerns about the conclusion of Manifest Destiny. When the land was seemingly limitless, it was a lot easier to justify giving it all away to citizens. By the time the western states were accepted into the union, management of nationally important resources became a federal priority. \n\nFor people who are strong proponents of states' rights and sovereignty, this is a major issue. Their opponents see federal land as a way to protect resources (like minerals and oil, which are leased to private companies to exploit) and parks of national importance.\n\nAlmost all federal land is west of Kansas. For example, the federal government owned 1.9 percent of Massachusetts in 2004, 3.6 percent of Oklahoma, 45.3 percent of California and 84.5 percent of Nevada. Since most of the nation's political and economic power is concentrated in the east, I'm not sure this issue will get much traction.",
"We own the government. They are actually our parks. The government put a fence around them so it feels like they were doing something with our money all along."
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3j6fa2 | why can .exe only run on windows - not mac or linux? when a file like .mp4 can run on both? can't a compatibility application be made to support .exe? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3j6fa2/eli5_why_can_exe_only_run_on_windows_not_mac_or/ | {
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"It's not that difficult to write a Mac or Linux program that can read the instructions in a Portable Executable file (the format that Windows uses for .exe files). The problem is that doing so doesn't let you run the program. Modern programs don't contain everything they need to run- all sorts of common logic, like sending data over the Internet or drawing windows on the screen- is handled by the operating system. And the code that Windows uses to draw things on the screen is different than the code that Mac uses to draw things on the screen or Linux uses to draw things on the screen. So in order to run Windows programs on Mac or Linux, you have to re-implement large chunks of Windows to run on Mac or Linux. There is [wine](_URL_0_) which has been working for more than 20 years to get Windows programs running on Mac and Linux, and they've been reasonably successful, although they haven't re-implemented the entirety of Windows yet so a lot of programs still won't run. ",
"So far I see a couple of correct answers, lots of incorrect answers, but no ELI5 answers.\n\nSuppose there are three restaurants in town: Mac's, Win's, and Lin's.\n\nWhile they all serve a lot of customers, they have totally different specialties. Mac's is a bar & grill with a small menu but good quality, Win's serves a little of everything but it's all a little bland, and Lin's is a serve-yourself buffet.\n\nAn MP4 is like a box of cake mix. All three restaurants can buy the same box and they all know how to use it to make cake, even though their kitchens are very different.\n\nAn EXE is a recipe specially made for Win's. It's not a normal recipe like you'd use in your kitchen at home, it's one designed for a high-volume restaurant with a head chef and dozens of line cooks. It describes how to use the specific kitchen equipment they have to cook a large volume of a popular dish.\n\nIf you tried to cook the same dish for the EXE at Mac's, it wouldn't work - because they don't have the same equipment in their kitchen, or the same number of cooks with the same specialties. The restaurant works in a totally different way.\n\nFor example, when you order a burger at Mac's, the same cook gets your order and does everything, from grilling the meat to chopping vegetables and putting it all together. At Win's, it's a big assembly line, with one person doing meat, another doing just tomatoes, and so on.\n\nYou *can* write a recipe that can be used at all of these restaurants - it looks just like a recipe you'd find in a book or on a recipe website. But that kind of recipe isn't very efficient for busy cooks at a large restaurant to use. They want the recipe to be \"compiled\" into a form where they can execute it really quickly - and it's at that point that a recipe compiled for Win's and a recipe compiled for Mac's become incompatible.\n\nTranslating a recipe once it's already been compiled is very hard.\n\nSome people mentioned software like Wine. That basically tries to recreate a small version of Win's kitchen in a corner of Mac's kitchen or Lin's kitchen, so they can borrow the most popular recipes because they don't have their own version. It's not as large and not as complete, but it works fine on many simpler recipes.\n"
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3h7oad | how come some people can seldom or never brush their teeth and seldom or never develop cavities, while others adamantly brush 2-3 times a day, and develop many cavities? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3h7oad/eli5_how_come_some_people_can_seldom_or_never/ | {
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"Cavities have more to do with diet than brushing! I recall one study where a dentist went to a very remote village in Africa or Asia and they didn't have tooth brushes. He cleaned teeth and was amazed that after cleaning teeth that were completely black with built up plaque, there were no cavities or any real issues. \n\nSugar rots our teeth. Soda drinkers and candy eaters tend to have more cavities, even with religious brushing. People who eat \"clean\" (ie less refined sugars) tend to have fewer cavities even if they brush less frequently. \n\nBrushing is important, especially if you eat sugar, but diet is a bigger factor.",
"There can be a number of contributing factors. Falling under 2 main categories; environmental and internal.\n\nThe first environmental factor is diet. There are two sides to this.\n\n* 1) Dietary intake that helps teeth (things containing calcium and vitamins)\n* 2) Dietary intake that damages teeth (things containing sugar)\n\nOur teeth are still alive, while they don't grow, they do change over time, that's where the positive dietary input comes in. Damage is done daily so giving them the adequate resources to be able to repair any damage done, is quite vital. Fairly simple.\n\nAs for negative dietary input, avoiding or limiting intake of substances that damages teeth is fairly self evident. The problem is that there can be a lot of misinformation or outright lies out there about what certain foods and drinks do to our teeth. General rule is, if it has sugar or is carbonated, then avoid or limit intake.\n\nThere is also methodology of brushing. Essentially there are two sections to any tooth; the flat portions and edges (gum line and in contact with other teeth). People who over-brush the flat portions can strip away the enamel - the protective coating on the tooth. In the process, those people are not sufficiently brushing the edge areas which are the parts most at risk for gathering waste food particles and plaque.\n\nSomething to point out here about plaque. It is *natural* digestive tract flora. While yes, it can be damaging to teeth when it becomes too abundant, trying to obliterate it from existence the way adverts suggest is not only nigh impossible, but damaging too.\n\nPlaque is a fairly simple organism, that feeds off of the same food that we eat and it also extracts nutrients from our teeth. However, it can derive better energy from sugars, thus if we eat more sugars, we allow it to grow out of control, meaning it strips more from our teeth (faster than it can be replaced). As for killing it altogether; as I said that is damaging too, as the plaque acts as a natural barrier between the teeth and gums, preventing other, external things (bacteria and such) from getting in and causing infections.\n\nAs for internal factors, here we end up talking about things like genetics. It's an unfortunately vast area. Some people just naturally have better teeth. That could be because their bodies are very efficient at drawing the necessary minerals out of food to allow the teeth to repair. Or their personal flora may not be as directly damaging to their teeth. Everyone is different in this regard.",
"For my first year in medschool i had a few classes on dental hygiene and other crap, i learnt that having cavities is about 50% not brushing your teeth and having a bad diet (eating sugary stuff and very acidic) and 50% genetics.",
"I am 63 and never had a cavity. Same with my mom. I was told years ago by my dentist at the time it had to do with calcium in saliva. I have no idea if that is true. What I do know is it was not the amount of sweets. People my age were raised on kool-aid and candy and soda's were a staple part of the diet. My brother, who was raised the same as me, had plenty of cavities."
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3e8csu | why does radiation cause mutation, such as the recent daisies in fukushima? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3e8csu/eli5_why_does_radiation_cause_mutation_such_as/ | {
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"someone else will explain better. but my physics teacher did an eli5, he said the little radiation particles are so small that when they fly through you there is a chance that they bump into a DNA \"particle\" and knock it out of its normal place, then that DNA gets replicated again and again and since it isn't DNA with the correct sequence of things in order it starts to form something else, I.E. a mutation.",
"So there's 2 types of radiation: ionizing and non-ionizing radiation. Ionizing radiation is the dangerous stuff that causes these weird mutations.\n\nWhat happens is that an energetic particle whizzes through the air and hits the flower. Now these particles are small enough that sometimes they hit the flower's DNA. And when that happens they will sometimes bump an atom or a chunk of atoms off of the DNA. When that happens, the flower's DNA has now fundamentally changed. So depending on where the DNA was hit and what exactly happened when it was hit, will determine what the mutation is.",
"Because certain types of radiation (not all) can damage DNA in your cells, when that cell reproduces it passes down those damaged traits. ",
"Just to be clear, there's no evidence that the daisies in that picture were mutated by radiation. That particular mutation happens all over the world, and can be caused by pests, chemicals, or just random mutation. "
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8cgilt | how do scientists find out the boiling and melting points of elements with extreme ones? | For example, helium melts at -272°C / -458°F and rhenium boils at 5596°C / 10,105°F, which is about the temperature of the sun's surface. Do they actually place samples of the element into such temperatures? If so, what kind of environment is able to stand such extreme temperatures? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8cgilt/eli5_how_do_scientists_find_out_the_boiling_and/ | {
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"It's as hot as the surface of the sun, but that's surprisingly not *that* hot. We can make temperatures in that range fairly easily using various techniques, and they are only dangerous on a local level.\n\nThe corona of the sun, just above the visible surface, has temperatures over 200 times that of the surface, which is much more dangerous to Earth, if we tried to replicate it on a foundry scale, though small-scale atomic reactions can create localized temperature flashes in the trillions of degrees.\n\nBut to answer your question, they use different methods for different ranges of temperature, and place a sample of the material in that heat to record the melting or boiling points."
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7vqnl2 | why do space shuttles launch from florida and kazakhstan | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7vqnl2/eli5why_do_space_shuttles_launch_from_florida_and/ | {
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"When launching a rocket, you want to be as close to the Equator as possible. \n\nFlorida is about as far south as you can get in the continental US. Kazakhstan was as close as you could get in the old Soviet Union. The European Space Agency launches their rockets from French territory in South America for the same reason.",
"Normally on earth when you drop something it falls straight down. If you give it some sideways speeds it will fall down but nows it travelled some distance. On a larger scale, orbiting is just falling from a very high height at a large enough speed that you \"miss\" the earth and keep falling. The speed you need to orbit depends on the altitude of the orbit. \n\nIn order to be more effecient, you want to give your rocket as much initial velocity as you can, so they use the rotation of the earth as a boost. Since the fastest point on a rotating circle is at the edge you want to be the furthest away from the axis of the ration of the earth which is on the equator for our spherical earth. \n\nThe direction you launch in also matter. Looking from north pole down, the earth spins counter clockwise so at the equator you'd want to launch east to take advantage of the spin. This also means many space ports are build on east coast so that when you launch east there is only water down range incase something goes wrong. In the case of Kazakhstan they have an empty desert downrange from them. "
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11ykaw | fast fourier transform? | Can someone explain to me how a Fast Fourier Transform works? I do a lot of audio manipulation, and I happen upon the term often, but I can't seem to grasp just how it works.
I know the answers I'm going to get are probably not going to have anything to do with audio, and that's totally fine. If someone could come along and explain it in terms of audio as well that'd be *stellar*.
Also: are there other applications for a FFT outside of audio? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/11ykaw/fast_fourier_transform/ | {
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"Well, are you confused about a *Fast* Fourier Transform, or about a Fast *Fourier Transform*?\n\nThe fast just means that it's a fast way of doing a fourier transform. There's a procedure or algorithm that I no longer recall that allows you to do a fourier transform with a few simple computations, rather than the really long and involved traditional way. \n\nThe long and short of it is that you're converting from time domain to frequency domain. You're looking at a complex function (in your case, an audio signal) and converting it to a sum of simple sinusoidal functions (in your case, individual frequencies). The display output shows the relative magnitudes of each of those functions.\n\nFor instance, if I record a drum and a guitar together, my signal will be an extremely complicated waveform. I can't really tell what it is. If I perform a FFT, I will see a spike around whatever frequency the drum note is, and another around whatever frequency the guitar note is. You'd probably call this FFT performing device a Spectrum Analyzer or a Graphic Equalizer, and I assume you are familiar with those devices. FFT is just the mathematics that go into how they work. There are lots of audio applications, but they're fairly common in mathematics, physics, and anything relating to electricity. The *Fast* part is just the method used to solve them, as it allows a fairly inexpensive device to perform real-time Fourier Transforms. It's actually pretty brilliant how it works, but it's been enough years since I took that class that I couldn't sufficiently explain it off the top of my head.",
"Since nalc has already answered the question I'd thought I'd tackle the second part. \n\nYou can Fourier transform any kind of signal, audio, pictures, random noise, you can even Fourier transform the fluctuations of the stock market. \n\nOne of the main uses for the transform is an easy way to calculate the output of a system, like an audio or image filter. If you know the Fourier transform of the filters impulse response (the way the output would look when the input is a sharp spike) the Fourier transform of the output is the multiplication of that and the Fourier transform of the input. \n\nSince the Fourier transform is reversible getting the actual output is then rather easy. \n\nThis calculation is often the easiest way to calculate the output, especially if we are talking about applying complicated filters to big images. \n\nThere are more uses for the Fourier transform, but that's for some other day. ",
"(This was originally going to be a reply to your comment, but I think it's more of a new ground-up answer to the whole question)\n\n > Sorry, yes I'm confused about a Fourier Transform. I get the part where \"Fast\" just means it's a bit more efficient.\n\n > \"time domain to frequency domain\" - not sure I understand this part. Frequency is sort of a measure of time, right? 1 Hz = 1 wave / second? What exactly is changing here to make it 'time domain' as opposed to 'frequency domain'?\n\n(e; I was using code block instead of quote)\n\nFirst, let me define frequency; in terms of audio, it is basically the pitch. If you have just a sine wave (like this: _URL_1_ ), the frequency is just how many times it goes up and down every second.\n\nThink of an audio file as a description of the amplitude at various points in time (about 44000 times, in a standard quality audio file). We can even say that this audio file is the amplitude function with respect to time.\n\nLet's say we have an audio file something like this: _URL_3_ Well, what's the frequency of it? It's hard to say because it's not a sine wave. Enter Jean Baptiste Fourier.\n\nFourier theorized (and proved… theoremized???) that every single periodic function (that is a function that repeats over and over, so f(x)=f(x+a) for some value of a and all x (for example sin(x)=sin(x+2pi))) can be written as the sum of (possible infinite) sinusoidal functions, so something that looks like a*sin(p*x+h). Every single periodic function.\n\nLet's say we have a sawtooth wave like this: _URL_0_ What is the frequency? We can say that the frequency is how many times it goes up and down; but is a 440Hz sawtooth wave the same as a 440Hz sine wave? Nope, and Fourier says we can show how they're related.\n\nSawtooth waves, it turns out, start with a normal sine wave at the fundamental frequency (this is the \"how many times it goes up and down\", if we play a sine wave at this same frequency it sounds like it's the same pitch), and then subtract a wave at twice that frequency with an amplitude half that of the fundamental, then add a sine wave with three times the fundamental frequency and one third the amplitude, subtract a sine wave with four times the fundamental frequency and a quarter the amplitude, and so on (forever). Here's an animation of sine waves being added together to make a sawtooth wave: _URL_2_\n\nSo we can answer the question. Let's say we have a sawtooth wave with a fundamental frequency of 100Hz and an amplitude of one. We can say that it also has a frequency of 200Hz, but at an amplitude of 1/2. It also has a frequency of 300Hz, but at an amplitude of 1/3. We could make a graph of the amplitude vs. frequency here.\n\nBut let's get back to actual audio. The music you listen to is most likely not a periodic function (unless you listen to dubstep), so we can't just fourier transform the whole thing.\n\nSo we take just a little tiny bit of the audio and say, hey, let's pretend this little piece repeats over and over. And then we can ask how you'd construct that little bit of audio as a sum of sine waves. This gives you a relationship between frequency and amplitude for that little bit of audio. This step is repeated over every little bit of the audio, and you end up with a three dimensional graph. On the one hand, you have time, this is how far into the audio you are, and then you have frequency, and you use both of those to find the amplitude. So, you can ask yourself, what is the amplitude of 100Hz between 1 second and 1.001 second. "
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1u0zjx | how are the 'hot' posts sorted on the front page? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1u0zjx/eli5_how_are_the_hot_posts_sorted_on_the_front/ | {
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"It's based on the number of upvotes and the number of comments (and upvotes in comments) a post has received and inversely related to the age of the post.",
"Also how does it scale to the popularity of the subreddit? It seems that less hot posts on less popular subreddits will still be on your front page.\n"
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1lp2om | "this product contains chemicals known to the state of california to cause cancer..." | If a product has chemicals known to the state of California to cause cancer, why can it be sold freely, and why do they recommend washing one's hands after using said product. I don't see how washing hands in this case will make cancer less dangerous. Am I at risk of developing cancer if I handle a product with this warning label? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1lp2om/this_product_contains_chemicals_known_to_the/ | {
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"California (cancerfornia, commiefornia, etc are used as derisive names) has a very, very large regulatory... policy. Some would argue bloated, other would argue reasonably sized.\n\nNo matter how you look at it, it exist and it's larger and more powerful than most other states. Because *so many* things fall under the \"Can cause cancer\" umbrella (the umbrella is very large according to California regulation) they can't outright ban them. It would be economically and practically infeasible. \n\nSo instead they're required to have warning labels. Since Cali is such a big market, it's easier to just print the warning labels on the regular label. ",
"California has really strict laws. The exact wording is just to comply with a particular labeling law required by the state. And since it makes sense to give the same products to California that you give to the rest of the US, it's common for many products to have the warning printed on the label. Realistically, these products pose incredibly small health risks to the point where you shouldn't worry about them. You don't need to wash your hands after using them, though washing your hands frequently is better for your health as a rule of thumb. ",
"People in other states handle the exact same product without getting cancer. You'll be fine. \n\nWe all know that deoderant, nonstick pans, cosmetics, plastics, etc.. contain chemicals that can cause cancer, but we use them anyway. You probably aren't going to get cancer from these things, but California is going to warn you anyway.",
"The state of California has been known to cause cancer"
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1m4chx | what is cold, why and how do particles get 'cold' | I've been wondering about this for a while but all I really have to help me is a B grade in GCSE physics so I don't really understand this particular idea of particles getting colder and warmer. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1m4chx/eli5_what_is_cold_why_and_how_do_particles_get/ | {
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"Cold is simply the lack of thermal energy. What is thermal energy?\n\nImagine a tennis ball bouncing around a room, with no gravity and no atmosphere to slow it down.\n\nNow imagine a second tennis ball, bouncing around that room at a much slower speed, in the same room. When the two eventually collide, the faster one will slow down, and the slower one will speed up.\n\nIf those were molecules, the faster one would be the 'hotter' one, and the slower would be the 'colder' one, and when they impacted, heat would transfer from one to the other.\n\nNow, say you have a room with a bunch of tennis balls bouncing around, and imagine you made that room smaller. Well, the same number of bounces are happening on the walls (Which also have thermal energy) but those bounces are happening in a smaller area, so that area becomes hotter from getting hit more often, because getting hit more often transfers more energy to the wall. If you make the room bigger, it gets colder, because it's getting hit less often. That's why when you compress a gas it gets hotter, and when you expand a gas it gets colder.",
" > What is cold, why and how do particles get 'cold'\n\nLet's start with the second part of that question. Particles don't get cold. Particles also don't get hot. \"Temperature\" is not a property that applies to individual particles. Rather, temperature describes the average kinetic energy of a *group* of particles.\n\nSo what is cold? It's just a measure of \"these particles have a lower average energy than some other particles\".",
"To understand cold you need to understand temperature.\n\nSo, what's temperature?\n\n*It's moving particles. Simple as that, the harder they move, the hotter something gets.*\n\nSo what's cold?\n\n*Particles moving slowly.*\n\n---\n\nProblems with this?\n\nCold is relative. If you come from the beach at a hot summer day (30 degrees C) and someone then drops some icecubes on you, that will be cold. But how cold are those icecubes relative to absolute zero? They're freaking hot, they're about 270 degrees C warmer."
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6q8u1i | my understanding is that simple one celled organisms were the first life on earth and they simply copied themselves and split in 2 in order to reproduce. at what point did life split into male and female in order to reproduce? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6q8u1i/eli5_my_understanding_is_that_simple_one_celled/ | {
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"For starters we will never know for sure, since the evolution of sexual reproduction happened many millions of years ago. What we can do is make a hypothesis that fits the evidence.\n\nNext, you need to think about ways that single celled organisms can exchange DNA. It's not just \"split in two\" and repeat. Organisms can also gain DNA from eating other organisms, from sharing pieces of DNA, using something called a \"plastid\" which is a special bundle of DNA, etc. Sharing DNA creates more variation which creates more options for beneficial changes in an organism.\n\nSexual reproduction is a further development of sharing DNA, to allow two successful organisms to recombine their genes for the next generation. "
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2g02yn | why doesn't the u.s. have a generic version of viagra and/or cialis yet? | WalMart Rx has them for $35 PER PILL in my area. I import generics of them (probably illegally, whatever) for $3 per pill, and they work just as well. So why dont we have generics yet? Dont the manufacturers only have so long to keep it exclusive to them, and hasnt that time passed (especially for Viagra)? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2g02yn/eli5_why_doesnt_the_us_have_a_generic_version_of/ | {
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"According to Wikipedia, Viagra's patent for treatment of erectile dysfunction in the US will expire in 2019. It was filed in 1994.",
"Phizer manipulated the patent system in the US to extend the life of the patent. It was a shady move that they attempted elsewhere as well, but it only held up here in the United States. You can learn more about this here:\n\n_URL_0_\n\nAs a result, generic sildenafil is available everywhere else in the world, but not in the US. The lower dosage version used to treat heart conditions can be prescribed for off-label use, and can be bought in generic form. This would mean taking more individual pills for the same dosage, but it's perfectly legal."
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1fodzh | if it's 90f outside, why is my car 120f inside? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1fodzh/eli5_if_its_90f_outside_why_is_my_car_120f_inside/ | {
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"Greenhouse effect I presume",
"Heat is transferred in different ways, and some of these go into your car, but not out. This is the \"greenhouse effect\".\n\nHeat from the sun arrives on Earth in the form of radiation. Radiation can pass through air, and through your car windscreen. But it gets absorbed by the things in your car, like the seats and the dashboard.\n\nThese things transfer the heat to the air in your car by conduction, and heat it up.\n\nBut now there's no easy way for that heat to get out. Hot air doesn't radiate anywhere near as much heat as what's coming in from the sun. The heat can't get out by conduction because windows don't conduct heat well. And the other way that heat moves around - convection - relies on air moving around, but the air is trapped inside your car, so the heat can't get out that way either.\n\nThe net effect, then, is that the car gets hot - hotter than outside.",
"Let's break it into sub questions:\n\n**Why does anything reach a steady (equilibrium) temperature?**\n\nObjects are bombarded with energy from the outside, most often in the form of electromagnetic (EM) waves (which like any wave have a frequency), which include visible light. They also throw off energy. As an object gets hotter, it throws off more energy, until the two balance out.\n\nThis mode of heat transfer is called radiation, and hotter objects emit EM radiation at a higher average frequency. Very hot objects (fire, embers) have an average frequency in the range of visible light -- but all objects emit EM radiation of some sort.\n\n**Why can the car's cabin temperature be above that of the outside?**\n\nBecause the conditions in a car reach equilibrium at a higher temperature than the air outside. In the case of the car, it's usually because the things inside of it absorb more of the sun's rays (per unit mass heated) than the surrounding air. And that, in turn, is usually because it's easy for EM waves to get into the cabin (through the windows), but hard to get out -- because the materials inside absorb most of it, and what they don't, is unlikely to point right out the window.\n\nThus, the car's cabin must reach a much higher temperature to emit a balancing amount of energy."
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p29kv | romneycare vs. obamacare | I've read [this](_URL_0_), but I can't help but feeling that it's a *little* biased (the site is dedicated to Romney).
Also, along with the last point, I'd prefer a non-biased answer please... I know that (the people of) reddit are mostly very liberal or anti-republican.. but just the facts please. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/p29kv/eli5_romneycare_vs_obamacare/ | {
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"Alot of bad info in that graphic, I could try line by line but I don't have all night. I expect to see a lot more false charts like this (that make up facts, or distort facts, or play off of people's ignorance of how things work) as the election ramps up. Romney was pretty liberal until he ran for president, so he will have to put out a lot of charts like this to get his supporters over their 'cognitive dissonance' with him. \n\n\nFunctionally there is no difference between the two programs. They both aim to lower insurance costs by mandating coverage both by the insurance company (they can't cancel you because you got sick) and the individual (you have to purchase insurance of some form or else you will cheat). You can find minor differences between them but Obamacare was modeled right off of Romneycare. ",
"As **Thisisntnamman** said, there is so much wrong with this it would take all night to take it line by line. If there is anything in particular you are wanting explained, let me know.\n\n > 16.7% of America still uninsured [in 2009]\n\nThey're blaming the **Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act** for uninsured people 5 years before it even goes into effect. Nice.\n\nThe fact is that opposition to Health Care Reform has been THE central part of Republican opposition to President Obama. Now they will very likely be electing a candidate who not only passed a very similar bill as Governor of Massachusetts, but one that included the exact provision that conservatives most despise about HCR, the mandate that individuals buy insurance.",
"Biggest difference between the two is that one is a state program while the other is a federal program. The supreme court will soon be deciding on whether or not the federal program is constitutional or not."
]
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[],
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6cr3vs | if you were to eat a poisonous spider (say a black widow) without it biting you, would you still be poisoned? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6cr3vs/eli5_if_you_were_to_eat_a_poisonous_spider_say_a/ | {
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"Spiders are venomous, not poisonous. For venom to be a danger you have to have it injected into your bloodstream. It is not poisonous and it is actually fully safe to drink it so long as you have no wounds in your mouth or ulcers. For something to be poisonous it has to be toxic when eaten. ",
"No, although, if you had a cut or bleeding gums, or any direct path to your bloodstream along the route to your stomach... you would be. \n\nIn fact, a black widow is *venomous* and not poisonous. \n\nToxins: Stuff that makes you sick, produced by an organism (often a metabolic byproduct). \n\nPoisons: Toxins which make you sick if you eat or drink them.\n\nVenom: Toxins which make you sick if they're delivered via injection (bites, stings, etc.)",
"\nSo, some of the answers provided are kinda close, but not exactly true. Firstly venom does not have to be injected directly into the blood stream to cause an issue. When a bee stings you the venom hurts, but it is not being directly introduced into the blood stream because the physical stinger is not big enough to puncture a vein or artery. \n\nA spider bite would also be a very superficial bite and would not directly go into the blood stream. This is also the same reason that cdb is completely wrong. You can not consume any kind of toxin, venom, poison or any other substance without being affected by it, whether you actually feel it or not, it causes chemical changes and organs to work harder. That does not mean death, it just means that if you consume a small amount of a substance you may not feel the symptoms. \n\nHowever if you as you mentioned eat a spider that is venomous you could actually shorten the time of symptom onset. This is because you have now ingested the toxin, versus just having it on the epidermis of the skin. Your body instantly begins to absorb something that is eaten, and the tongue is the first place that actual digestion takes place. So by eating the spider, you would be directly putting the toxin into your digestive system which is also an effective place for the half eaten spider to spread the toxin directly into the blood stream. \n\nIf you were to follow the previous post and just drink a toxin, it does not matter if you have a cut or ulcer, because every fluid that is introduced into the mouth is rapidly absorbed. This is why when a patient is having a heart attack we use a sublingual dose of nitroglycerin because it has such an effective absorption rate. This is also why Public Safety personnel carry an oral dose of a drug called Narcan, or Naloxone which is what saves heroin or opioid overdoses.\n\nSo unless you want to end up in your local ER, which is my department, I would recommend not eating spiders, or drinking anything that you don't really know what it is. \n\nQualifier: I am a Medical Doctor. Disclaimer: All information provided in posted comments are answers to posted questions. No comment is intended to diagnose, or treat any illness, disease, or disorder, however basic descriptions of posted questions may lead to the recommendation of consulting your primary care Physician."
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69wa22 | lots of people have an issue with the word "moist" and find it gross. why do people "jump on the bandwagon" and form such a strong opinion on something as arbitrary as a word? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/69wa22/eli5_lots_of_people_have_an_issue_with_the_word/ | {
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"Word bias, the same goes for names.\n\nYou might've met someone called 'Jim' hypothetically, and he was a complete jerk. Then you'd meet another person named 'Jim' but he's completely different. Yet you still have that small part of you not liking him because of your first impression of people with the name 'Jim'. \n\nMoist has a connotation with a woman's arousal, hence the 'grossness' some may find. \n\nI take advantage of these types of words and make people feel uncomfortable. It's my guilty *pleasure*. "
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32e3sr | why is it that i can remember and reproduce the melody of songs i've heard only a few times accurately but can't tell you the interval between two notes? | It seems really strange to me that myself and many people could sing or whistle a complicated melody involving lots of pitch intervals reasonably well, but if you played them middle C, whilst they could hum it back to you, when asked to go up a 4th wouldn't know what to do. I mean we obviously know how to go up a fourth when singing a song we've heard that contains that pitch interval, so why can't we isolate what the means to do that?
I mean obviously some people are tone deaf and could barely hum the tune to happy birthday and that is fair enough. But I feel like many people are capable of singing in tune but can't learn by reading music, they can only do it by hearing something first.
What's even more maddening is that I've spent a lot of time in my childhood singing music and was also taught to read music (at least in the sense that I understand what each symbol is meant to represent). However if you gave me a musical score I'd be at a loss as to what it actually sounded like unless it was played to me or I slowly worked it out on the piano. However for others they can easily pick up how to read the music properly and hear it in their heads once they've had some practice.
It doesn't make any sense to me, it's like people are able to play chess before they know what each of the pieces can do. Is their any explanation for this phenomenon? Why are so many people able to hold a tune but aren't musical in the truer sense of the word? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/32e3sr/eli5_why_is_it_that_i_can_remember_and_reproduce/ | {
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"Many things in our memory are stored as a sequence.\n\nFor example, many people have to go through the alphabet song in their heads to gauge the relative order of the letters in the alphabet.\n\nFor the athletes that compete in memory by quickly memorizing a deck of cards and recounting it, they often store the card information in a long sequence as if they were meeting a long series of people where each person represents a card. ",
"Basically: one requires training and one doesn't. Most people can learn a simple tune by ear and hum or sing it back at you, excepting people who are truly tone deaf as you say. This is just a matter of hearing and repeating, kind of like how if you teach someone a word phonetically in a foreign language, they can repeat it back at you without having any idea what the word is.\n\nLearning intervals requires learning the language, as it were. What's a fourth? Like, what is it? It's a term of music theory. It's a concept, not a tune. It's a set distance between two notes, but without knowing what the distance is, it doesn't mean anything. It's why a lot of interval training starts with picking out songs that feature those intervals. \"On my own, you aaaaaare a perfect foooooourth...\"\n\nPicking up a tune by ear is pretty much repeating back a sound you heard, but you don't know what the actual tune is without training (or perfect pitch, which usually develops with training that begins very young). You don't know what notes it is, you don't know the actual intervals involved. You just know the tune. So for an interval, it's like teaching someone a word phonetically in a language and they can say it back at you. But if you randomly ask them how to say \"cat\" in that language? They won't know. They don't know the language.\n\nThat said, intervals can be learned. That's all it requires, really, and learning intervals is a basic part of music theory. It's just not something that your average person learns. Like I said before, it usually starts with just taking familiar tunes that feature those intervals so you can better recognize or replicate them. And being to take a sheet of music, pick a starting note, and sound it out requires more training, because you pretty much have to have practiced intervals enough to have every single one of them ingrained in your body enough to basically read the notes like a language."
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2tckub | why is the new king of saudi arabia the half-brother of the old one and not one of his sons? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2tckub/eli5_why_is_the_new_king_of_saudi_arabia_the/ | {
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"Titles passing from father to son is known as primogeniture, but primogeniture isn't always the system in use; primogeniture was the standard of Europe in the late middle ages and on. Saudi Arabia has a [council](_URL_0_) that chooses the successor from the Royal Family.",
"Because in many non-European societies they don't have the rule of [primogeniture](_URL_0_), so it's not always the eldest son. ",
"Saudi Arabia's succession rules pass the throne from older brother to next older brother rather than from father to son. [This video](_URL_0_) explains it more fully."
]
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3edk06 | if we can look 1400 light years away to find another earth-like planet, what's stopping us from zooming in just a little closer to look for indications of life forms? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3edk06/eli5_if_we_can_look_1400_light_years_away_to_find/ | {
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"You're confused on how we find earth-like planets. We don't actually see them. No telescope ever made can see that far with that much detail. Instead we look at the amount of light a given star produces, and if it wiggles back and forth. When a planet travels in front of it's star, the light drops off a tad bit. The star will also wiggle back and forth from the gravity of the circling planet. These are two methods used to detect other planets. \n\nTldr; We don't \"see\" the other planet, instead we look for indicators from the star that there are planets in the system. ",
"The planet was discovered through the variations in brightness it caused as it transited in front of it's parent star. In other words, the planet comes between it's star and our telescope, blocking some of the light.\n\nHowever, none of this was observed. The only information we have about the planet is the amount of it's parent star that was blocked during each transit, and the period of it's orbit. You can work other things out from this, like it's size and relative orbit, but you can't observe either of these directly. At it's current distance, even the star is not resolvable as more than a point source of light; it's impossible to make out any features whatsoever.\n\nThis is partly due to the size of telescope available (one that's a few hundred meters across, and in space, might be able to resolve a handful of pictures at this distance), and partly due to an intrinsic property of light that prevents us from resolving past a lower limit.\n\nIt's the same reason we could get pictures of Pluto like [this](_URL_0_) a few billion kilometers away using Hubble, but had to get within a few thousand to see it like (this)[_URL_1_].",
"You might be interested in the [Fermi Paradox](_URL_0_).\n\nUnfortunately there is no telescope that will allow us to zoom in on such a level that we can see actual living creatures.\n\nBut let's just say that we hypothetically could do it.\n\nYou would be only ever able to look at a snapshot of what life would be like on a planet many thousands of light years ago. By the time the light actually arrives at your telescope you would be looking at something that had lived potentially tens of thousands of years ago.\n\nWhat you are viewing is essentially a crap shoot as to whether you will observe anything or not. It is entirely possible that something had lived there many hundred thousand years ago but it has been wiped out by some cataclysmic force (ice ages, cosmic radiation, meteors, etc etc etc), and it's also possible that something lives there now but your snap shot is of the past.\n\nTherefore, it is in fact just as important to observe *signs of life* rather than an observable case of life itself. It's theoretically possible to have a more advanced life form out there that has been extinct for a hundred thousand years. \n\nSuddenly, \"A long long time ago in a galaxy far away\" makes a lot more sense :P",
"We don't have a zoom lens remotely big enough to see surface details. The best indication we're likely to get would be the presence of certain chemicals in the atmosphere, which we can detect by analyzing the frequencies of the light that passes through it."
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4jk0yt | how can there be a "controlled explosion" on a non-explosive device? | Looking at the Man. Utd. Incident...how can a non-explosive device explode? I thought the purpose was to use the device in a controlled explosion, not bring in other explosives to do the job? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4jk0yt/eli5_how_can_there_be_a_controlled_explosion_on_a/ | {
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"Let's pretend we have 2 land mines stacked on top of each other. The bottom is set to go off if the top one is moved. The top one might be easy to disassemble if it was there on it's own. But the second one beneath it increases the risk of it going off. \n\nOr maybe a package bomb that has multiple triggers, like if it's moved, opened, in addition to maybe a remote detonator or timer. \n\nIn those cases, it might not be safe to disassemble. \n\nIn those cases, a controlled explosive charge is placed near or on top of the suspected bomb, and is set off after the area has been cleared. In other cases, a small explosive is used to damage the bomb controller faster than the controller can react to it's own triggers being set off, rendering the bomb safe with out setting off the main charge. ",
" > I thought the purpose was to use the device in a controlled explosion, not bring in other explosives to do the job?\n\nIf the device doesn't look safe to disarm or disassemble then the only solution is to use another explosive to destroy it."
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2a9bkx | how is it possible to make electronics atomically small? | So I just read an article with the title [In Less Than a Decade Your Computer Could Be Just One Atom Wide](_URL_0_) and I was pretty confused. How is something like this possible and how would you explain it to a 5 year old | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2a9bkx/eli5_how_is_it_possible_to_make_electronics/ | {
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"Our current architectures will not be able to get down to atomic level so we'd need to create a new one to do so. Intel has 5nm technology working in the lab (which is about 22 atoms across or so) which will probably be out in about 10 years. ",
"Photolithography. (a great word for a 5-yr-old to learn to pronounce)\n\nThe elements of the circuit are imaged onto the wafer by a photographic method. A lens system makes the image much smaller than the mask which creates the image. By coating the silicon wafer with a light-sensitive film, the light image can be \"developed\" just as in old-style film photography, to produce exposed and masked areas of wafer. Then we diffuse in impurities, which go only into the areas where the wafer is exposed. \n\nBy doing this several times with different impurities we build up a circuit, then coat it with aluminium, and use a similar process to etch away most of the aluminium, leaving just the interconnections we need.\n\nThat used to be all the explanation you needed. But the observant will have spotted that the features in a modern processor are only 20-40nm wide, while red light has a wavelength of 700nm, and even violet light has a wavelength of 400nm. You can't focus much below the wavelength of the light you use. So for decades we have been shifting right out of the blue end of the optical spectrum, through the ultraviolet, and now into soft(ish) X-rays as the features have shrunk. The principle is still the same, though."
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3uzm0e | how does self-driving cars deal with emergency vehicles like ambulances? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3uzm0e/eli5_how_does_selfdriving_cars_deal_with/ | {
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"The same way they deal with everything else - you have a computer programmed to recognize things it sees on a camera/radar and it's been told how to react. Flashing ambulance lights aren't much different than a traffic signal to a computer program, you just say \"IF .... THEN ... ELSE\""
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6rh3zo | when a wave crashes up on the shore, was causes the water to get sucked back into the ocean? | I was sitting on the beach watching the waves crash and come towards me. Before the water reached me they always got sucked right back out. I've seen this soooo many times but realized I didn't understand what was actually happening. What force cause the water to get sucked back? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6rh3zo/eli5_when_a_wave_crashes_up_on_the_shore_was/ | {
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" > What force cause the water to get sucked back?\n\nThat would be gravity. The trough of the wave is in essence the water level for that on the sloped beach, so it runs down the slope into the ocean."
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3xpy0y | how do un diplomats understand each other? | Do they have some kind of quick conversation translator? If so, why is it not available for common use? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3xpy0y/eli5_how_do_un_diplomats_understand_each_other/ | {
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"They have interpreters who listen to what one person is saying and repeat it in a language that the other understands. For the large meetings, everyone has an earpiece and can choose which interpreter to listen to. ",
"The UN has six official languages: English, French, Russian, Spanish, Arabic and Chinese. There are real, live human translators that translate what's being said in real-time.\n\nUN diplomats must be able to communicate in at least one of those official languages. If they don't understand what's being said, they have headsets they can listen to, and tune into the translation of a language they understand.\n\nAnd yes, translators are available for common use. You can easily get someone to walk around with you and translate for you, if you are prepared to pay them."
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1bes6k | april fool's day. | Why is this day dedicated to pranks and tomfoolery? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1bes6k/eli5_april_fools_day/ | {
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"When you retire you can claim any April Fool's days you participated in for a modest tax break in most European and North American countries.\n\nIt's supposed to encourage more fun and happiness, as happier people live longer. Of course the actual tax break is hard to police, and a lot of people probably claim more pranks than they've done, but the system was probably built to deal with that. Also, interestingly, there's the guilt factor so people end up actually performing tomfoolery more than they normally would anyways. jk.",
"Don't forget japery. Japery is also very important on this day.",
"Although I cannot cite a specific source, I remember reading that April Fool's Day had something to do with changing the date of \"New Year's Day\". I read a story, or something, about kids who traveled through time to learn history trivia, and this was one of the things they learned. People who said \n\"Happy New Year!\" on April First were considered gullible and people were encouraged to prank or con them because they would believe it. \n\nAgain, I have nothing to cite, so I probably shouldn't even comment, but that's what I remember reading. I'm going to see if I can find the story and link it if I can once I get to a computer.",
"Like everything important, I learned this from the Simpsons:\n\n_URL_0_",
"_URL_0_\n\n5sf with a very good explanation "
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egbpnn | why do tanks of compressed air get cold, to the point of frosting over, when the gas is let out quickly? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/egbpnn/eli5_why_do_tanks_of_compressed_air_get_cold_to/ | {
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"Heat is basically atoms and molecules bouncing off each other. (NOTE: there *is* radiant heat, but that’s a different thing and doesn’t apply here). When you get a temperature reading, what you’re actually measuring is how vigorously the molecules are moving and striking each other. In other words, it’s a measurement of the kinetic energy in the volume of the gas. \n\nAnother way to think of it is the *density* of the kinetic energy in that volume. When you release gas from the canister, the escaping gas takes its kinetic energy with it. That means less kinetic energy (heat) in the same volume and thus a lower energy density. I.E. fewer molecular collisions. Fewer energetic collisions = lower temperature.",
"Compressing air makes it hot, compress it a lot and it gets very hot. Take some energy away to bring it to room temperature.\n\nIn reverse, expanding air makes it cold, we took away the heat earlier, so it has to take heat from the surroundings.",
"It's responding to the ideal gas law. \n\nP V = n R T\n\n[Here's a video](_URL_0_) explaining things a little better yet keeping it simple.\n\nBasically, when releasing the gas, the ammount of molecules inside the cannister go down, lowering the pressure. Everything gets so low that temperature also has to go down to compensate all these changes."
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67v5l2 | why is there a big hubub about lack of women in stem fields such as programming but not in trade fields such as plumbing? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/67v5l2/eli5_why_is_there_a_big_hubub_about_lack_of_women/ | {
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"Hey! I'm a graduate in the STEM field from an all-women's college!\n\nA lot of it is stigma. A high school robotics team is 75% dudes. My degree is in math, but I was told by my college guidance counselor that I shouldn't take higher level math \"because there are a lot of boys in that class, and that can get a little intimidating.\" I could go on.\n\nWhen I was growing up in the 90s, you never heard of many women scientists or engineers, because it seemed to be beyond my grasp. Only men are doctors, women nurses, etc.\n\nNow why is there no focus on trade fields? The \"women not staying at home\" fad was popular for a long time. When equal rights really came into being, women realized they could be anything. So why not super smart fields?\n\nTL;DR- a lot of new jobs opened up to women, they want to strive for the \"best\"\n\nI really want to hear more responses on this :)\n\nEdit: I just want to thank everyone who gave me a constructed response. It's been a bad week with my anxiety but I know I'm getting better because I can read the replies without uninstalling the app (little victories matter)\n\nI suggest to all to visit _URL_0_, they're right that many, many teams are being super inclusive and inviting everyone in all skill levels.\n\nI apologize for the lack of clarity in my original post, and I plan to study the social aspect of women in STEM, and see where the future holds from there.\n\nThank you.",
"The argument is that there is a set of women who would like to get into STEM fields, but are prevented from doing so by a number of factors, including both conscious and unconscious biases. The idea that \"science is for men\", or however you'd like it to be phrased, is a problem which has real, measurable effects on the perception that girls as young as early teens have of their potential in STEM fields. \n\nI would imagine that the reason there is less complaint about the gender disparity in manual labour occupations is because there are fewer women who have expressed a desire to be in those occupations. ",
"Because trades aren't highly regarded in public perception. \n\nDespite the cat they can also be highly paying jobs they're not \"desirable\" and largely get ignored when discussing equality in the work force. ",
"The simplest answer is that STEM is a sexier field; it's more highly regarded among the public, it's a growing field, it pays better, and the work is seen as more interesting and valuable. \n\nBlue collar work also tends to keep women out, but because people (at least in the US) don't really care about blue collar jobs, there isn't as much fuss raised. The gender disparity is just as real, it's just less talked about. ",
"When I did my engineering degree there were more women than men in the faculty and they were still pushing hard to get more women in there. I found it really odd. \n\nAnyway I have seen 2 effects. 1: more women are encouraged to enter the field and find they are perfectly capable to do the job. This is great for everyone.\n\n2: there are some women who are taking advantage of affirmative action hiring but they are not up to the task. They barely do anything . Fortunately they are outnumbered by those who want to be there. \n\nUltimately I believe the push for women in stem fields is a double edged sword. We get more great workers, but also more sub par workers.\n\nThe reasons they are not encouraged to go into trades are varied. They either view trades as beneath them or think that a trade is hard physical labour that they can't handle. Personally I think more women should consider trades. My wife is considering a career change and is thinking about becoming an electrician. ",
"During World War 2 women took over in those fields with no difficulty, so I think public consensus is probably that they could do it but just don't want to.",
"Because STEM = cushy white collar jobs\n\nTrade = hard work\n\nWhy would women care about equality in something that isn't comfortable and easy? You don't see them whining about the lack of women coal miners or sanitation workers do you?",
"I'm a millwright. I still get asked why I took such a dirty trade. I love being a professional MacGyver. I took nothing but stem and tech in school and I was constantly told the trades are dirty, hard work. It's all stigma. Not only do I have to prove myself to everyone I meet, I have to also prove I'm not here to preach from my soapbox. Personally I see as much of a push for women in trades as I do stem, but obviously I'm closer connected to those conversations. ",
"Forget women being encouraged to go into the trades, men aren't even encouraged to. Everything is college college college! If you don't go to college you're a failure!",
"I would guess because careers in STEM are sort of perceived as 'dream' jobs and traditionally seen as dream jobs for boys, which is of course something that needs to change. \n\nAs an aside there's an all female plumbing team where I live and they're by all accounts excellent!\n\nedit: grammar",
"i think because stem jobs hold a general sense of prestige where as plumbing is still looked down on even though trades people make excellent money (45-60$/h or more). i think the same would go for mining jobs, oil rigs, lumber and milling jobs, garbage collection, snow removal, theres no push for women in these decent but generally male performed jobs that im aware of.\nit could also just be a one-barrier-at-a-time type of push, focus on one field and gaining opportunity before moving on to the next. \n",
"Perception and stigma are obviously huge factors. I would add that the STEM field itself, which is largely about innovation, can greatly benefit by giving more people a fair opportunity to push us further. Those in the STEM field already have an interest in widening the talent pool. Those in trades have less of that interest. ",
"Originally I wanted to be an auto mechanic then an electrician. Got told I wouldn't want to be around a bunch of greasy guys with pictures of naked women all over the shop. Ultimately I chose engineering because there were more fields to specialize in and at the time I wanted to know as much as I could. The broad scope of the discipline was very appealing. I also liked the fact that the math was incredibly similar (lots of second order differential equations) between each of the engineering fields as long you paid attention to the units.",
"I must be an outlier on the curve because I'm on three Dev teams at work and all three are half women. ",
"Because physical and dangerous work are only for men. Duh? ",
"This... Lol people like to be picky and choosy but at the end of the day trades make the same kinda money as a general STEM job. Dont know why this isnt brought up more",
"Because many feminists think an equal distribution of m-f in a certain profession=equality. They're wrong of course, since they discount individual choice.\n\nBottom line is, as a general rule, men and women gravitate towards different fields. Women tend to value flexibility and less physically exhausting jobs, and men tend to value money and status. Because of this, a lot of trade jobs are filled by men. There's generally not a lot of status in trade jobs, but there's a decent amount of money.\n\nThis is a gross generalization, but accurate overall.",
"Women can't handle the physical or emotional stress ors found in a typical trade profession",
"I'm a unionized electrician in Canada and I can tell you that they absolutely want women to join up. There just aren't many takers. Every year there tons of people applying to become apprentices and many won't make it. I can pretty much guarantee that if a women applies she'll be accepted.",
"I know I'm just a mouse cum and all but I think it has something to do with the culture we are a part of and a bit of basic anatomy . Women are seen as not being able to perform physically demanding jobs because on average men are naturally stronger, therefore the perception goes something like: \" I'm not going to hire a woman who is probably weaker than a man for the same amount of money\". I've seen it firsthand as a landscaper. My old boss hired two girls ,and while the one looked jacked neither could really keep up with the rest of us. They were hard ass workers and would work until exhaustion but were not as strong and got tired quicker. We would have to take extra breaks so they didn't pass out. Who do you think my boss had a preference for and who do you think he called more often for jobs, the men or the women?. Now I know there are a lot of women out there who could out work me and the other fellas but it's hard to find them because women aren't generally groomed to be strong and masculine. Little girls are given dolls and have Disney princesses as role models which are petite and dainty where as little boys have violent shit like g.i joes and super heroes which are tough muscular fighters ( but that's another topic all together). Also a lot of people in this thread hit on the fact that trades aren't held in high esteem anymore due to the surge of computer work, even though in my opinion it would be much harder to replace a painter or electician with a robot than say a receptionist."
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29vdcp | why do only white people have varying hair colors, while people with other skin colors typically only have one hair color? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/29vdcp/eli5_why_do_only_white_people_have_varying_hair/ | {
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"[Some aboriginals in Australia have blonde hair](_URL_0_)",
"Red hair color shows up in all races. I've seen Japanese people with naturally brown hair too.",
"Kinda like mixing paints! Darker pigment alleles are more dominant than the lighter ones. If the dark one(s) are missing than you get more of a color array from the lighter ones (which don't dominate each other as strongly). But as soon as you add some darks, that's what ya get.",
"White people are the true coloured people of the world, ",
"I knew a black guy who had red hair. Well...I guess he was mixed, but whatever.",
"Melanin is involved in skin color, hair color and eye color. Lighter skin evolved as an adaptation to less sunlight, lighter skin is achieved from lesser concentrations of melanin in the skin. \n\nIt is this way in hair as well. Hair color is determined by two types of Melanin (eumelanin a dark pigment and pheomelanin a red pigment). Brown hair has less melanin than black hair. Blond hair has very little melanin. Red hair has a lot of pheomelanin and very little eumelanin.\n\nThere are many different types of brown, blond, and red hair. Which just comes down to different concentrations of melanin overall, and the proportion of eumelanin to pheomelanin. This is achieved by mutations over time in the genes that control melanin.\n\nThe point is that 'white' skin color and lighter hair colors are related because they are simply due to lesser melanin. This is probably why they show up so prominently in populations in Northern Europe.\nAlthough it's not the only place alleles for lighter hair has mutated: See blond hair in Australian Aboriginal and Polynesian populations",
"A lot of dark haired people have different shades of brunette",
"Asians actually have different shades of black, sometimes even brown hair.",
"Get a bowl of vanilla ice cream. Now add any other ice cream or topping that is differently colored. If you put chocolate into vanilla the vanilla turns brown. Strawberry into vanilla turns the vanilla pink. It's harder to do that with any other color of ice cream, especially chocolate. Same thing goes for humans. Dark skin is just more dominant than white, so it shuts out any other color.",
"Because being white is a genetic mutation. Darker skin and hair were the origin. We mutated to be gingers.",
"Of course blonde hair does happen to people of color, the genes are just different then white people.\n\n_URL_0_\n\nSo there's that.",
"Surprised nobody has mentioned this but the gene for red hair is from the Neanderthals. Africans have very little Neanderthal DNA.",
"There are other hair colors to be found, particularly in asia...\nDark brown hair can be found among some east asians, and the mongols, uighurs, etc... can be found even with red or brown hair.\nMeanwhile, though I suppose this differs depending on what you're considering \"white,\" mideasterners (west asia, north africa) can be found with varying hair colors as well.\nAnd finally, some native americans/first nations I've met (a fair amount considering I've lived in rural northern Alberta) have hair colors which are essentially brown.",
"Because Caucasian people are very diverse, in ancient Europe their was many different white colored tribes that were at war with each other, the native Celtics of Brittania had brown eyes and brown hair. First, the Romans came and conquered them spreading their genes all through the place, then the vikings (Tall, red hair, blonde, blue eyed warmongers) invaded, they bought red hair all across Europe like a wildfire from pillaging and raping the natives. Blonde hair was just simple natural selection. It looks good, right? so more and more people decided to procreate with them. ",
"When I went to Papua New Guinea, I was amazed at the number of blond people.\n\n_URL_0_",
"I'll explain it like you're actually five: They don't. It's just the fact that you live in a place (the western world) where that happens to be common. There are black people with blonde hair, asian people with blonde and red hair and so on. There are more black haired people, sure. But that is because it is more likely for you to have black hair than any other color, just like it's more likely for you to have brown eyes when you are born. \n\nThe Melanesians from an Australian tribe. Natural blondes:\n_URL_1_\n\nThere have been more and more cases of Asians with blonde hair. Here are some of the Hmong people:\n_URL_2_\n_URL_0_\n",
"If you've read down the comments this far you deserve the real answer. The reason why the original Europeans exhibit so much variety, so many genetic mutations, is because of the **continent itself.**\n\nEurope is unique. Europe is special. Europe looks like a child of the gods has been pounding the shit out of it with his hammer.\n\nWhereas other continents look like fat bananas, with mountains down the inner curve and plains on the outside that humans like to fill in large numbers, Europe has bits of mountain range and shallow sea dotted all over. Peninsulas stick out here and there, large islands get isolated with changes in sea level and it has a huge amount of coastline for it's size. The place is a geographic wreak.\n\nWhen the human race emerged out of Africa, some populations went east into Asia and into it's broad central plains. There, about 35k years ago, a genetic mutation cropped up that offered many advantages to the extremes of heat and cold found at the center of a large continent. It increased the number of sweat glands, the number of head hair follicles, gave the eyes extra protection and made the female breasts smaller. Hence the Asian \"race\" that then spread far. Lesser mutations that do not offer as much are too readily absorbed by and disappear into large populations.\n\nSome populations headed west into Europe but soon found they could not go further because of the Atlantic. With changes in climate these populations sloshed up and down the large seaboard, becoming occasionally isolated. And it is in small, isolated populations that genetic mutations can thrive as the population can become saturated by them before the point where they'd fade away. This chucked up several sorts of fanciness, somewhat adjusted to the cold and lack of sunlight in Europe, that we see today - hair colour, eye colour, gaunt facial features.",
"[Black kid with natural blond hair ]( _URL_0_)",
"Many of the posts I responded to were deleted so for them here are my responses.\n\n\n-------------------\n\nNo. The red hair gene of the neanderthal was different. Modern day red heads are a separatemutation. After all neanderthals might have had fur. Modern day red heads have less hair than everyone other than those with afros.\n\n--------------------\n\nThis is more of a related matter than a direct answer but it might be of interest.\n\nI've heard that many Africans consider black people who are 'white' to be very attractive. 'White' here might be an incorrect translation as it comes from the terms that some black Africans use for white people. It is more accurate to translate the black people that many Africans think of as attractive as 'red' people (it is the redness of Europeans that causes them to also use it for Europeans). In other words, among themselves, they don't all look alike. This, of course, doesn't necessarily mean that these people actually think of white people as very attractive. They would really be thinking that of flushed or burnished or whatever looking people like themselves (extremes are usually a bit freaky looking). It's just a conceptual confusion of translation\n\n\n-----------------\n\nThat's the dream of the insane reality denying racially 'improving the stock' progressivist. In fact we wouldn't. There is no brown paper bag racial ideal for all sub Wasp Zionists to collectively ever reach. It's like Mendel, the geneticist's, smooth and wrinkly peas. You are one or the other. This is what happens with Brazilians who are all partly all types. Eventually you are still Eurasian or black. Wrinkly or smooth. The big gumbo melting pot of food or paint or colour is not how genes work. This is more clear with Afro or non Afro.\n\n------------------\n\nThat happens occasionally. Malcolm X was a red head. Red hair is recessive so I think that you have to inbreed and have it on both sides of the family to have it. Hence gingers having no soul: because they are all avatars of each other.\n\n\n\n",
"Never understood this, at birth I had red hair. When I was growing up, I had incredibly light blonde hair and now I have an almost brown, dirty hair color. Thanks for the explanation",
"Im turkish but I have blue/brown/black hair depending on the light and blonde/red/black beard. ",
"I actually wanted an explanation for this too. But everyone seems to think the poster is being a fucking bigot. It's a serious question. If you happen to not be white, and comment something about being racist, you're pathetic and over sensitive. This is why I never come on reddit anymore. Fuckin over emotional, whiney little bitches on here man. my god get a fucking life. Nobody cares about race anymore. No one. Get the fuck over it. Nobody cares about gays. Nobody cares if you want to smoke weed. Seriously. Stop it. ",
"I was born with golden hair with dark red mixed in, which then turned to white, then turned a golden color. I'm 25 and still have my natural blonde. Some parts white, some golden, some in the middle of those two, and some dirty blonde. Following the puberty rule, does this mean I'll always have blonde hair? My family has some redheads on my Irish side but the rest, even my parents and brother, all have very dark hair. My mom and brother's blonde haired turned when they were kids. I keep waiting but it just varies in shades each season, never changes from blonde. Natural blonde hair makes me feel like a child for some reason, like I haven't grown up yet and I've just always been under the impression that blonde hair always turns.",
"What happened to ELI5? There used to be serious replies, and now it just seems like every question I go on is just a bunch of douchebags making stupid, unhelpful comments.",
"FALSE: theres a nice black lady who works at my pharmacy and she alone has 5 different hair colours. ",
"There are black people with red hair in the general region of Egypt. Maybe bedouins. I read about them a while ago. Ramesses II had red hair too. It was originally thought that mummification had turned his hair red but testing proved otherwise. A lot of Afghans have some natural red in their hair too. The rest of them are using henna. ;)",
"Black people tend to dye their hair to straight black. White people choose more varied colors. Check out Solomon Islands and blonde on google. (they independently developed the blond mutation) \n\nalso this description by spider robinson is apt:\n“I traveled the world in me youth, and I noticed yez/mocha, mahogany, chestnut and cocoa/ochre and umber and amber and gold/coffee with cream, coffee with milk, coffee with nothin’ but Tullamore Dew/amber and anatase, russet and chocolate, both the siennas, the burnt and the raw/hazel and sepia, several more/an’ never a black man or woman I saw.”",
"There are black people in the Solomon Islands with blonde hair\n_URL_0_",
"I'm part Puerto Rican, and I have cousins with blonde hair. \n\nI also have a black friend who grew out his hair super long in high school, and discovered that he has red roots.",
"I hate when the top comment isn't explaining like OP is five, but instead is just some guy wagging his dick around with the knowledge he Wikipedia'd. ",
"Reddit, you don't have to be a bunch of social justice warriors. You all very well know what OP is asking, you don't have to point out the .001 percent of non-European blondes to make yourself feel better. When you think of a person from Africa, India, etc. you don't think of a blonde or redhead, just accept it. It really isn't a big deal. In the world, the vast majority of people with varying hair color come from European decent. That fact does not mean that people from Europe are any better or worse. Just answer the question.\n",
"So, the short answer is that it has to do with dominant and recessive genes. (Please correct me if I'm wrong.) There is a lot of stuff on the internet re: dominant and recessive genes. I'm a fraternal twin. I have brown hair, brown eyes, olive skin. My twin sister is blonde (although now her hair is much darker, almost brown) blue eyes and very fair skin. When we were born my mother became fascinated with this and would go on and on about dominant/recessive genes. (I never really paid much attention!) But my mother would say, the blue eyed, fair skins genes were the flukes in nature. For example, to get blue eyes or red hair, you would need 2 recessive genes (someone correct me if I get this wrong) to get those features. What this means, on both sides of the family, the mother/father have recessive genes to produce a child with red hair/blue eyes. In my case, where I am a twin, my father had black hair, blue eyes, and fair skin but my father was of German/Swiss descent. My mother is Spanish, Dominican and there is reported to be some European family members. Example: an English aunt. The Spanish/Dominican genes are dominant, but because my mother carries a recessive gene, that was how she was able to produce me: carrying dominant genes and my sister, carrying recessive genes. My father had recessive genes and while my mother had dominant genes but she also had recessive genes to produce my blonde sister. ",
"Being that a fair share of Americans are decedents of European ancestors whose climate is vastly different than ours, will we start seeing a progression towards darker skin again in America? We definitely are exposed to more sun and harsher rays compared to our European ancestors",
"When pre-historic humans migrated north out of Africa the pressure for dark pigmentation in hair skin and eyes decreased. The heavy pigmentation protected against Exposure to UV light, and in the northern latitudes the shortened length of day and decreased intensity from the sun made having these dark pigmentation a less necessary for survival. The human populations split into two main directions after leaving Africa: one migrational path led upwards into Europe. The other led north east into Eurasia. When these populations moved north, both routes experienced lightening of the skin. However, separate mutations caused variation in hair and eye color in Europe, mutations that did not appear in the populations who had split off and migrated north east. \n\n",
"It seems that way, but when you really pay attention to detail, most ethnicities have varying hair colors.",
"Awful lot of racists in the comments.",
"OP, have you ever seen a map based on skin color? \n\n_URL_1_\n\nNorthern Europeans are unique in having the lightest pigmentation in the world. In fact, if you were to include even more gradations in that map, you'd probably see the lightest region of Europe being the northernmost. \n\nSo, why did they develop light skin? \n\nOne convincing theory to me is that it was a combination of a low UV environment and agriculture. \n\nLow UV means less vitamin D from the sun. \n\nAgriculture means less vitamin D from the food. \n\nWhen Europeans used to hunt, they would get satsifactory amounts of vitamin D from sources like fish, meat, and offal. \n\nGrains and dairy, on the other hand, are very poor natural sources of vitamin D. \n\nThe theory is that as agriculture was adopted in Europe, people became even more deficient in the vitamin, and gradually developed even lighter pigmentation to absorb what they could from the sun. They got pale because they needed the D. \n\nNow, this could explain the prevalence of light eyes in northern Europe IF the genes for light eyes and light skin were linked. I don't know if they are, and I'm too lazy to look. \n\nAnother theory which has some support in the scientific community is that blue eyes were a sexually selected trait in paleolithic times. \n\n_URL_0_\n\nSurvival was harsh in those days, men were the only ones capable of doing the heavy provisioning, many men died hunting, and there probably weren't enough resources to support polygamy. \n\nBasically, romance was a male market, unlike today's female one. \n\nThis means that men generally got their pick of the girls, and they chose the ones with the light colored eyes. \n\nFor what it's worth, all human societies display a similar pigmentation trend, with females being slightly but consistently lighter than males. In Europeans, this is most observable in eye color; light eyes in adulthood are more common in European women than European men. \n\nThose are the two most convincing theories I've heard. Perhaps they're both true, to some extent. \n\nIf anyone wants a source on anything I said and didn't cite, feel free to ask. ",
"Cuz we're muts",
"[Sure, all Black people have black hair.](_URL_0_)"
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3vgdi5 | why do short versions of many names end in 'y'? | (i.e. Jenny for Jennifer, Toby for Tobias, ..etc) | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3vgdi5/eli5_why_do_short_versions_of_many_names_end_in_y/ | {
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"Many languages have endings that make a word small and/or cute. These are called [diminutives.](_URL_0_) \n\ndog - > doggy\n\nJohn - > Johnny\n\nElizabeth - > Betty\n\npig - > piglet\n\ntaco - > taquito\n\ncabin - > cabinet\n\n"
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foqal2 | the us has $21 trillion dollars in debt, what happens in the long run if this debt keeps accumilating? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/foqal2/eli5_the_us_has_21_trillion_dollars_in_debt_what/ | {
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"First off, the US is constantly in a state of paying off old loans and acquiring loans. Although it varies by year, we pay somewhere around 8-10% of our yearly budget just on interest rates on loans. About 25% of that goes to various government programs, like Social Security (the largest creditor to the government).\n\nSecondly, yes. The US can continue accumulating new debt as long as debtors find US securities a solid investment. Right now, US Securities are considered one of the safest investments around, so there's very little risk that the US won't be able to find new debt.",
"All countries are in debt, to almost all other countries.\n\nYes, it sounds stupid.\n\nLike everything: So long as you keep up the payments, you're fine. If you stop paying, it drastically hurts your ability to find more money (nobody will lend to you, countries literally have credit ratings like you do), and you'll find it brought up whenever you go to a trade meeting or want to sign some form of agreement or political measure.\n\nCountries can, and do, go bankrupt - like Zimbabwe - which saw out-of-control inflation and had to abandon its own money system and deal in US dollars. Or Greece, which couldn't afford its regular payments to those countries who lent it money. They would only agree to lower payments if THEY said how the money was to be spent (i.e. not on wasteful things, only necessities).\n\nObviously, the people or the country don't just go away, but they have a much harder time of living, trading, and everything else."
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1cme7e | why did the gun bill get rejected by the senate if there was a 90% approval rating? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1cme7e/eli5why_did_the_gun_bill_get_rejected_by_the/ | {
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"because the US is not a direct democracy, it is a representative democracy which means special people are elected to vote as a representative of the public. If people do not like the way their representative is voting, they can elect someone new in the next election.",
"The gun bill was a controversial vote for the Republican party and even more so for Democrats who reside in typically Republican areas. A \"yes\" vote almost garunteed a vicious primary or general election for any of these people if they voted yes. The senators bet, correctly IMO, that gun control supporters wouldn't show up to support them during election season 2014. The NRA and its supporters *will* remember to vote though and they'll remember who voted against their interest. \n\nA \"Yes\" vote pretty much would of caused some senators to lose their seats. You can talk all you want about \"the will of the people\" but if you don't care enough to show up where it matters (elections) then you don't actually care that much. I don't blame a single senator for voting against the bill.\n\nOn a side note 90% also notes the public approval for the general *idea* of gun background checks. Not a specific 90% approval for the contents of the bill in question. ",
"One thing to understand is that the bill did not have a 90% approval rating. While 90% of Americans may support the IDEA of background checks for all, the actual implementation of it is different. ",
"90% of Americans like the idea of background checks. So do I. But most of those 90% are unaware of what background checks are already in place, and unaware of what draconian bullshit might be lurking inside a bill crafted by politicians who hate guns and gun owners."
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1l34wr | what makes the funny bone funny? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1l34wr/eli5what_makes_the_funny_bone_funny/ | {
"a_id": [
"cbvea76"
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"score": [
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"text": [
"I always thought it was because when you hit it, it hurts like a bitch so much that your cry of pain sounds like laughter."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
1znx62 | why are online ads (mostly) so dodgy? | ELI5 please :) When I browse the interwebz I usually have adblock off, and the amount of dodgy ads is mind-blowing. Why is this the case in this day and age?
Some examples:
"You're our 100 000th visitor. Click here to claim your reward"
"7 investment tips you don't want to miss out on. Click here to download the PDF!"
and finally the good old "Your system is infected. Click here for a virus scan" < - fuck off.
I would never click any of them, short of someone holding a gun to my head. How come I can't receive ads for stuff that makes sense more often? I browse a ton of hardware/tech websites and it seem there would be ample opportunity to get me to click if I could trust the sources. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1znx62/eli5why_are_online_ads_mostly_so_dodgy/ | {
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"text": [
"Think of it in this context..... SPAM..... now you hate spam, I hate spam, everyone we know hates spam.... however... it simply MUST be working.... otherwise.... spammers wouldn't send it anymore, right? So someone, somewhere, and LOTS of them, are responding to spam messages or they would stop.\n\nDodgy ads.... you don't click em, I don't click em, but someone most definitely IS clicking them and they are resulting in sales of the products they are advertising.... otherwise... they would stop using dodgy ads.",
"I actually know the dirty little secret as to why this happens that the advertising companies don't want you to know, and those very same advertising and marketing companies HATE me for it. Just click [HERE](_URL_0_) to learn more!",
"In any population, you will have people who ate smarter, and people who are..well...not.\n\nThese ads target the lower end of the intellectual spectrum...people who think they've won a sweepstakes, have a virus because a pop-up told them so, and are helping a Nigerian prince get his millions to America. If somebody is gullible to follow one of these ads, you can probably fleece them again and again.",
"All of the ads are purposefully poorly written. The thought is that if you have a well written ad that attracts intelligent people, they will exit once you ask for the address, credit card, and first born. If the ad is purposefully bad, the people you attract are most likely to actually give you information like the credit card for the PS3 you won by being the 10,000th visitor.\n\nTL;DR If you're dumb enough to click on it, you're dumb enough to give them your information."
]
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[],
[
"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6OXjnBIW-4"
],
[],
[]
] |
|
3h7jsi | why are many greek and roman statues missing their hands and head? | As the title says. I'm in the metropolitan museum right now and it's a fairly consistent theme I noticed. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3h7jsi/eli5_why_are_many_greek_and_roman_statues_missing/ | {
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"cu4x8gc",
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"text": [
"Because those are the weakest points in its construction. After 2500 years of wear and tear, necks and wrists break. ",
"As I was taught in school, During catholic crusades, they broke a lot of \"FALSE IDOLS\" and many of these were statues of old greek and roman gods/deities ",
"Many statues are composed of different component parts, like Mr. Potato Head, rather than made if a solid piece of marble. The head and hands/arms would be added after the torso and the rest of the body were complete. Hence, they would break at these places when the toppled over.",
"Asides from being 2000 years old, and sometimes destroyed by churches, they were also paraded in open displays after thier unearthing, where they were exposed to abuse and damage from moving and uneducated peoples touching them in ways that can harm the statues",
"Not sure about the hands, but I believe the heads were sometimes made as a separate piece so when the power of state shifted heads on the statues could easily be swapped out vs making a whole new statue",
"Also certain regions where those statues were concentrated, e.g. Constantinople and Antioch, were very prone to earthquakes. When a statue falls off its pillar the things sticking out are most likely to break off.",
"And their dicks. Ever go to a museum? Dickless statues everywhere",
"When I was in Thailand I observed similar statues representing buddha. The heads are clearly severed off and it is generally assumed that they were stolen and sold for profit. This might be the case for some of the greek and roman statues as well."
]
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[],
[],
[],
[],
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|
1slr2f | if the geology of the earth were reversed (70% land/30% water) how different would our lives be? | How would the climate change, what would civilization and the animals be like? Would we even be able to survive in a setting like that as we are now? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1slr2f/eli5if_the_geology_of_the_earth_were_reversed_70/ | {
"a_id": [
"cdytfja",
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"score": [
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"text": [
"Possibly non existent. The oceans regulate the temperature. If it was too much land we'd just be a desert planet with small seas. ",
"Possibly cavernous oceans would form through erosion but then it would not benefit from the suns energy.",
"We would be mer-people."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[]
] |
|
145t3b | why there are different sockets around the world and not 1 universal one | [like this](_URL_0_) it makes more sense if there was just one wouldnt it? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/145t3b/eli5_why_there_are_different_sockets_around_the/ | {
"a_id": [
"c7a4p6b"
],
"score": [
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"text": [
"It is a safety feature. See this wiki page: _URL_1_ for a more detailed look, if you so desire.\n\nAs shown in [this image](_URL_2_), many different countries have many different standards for their outlet voltages and frequencies. Power sockets and plugs are different so that you cannot plug in a device made for one voltage-frequency combination into an outlet that uses another voltage-frequency combination. This is to protect both the device you are plugging in and you from electric shock.\n\nExactly why they all differ is a legacy issue; it always has, so no one's bothered changing it. [Trying to make one standard for everything is futile](_URL_0_) for two reasons.\n\n1. You'd have to overhaul **everything** at once. All outlets, all power stations, all transformers, all appliances, electronic devices and whatnot at once. Everything that touches an outlet would have to change at the same time. This would be **very** expensive and fraught with problems (hooking up a 120/60 device to a 220/50 outlet will probably fry the device).\n\n2. If you opt for a gradual change, you'd have to have two (competing) sets of power infrastructure operating at once. If you switched American 120/60 to European 220/50, then you'd have to build a separate set of power lines and transformers to carry that different voltage to homes. In the eyes of the home country (in this case, the US), you'd be spending a lot of money building an electrical infrastructure that is redundant, never-mind that most people will stick with the old system."
]
} | [] | [
"http://i.imgur.com/w9RrR.jpg"
] | [
[
"http://xkcd.com/927/",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_outlet",
"http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f5/Weltkarte_der_Netzspannungen_und_Netzfrequenzen.svg"
]
] |
|
3cwz5r | do actor's producer credits on tv shows and movies actually mean they are involved in production? or is it something you earn after long career? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3cwz5r/eli5_do_actors_producer_credits_on_tv_shows_and/ | {
"a_id": [
"cszpvei"
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"score": [
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"text": [
"There are some occasions on TV shows where actor's might be credited even if they were not in the particular episode.\n\nWith movies, yes, everyone is involved with the production, but sometimes not very directly. For example, the \"Executive Producer\" is often just a big wig from the studio, who, in many cases, never sets foot on set. A producer from the studio will actually be running the show on set, and he will be answering to the EP and keeping him posted. Unless there are serious problems, the EP will often not do anything, he is just the producer's manager. Executive Producers will often be managing many producers working on different shows/movies at the same time.\n\n"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
2eim8j | why is it when my nose itches and i scratch it, it will never stop feeling itchy? | It drives me crazy and i can never stop. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2eim8j/eli5why_is_it_when_my_nose_itches_and_i_scratch/ | {
"a_id": [
"cjzw15i"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"Also, no matter your resistance, if you choose to not scratch it it will also never stop feeling itchy."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
|
5xji1x | how do doomsday predictors and religious zealots cope/rationalize when the "end" never comes and their predictions are false? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5xji1x/eli5_how_do_doomsday_predictors_and_religious/ | {
"a_id": [
"deij3z2"
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"text": [
"My mom's husband at the time when I was growing up was and still is a doomsday prepper. It almost seemed like it was just regular conversation for him how the rapture would happen or Nostradamus predicted on a date, the New World Order, the mark of the beast, fema camps, etc etc.\nHe would typically just make everyone take that day off together. Then when things didn't happen, it was back to business as usual, more reading and waiting til the SHTF.\nOn the plus side I learned firearms at the age of 9 and learned to reload shells... daily. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
3kw6rs | how does youtube's auto caption function work? | It always seems to mess up... | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3kw6rs/eli5_how_does_youtubes_auto_caption_function_work/ | {
"a_id": [
"cv10jyt"
],
"score": [
3
],
"text": [
"Well yes.\n\nIt utilizes a speech to text program, which is the computer trying to recognize words. It is not very good at this, but things are improving."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
|
57ft3c | ikea furniture and formaldehyde | Is there any danger at all due to exposed exposure and the like? Most of my room is IKEA furniture and on my 'desk', I've scraped a front bit out when bored. Should I worry about potential long term effects? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/57ft3c/eli5_ikea_furniture_and_formaldehyde/ | {
"a_id": [
"d8rm77b"
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"text": [
"So, to start, formaldehyde is a binder, that helps keep the wood conglomerates all together. It has been widely used in the industry for the production of MDF (medium density fiberboard), but its use has been decreasing due to health risks.\n\nThere are legal levels for formaldehyde emissions, and IKEA is below those levels. [50% below the legal limit](_URL_0_). \n\nAlso, IKEA is one of the lead companies selling MDF furniture, so they try to stay ahead of the competition, and one way of doing so, is changing their binders, to more healthy ones.\n\nSo, I would say you will be fine!"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"http://lifeathome.ch/en/2014/05/formaldehyde-and-ikea-furniture/"
]
] |
|
6e08hn | why do most species of butterflies hold their wings vertically at rest while moths hold them horizontally? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6e08hn/eli5_why_do_most_species_of_butterflies_hold/ | {
"a_id": [
"di6o2yf"
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"score": [
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"text": [
"Butterflies often use visual cues (although not exclusively) for mate choice - the upper side of their wings is therefore often brightly coloured or patterned to attract mates. The underside is normally dark and camouflaged. When resting, butterflies therefore hold their wings vertically (closed) to avoid attracting the attention of predators.\n\nMoths, being nocturnal, primarily use olfactory cues for mate choice and so both sides of their wings are dull/camouflaged. Holding the wings open allows the moth to flatten itself against the surface it is resting on, reducing the chance of being spotted in profile (i.e. sticking out from the surface) and also being slightly better protected from wind etc."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
1qqlt6 | crayons | I just can't seem to grasp it. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1qqlt6/eli5crayons/ | {
"a_id": [
"cdfg6lk"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"I think Mr. Rogers visited the crayon factory one time.\n\n[Here it is](_URL_0_)"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=59e7WYd24gI"
]
] |
|
6hu9xi | how can a company "restructure its stocks" in the way google did with alphabet inc.? | Based on [this](_URL_0_) article, when Google restructured into Alphabet Inc., it designated three classes of shares, A, B and C. The common shareholder's stocks were converted to class A, which owns 1/10th of the voting rights of class B shares, mostly owned by the company founders.
I am looking to understand:
- What "restructuring stocks" in this way means? How do you make it happen? What are its implications?
- Are there legal issues with the idea of "modifying" a shareholder's voting power in this manner?
Thanks :) | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6hu9xi/eli5_how_can_a_company_restructure_its_stocks_in/ | {
"a_id": [
"dj17ts8"
],
"score": [
2
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"text": [
"Alphabet's restructure did not change anyone's voting power. The 10-vote class B shares (which are only owned by the co-founders) have existed since the company went public. What Alphabet did was split the existing shares- for every share that someone owned before the restructure (1 vote), they owned 1 class A share (1 vote) and 1 class C share (no vote) after the restructure.\n\nThe reason for this restructuring is that it allows the company to create more class C shares in the future without getting rid of the co-founder's majority control of the votes (since none of the new shares have voting rights, you never get to a point where the people outside the company have more voting rights than the co-founders). \n\nSuch a stock change has to be approved by the shareholders, but when the co-founders control more than 50% of the votes, they don't have a problem getting their proposals through."
]
} | [] | [
"http://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/class.asp"
] | [
[]
] |
|
447xv8 | fourier and z transform | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/447xv8/eli5_fourier_and_z_transform/ | {
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"text": [
"There's no ELI5 for this. I'm going to assume you have some background in math and electronics. \n\nTransforms take a function (like a signal, or a system) and moves them into a different domain. This lets us glean some additional meaning from the function. \n\nOne such transform is the Laplace transform. It takes a differential equation and transforms it into an algebraic equation. This is useful in electronics, where circuits with reactive components (inductors and capacitors) have voltage and current relationships where they are differential functions. We call those relationships impedances. When you take the Laplace transform, you get a circuit where you can analyze the capacitors and inductors in terms of their impedances, like resistors. This makes it easy to figure out how the circuit responds to an input. \n\nThe Laplace transform takes a time domain signal or system and transforms it into the *s* domain. When you evaluate the Laplace transform of a system at s = jw where j = sqrt(-1) and w is the frequency variable, you get the Fourier transform. This tells you how the system changes the input signal in terms of its frequency and phase responses. From this we can see how the system acts as a filter, something that changes the frequency response of an input signal. \n\nThe Z-transform is the discrete time version of the Laplace transform. We need it to evaluate systems that work on samples instead of continuous functions of time, like digital systems. Similarly, you can evaluate the Z transform at z = e^jw to get the Discrete Time Fourier Transform (not the same as the Fourier transform). This is the same as evaluating the z transform along the unit circle. \n\nWhy the unit circle? Because the Z transform can be seen as taking the Laplace transform and wrapping the jw axis on the *s* plane into a circle in the Z plane. It's kind of a cool fractal plot, and it's done by means of another transform that is a topic for a different day. ",
"Hi Mouzer! \n\nA little late to the party, but I wrote a primer on the Fourier transform that might help you out (nothing on the Z-transform, though). It's not quite ELI5 (as /u/Holy_City says, there probably isn't an ELI5 for this) but I think its a friendly introduction. \n\nAnyway, FWIW:\n[_URL_0_](_URL_0_)\n\nCheers."
]
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[],
[
"http://www.labkitty.com/2015/12/a-primer-on-fourier-analysis-part-i.html"
]
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||
236ijr | how is it that morbidly obese people can lose 100lbs+ and fit into a size 4 when normal people have trouble losing 5lbs? | if they have that much willpower, how come it took so long to start? why don't they stop at size 10 or 12?
this isn't meant to be offensive. anyone of any weight can answer. i just don't get it. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/236ijr/eli5_how_is_it_that_morbidly_obese_people_can/ | {
"a_id": [
"cgtwldm"
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"text": [
"The human body has something called a Basal Metabolic Rate, which predicts how many calories they burn in a day.\n\n_URL_0_\n\nEnter your age, sex, height and weight here. That is the amount of calories you will burn if you laid in bed all day, barely moving. In practice, your actual BMR is that number increased by 20-90 percent depending on your exercise level. So if an obese person and a skinny person eat the exact same thing in a day, and both work desk jobs without significant exercise, the obese person will have a much higher caloric deficit.\n\nA general rule of thumb for weight loss is to try a consistent caloric deficit. For instance, a 1000-calorie deficit for 7 days equates to about 2 lbs. lost per week. I can definitely do this since my BMR is about 2700, so a 1000-calorie deficit for me is almost an average day of food for a skinny person. However, as your weight decreases your BMR will also decrease, and you will hit a point where a 1000-calorie deficit means eating less than 1200 calories in a day - which leads to health issues regardless of who you are. So weight loss isn't necessarily harder once you're \"normal\", it just goes slower because they can't cut back as many calories.\n\nAlso, the time they start is not dependent on willpower, which is a misnomer anyway. But some event may inspire them to evaluate themselves and decide to make a change."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"http://www.bmi-calculator.net/bmr-calculator/"
]
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|
33fxlb | what makes the jupiter storm permanent, why don't we have one like that? | The 'eye' looks cool, but is it immortal? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/33fxlb/eli5what_makes_the_jupiter_storm_permanent_why/ | {
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"text": [
"It's not permanent. It's just been a perfect storm that has lasted for over 400 years.\n\nNasa has been tracking it and it's been shrinking by about 1,000 km per year (that's about the size of Washington D.C. to Chicago Il.). They assume it will be gone in about 2040, but nobody knows for sure.",
"You know how hurricanes strengthen over warm water, and break up over land? \n\nJupiter doesn't have any land to break up the storm. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
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] |
|
efvo7u | how does a phone know how to "fast charge" when using the official charger and how to "slow charge" when using a generic charger? | I have a Samsung phone and when I use the proper Samsung cable and plug piece it charges quickly however when I use a generic cable or plug piece it charges significantly slower. How does my phone recognise the difference, isn't electricity all the same? (insert Mr Incredible meme). | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/efvo7u/eli5_how_does_a_phone_know_how_to_fast_charge/ | {
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"text": [
"It's the current the adapter allows through. Normal USB charging is around 2.5 watts (.5amp at 5 volts). Fast chargers increase both the amperage and voltage for a higher watt output, powering the battery faster.",
"The phone sends a message cable asking how much current it can carry. If that's good, then it sends a different message to the charging brick asking for an elevated amount of power. If the brick or cable doesn't support high power, the phone slow charges on the default power output.",
"The phone asks for as much power as it can take, the power brick gives it as much power as it can give.\n\nYour official Samsung charging brick can output more power that most other charging bricks.",
"Look at the amount of amps your charger outputs. Your official one may be 2.5A or even 5A. Those cheap ones you can buy at the dollar store or that are sold at gas stations are almost always 1A or even as low as 0.5A.\n\nSame with car chargers. I thought the car charger on my vehicle was shit because it couldn’t do anything more than maintain the charge on my phone. Turns out it was just a 0.5A charger, and when I bought a proper 2.5A one it charged just like my official one."
]
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|
2taimn | why do some vaccines "last" longer than others? what's the difference? | I'm thinking of the flu - we need to get a flu shot every year because there's a different strain predicted to be the most prevalent, and because those strains keep evolving.
But then I think of, say, diphtheria. We only get that vaccine once or twice (by my recollection). Same for measles-mumps-rubella. Tetanus is only every 10 years.
What's the difference? Is it something about the diseases themselves that make them easier to vaccinate against, or is it something about the vaccines that make them generate longer-lasting antibodies? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2taimn/eli5why_do_some_vaccines_last_longer_than_others/ | {
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"The primary difference is the disease. The Flu virus is more prevalent and it also mutates quicker than some other viruses, and so a vaccine that worked last year likely won't work this year as the virus has reproduced so much that it's too different from the previous version.",
"Pharmacy student here.\n\nThe Diphtheria vaccine (Tdap or DTaP, booster Td) protects against toxoids produced by the Diphtheria ~~virus~~ bacteria, (sorry for the typo). Since the toxoids do not change, there is no need to update the vaccine. You just get a booster vaccine every few years to re-up your resistance to these toxins.\n\nOn the other hand, the flu virus mutates very easily, and so a new vaccine must be formulated each year with our best guess of the strains that will be mainly circulating. This is because the vaccine targets the virus itself.\n\nThere are also different types of antibodies produced by the body. Some are 'first responders' that are quick to appear in the presence of an infection. Others take longer to appear, but confer longer-term immunity. Over time, these antibodies will be less plentiful in the body, which is why you get booster shots like the Tdap. \n\n\n > But then I think of, say, diphtheria. We only get that vaccine once or twice (by my recollection). Same for measles-mumps-rubella. Tetanus is only every 10 years.\n\nJust FYI, the Td vaccine I used as an example above vaccinates against diphtheria and tetanus and is usually administered every 10 years. So you are getting boosted resistance to tetanus and diphtheria toxins with each booster vaccine.\n\n\n\nIf you have any other questions or would like me to expound upon anything, just let me know.",
"This is a GREAT question... and it's complicated. I'll try to be brief, but I'm a doctor and immunology is just about the coolest thing the human body does, flat out. \n\nWhen you get infected with a bacteria, B cells (and many others, we'll call them Antigen Presenting Cells) identify the bacteria as foreign and engulf a few, break them up into little protein bits, and bind them to special proteins to present the bits (\"antigens\") to your Helper T cells. Keep the protein part in mind, it will be important later. The first time you get infected by that bacteria, your Helper T cells find the new antigen, undergo lots of signalling and double-checking to be sure that it's truly a foreign antigen (we don't want our immune systems attacking our own cells!) and then activates (starts secreting chemicals that call over other immune cells). Because it's done lots of checking to be sure that the antigen it was presented is foreign, it activates Killer T cells in the area to start going crazy and killing anything that expresses that antigen, and it activates B cells to start making antibodies to that antigen. Antibodies are basically little molecular flags that are very fine tuned to specific antigens, and when they bind they signal the immune system to destroy whatever they're bound to.\n\nSome B cells are \"memory\" B cells, and they basically live forever in very small numbers, always looking for that same antigen. When they find it again (you get infected the second time) they immediately start producing billions of antibodies and your immune system is all over it. The first time takes a few days, and we get sick... but the second time, we never even notice because it's fought off so quickly.\n\nBut as you can imagine, having memory B cells that are always seeking out and signalling the destruction of anything with a certain antigen can be dangerous if it's actually your own antigen. So the process is very tightly regulated.\n\nThere are many types of vaccines. Some are basically just weakened versions of the infection. We call them \"live vaccines\" and those basically produce the same response as normal infections. However, they have a (very small, almost theoretical) chance of mutating and reactivating, particularly in immune suppressed people, so aren't good for everyone. We therefore also have killed vaccines, and some manufactured vaccines that are really just sugars or proteins from the surface of the bug. Our immune system isn't willing to commit as strongly to B cell and antibody production for some of these, because it evolved to be totally certain that antigens that are presented to it are foreign and it can't 'be as certain' with some of our simple killed vaccines. So the immune response it produces is much less robust, requiring lots of boosters.\n\nThat's the difference between some childhood vaccines that you get a few times and then never need again, and things like tetanus and diphtheria that require boosters every 10 years. Of course, as explained well by many other commenters, that's not true of the flu, which is a virus with lots of really cool abilities to mutate at faster-than-normal rates through purposeful genetic rearrangement, rearranging its antigens so that it can escape our adaptive immune system's defenses!"
]
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75da7j | how do people come to power? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/75da7j/eli5_how_do_people_come_to_power/ | {
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"Two ways, either by an established process or by force or the threat of force.\n\nEstablished process: elections, hereditary succession, designated successor (either by the previous ruler or by a cabal of some sort). I'm sure there are others. This works because people gravitate towards the stability and safety of tradition.\n\nForce: the only other way to come to power is to either defeat the current ruler in conflict or gain the support of the military and/or population so that the current ruler realizes they would lose a conflict (threat of force). You can gain this support in lots of ways (charisma, religion, ethnic ties, bribes, etc.), but in the end it comes down to the threat of force.",
"Took AP World (lol). Depends on the government. For example, Hitler was an excellent speaker and was able to convince his party to give their power all to him. On the hand, Trump won the presidency through the money he spent campaigning. Now that I think about it, you can come to power just by being a good speaker or having more resources. In slavery, whites were more powerful than the blacks because if the blacks fought back they would be killed. I don't really know. Take this answer with a grain of salt.",
"Humans naturally form hierarchies.\n\nPeople are always examining each other's abilities and experience, sizing up how good everybody is at accomplishing the goals of the group.\n\nWe all have circuits in our brains that measure how successful we are in achieving our goals. \n\nSuccess gives us serotonin, making 'safe' more of our default setting, which causes us to project our opinions more and feel confident taking charge in our groups.\n\nRepeated failure takes away serotonin, making you timid and more likely to let others take charge, because you feel insecure and afraid.\n\nWe instinctively understand that we need to form groups to achieve our goals, and that our group succeeding is more likely if everybody is in the right place in the hierarchy, with competent people leading and incompetent people being followers.\n\nBeing the leader is a great to be if you can pull it off, but if you challenge the leader (not necessarily violently, it can be by sharing your ideas as if they are equal to theirs) then everybody else in the group will size the two of you up and have an unspoken election.\n\nEvery single person in the group made themselves subservient to the leaders because they were willing to trade their freedom and social rank in exchange for the increased odds of success they would see by letting somebody else make the decisions. \n\nIf you selfishly try to replace somebody who is clearly more capable than you, the group will not be happy that you attempted to wast their sacrifice, and you will face heavy consequences (ostracism, expulsion from the group, death in some cases), so your body sizes up how much dominance you can get away with, and gives you enough confidence to reach that level.\n\nIt's basically this: people understand that they are more likely to survive/prosper if they form groups than if they go it alone, and that being low in the hierarchy might be their best option, because letting a more capable person run things for now is better than dying because somebody who didn't know what they were doing insisted on being the leader.\n\nSociety is a huge network of hierarchies that overlap and nest inside each other. The rule, in general, is to make the other people in the hierarchy believe that they are better off with you being above them. People who do this tend to get power.\n\nThere is corruption, intimidation, nepotism, and all the other complications that keep this from happening, but the core of power is displaying a level of competence/skill which convinces others that they are better off having you in charge.\n\nPeople climb their little hierarchies, then they climb the bigger hierarchy the little one was inside, moving up continually be convincing the other members that they will make things better if put in charge.\n\nImagine a young cop. He starts out as a nobody in his department (but fairly high in the social hierarchy of normal people who live in his area).\n\nOver five years, he gains experience and shows himself to be very smart and reliable to his coworkers, so when a Lieutenant slot opens up, he is the obvious candidate.\n\nHe starts interacting with other other leaders of local law enforcement agencies on a regular basis, as well as the heads of other local government agencies and some business owners and is now at the bottom of the hierarchy of the local leaders in his town, while still being near the top of his old hierarchy (his police department).\n\nHe demonstrates himself to be a capable leader. He also shows skill at interacting with the press and writing administrative documents. A slot opens up on the city council, and enough of the local leaders feel that their lives would be improved by him getting the spot that they decide to support him. \n\nEverybody at his police department is already going to support him, telling all the people they know that he's a great candidate, and the other local leaders he knows are at the top of their own hierarchies, so their collective decision to back him reverberates down throughout the organizations they lead and gets the Lieutenant enough support to get elected.\n\nHe then convinces the other city council members, government agency heads, and business leaders that he would make their lives better as mayor; convinces mayors and state-level businessmen that he'd be a good state senator; convinces the state legislature and Governor that he'd make a good House Member; convinces the other House members and the powerful people in his state that he'd make a good Senator; then convinces all the powerful people in the country that he'd make their lives better as President.\n\nNow, this is a ridiculous oversimplification (especially since many of these are elected positions), but I'm trying to get the gist across.\n\nBasically, they climb a hierarchy, end up at the bottom of a new one, then climb again; and once they are a level or two up, each person in their current hierarchy is on top of a stack of other hierarchies, and their opinion will get amplified downwards to the huge number of people below them in the social order.\n\nEach step is climbed by getting the other people in that group to believe that their odds of success are better letting somebody else climb to the top than trying to climb themselves.\n\nLook up Rules for Rulers on Youtube by Grey, it's a great video that says some great stuff about this."
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67k07j | how can soft drinks, with many ingredients, be cheaper to purchase than water? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/67k07j/eli5_how_can_soft_drinks_with_many_ingredients_be/ | {
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"It's what people are willing to pay.\n\nYour example isn't always true (it's one of those \"every square is a rectangle, not every rectangle is a square\" thing).\n\nIf you buy a case of aquafina water, you're paying about 10 - 15 cents per bottle of water. You're not going to find a 500 mL soft drink at a grocery store that costs that money.\n\nBut if you are deliberately choosing an expensive water (which is expensive because people are willing to pay that price), you are creating the situation you mentioned where water is more expensive than soft drinks.",
"You can probably get bulk water for cheaper than any soft drink. Just looking online, my local grocery sells 32 16.9oz bottles of purified drinking water for $3.33, meanwhile a 6-pack of Coke of the same size is $4.99. Name-brand purified tap water (lol) is slightly more expensive but still you get 24 16.9oz bottles of Aquafina for that $4.99.\n\nI don't doubt that some fantastic mineral water that you'd take to a Yoga class costs more per bottle than Coke. That's due to a combination of A) People will pay that much for it and B) Water is heavy, it's expensive to actually ship water from Fiji or France or whatever. Soft drinks (and purified tap) are bottled in your town or close to it, so the cost of shipping is just a local truck.",
"Beverages are not priced by the ingredient.\n\nWine has (technically) one ingredient and its way more expensive than both water or soda.\n\n"
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206hg7 | why are some people so adamant about investing in gold? is it a good idea? what are the risks? | I do some very casual investing in the stock market. I have a small but well-diversified portfolio that has been doing well the last few years. I balance it once or twice a year and I've been happy with the results. Despite this, a relative has been constantly telling me I need to invest in gold stocks. GDX, GLD, RGL, etc. What's the big deal? What are the dangers in investing in gold? Are there political motives behind such an investment (the relative is uber conservative)? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/206hg7/eli5_why_are_some_people_so_adamant_about/ | {
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"It's not a bad idea. Wether it is a good idea depends on many factors.\n\nGold is essentially a hedge. An investment in gold is usually designed to provide some upside in a portfolio that would otherwise be substantially affected by inflation or global recession.\n\nGold essentially acts as a neutral currency. There's no government in charge of what gold \"costs\". The rate new gold is added to the market is pretty predictable (always subject to change - if anyone ever succeeds in mining an asteroid or figuring out how to get gold out of seawater, the price of gold will crash). The gold market is liquid, global, and transparent. So it does reliably send price signals about the consensus of its value relative to dollars, euro, yen, swiss franc, real, peso, etc.\n\nIf you think that the future holds a lot of inflation and/or recession risk, you might want to think about adding gold to your portfolio. It is likely to underperform the stock market (or the bond market for that matter) barring major macroeconomic effects, so in the short run it is probably going to remain flat or lose value. \n\nIf things go utterly to hell, the price of gold won't matter a damn, of course. So it's a hedge within a fairly well bounded range of problems, like that experienced from 2007-2009. You don't want to live in a world where gold is worth multiples of what it is worth today; such a world would be a catastrophe.\n\nIt's hard to say if there's a \"gold bubble\". Gold is now easier to invest in than in the past. You no longer have to actually hold the metal or trust some entity that is relatively small to hold it for you. The big traded gold funds are unlikely to turn out to be frauds (but the history of private precious metal dealers going rogue is frightening). Some of the run up in gold value might be simply attributable to more people being comfortable investing in it. But since it's been a couple of years since the peak and it seems to be holding steady, I think the chances that the current price is a \"bubble\" are receding. \n\nGold could still tumble. If the economics of the United States and Europe became much better it would likely trigger a sell off of gold. The more confidence people have that the OECD will get its budget problems under control and deal constructively with entitlements and pension obligations, the less risk there is of sustained substantial inflation or currency devaluations.\n\nYour uber conservative relative probably thinks those odds are low. The relative probably thinks the economy is headed for a cliff. There are reasons to believe your relative might not be wrong, but it's a hypothesis, not a dead certainty.\n\nThe appetite to pay for risk insurance in this form is going to vary from investor to investor."
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422nry | why does a 100ms increase in ping drastically affect online gameplay? | How does such a small increase in latency make a multiplayer game go from smooth sailing to completely unplayable? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/422nry/eli5_why_does_a_100ms_increase_in_ping/ | {
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"Only in games like Smash bros or first person shooters that are all about timing. 100ms is not a small increase but pretty significant. That is 1/10th second extra for everything you do to reach the server. So it can affect aiming, especially when shooting at a moving target like an enemy player, he's in a different spot in 1/10th of a second."
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bbeemc | why can human eyes rotate quickly together, but not when going or returning from being cross-eyed? | Situations where humans must repeatedly change between very near and far vision rapidly are uncommon.
However, if you go cross-eyed and then relax, it takes a while the eye orientations to return to normal.
How is this different from rapidly being able to look left and right, when both eyes move in the same direction?
I don't think this is the same question as "Why can't I move my eyes slowly if there's nothign to track?", which has been answered before. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/bbeemc/eli5_why_can_human_eyes_rotate_quickly_together/ | {
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"Our eye muscles are designed to work in tandem, and we are constantly strengthening that uniformity through usage (just think of how often you move your eyes together). Just as it’s sometimes difficult to move other body parts in an unusual way (like rolling your tongue or making your fingers do a Vulcan salute), your eyes just aren’t used to working independently and need a little extra effort to cross or uncross. \n\nI’ve had a corneal condition in one eye for most of my life that has strengthened the other eye to compensate. I can move that eye independently of the other because (so say my eye surgeons) I have unintentionally trained the muscles to work that way."
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fddkc7 | why exactly does walking after falling or experiencing some other similar injury help reduce the pain? | I was wondering about the "walk it off" phrase, why does walking help with pain? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/fddkc7/eli5_why_exactly_does_walking_after_falling_or/ | {
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"Neuroscientist here! It really depends on the type of injury, but generally it comes down to the nature of pain. Pain is basically just a series of electrochemical signals generated by nerve cells that then travel to your brain and are then interpreted as being bad. They are your bodies way of telling you that something is wrong.\n\nHowever, there's only so much \"information\" that can travel between your nerves and your brain at any given time. By walking around after a minor injury, you're forcing your body to start sending a lot of sensory feedback up to the brain and back. You have to constantly monitor your balance, make sure you put your feet where they need to go, look forward to make sure you don't walk into a wall, etc. All of this involves signals traveling between your body and your brain and the original pain signal has a way of getting a bit lost in the background. This has the effect of you feeling like the injury doesn't hurt as much.\n\nThink of it like your internet connection. You only have so much bandwidth that you can use. If you are only watching YouTube, you'll get a crisp and clean HD video. But then someone else in the house turns on netflix, then you decide start downloading some music, and your laptop starts to sync its photos with the cloud! Suddenly the YouTube video is 240p and constantly buffering. Your pain is like the video, the more stuff that is going on the less you'll be able to notice it."
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2zv3ih | what would happen to the economy of everybody reverted back to trading for everything? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2zv3ih/eli5_what_would_happen_to_the_economy_of/ | {
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"The majority of the planet would literally starve to death.",
"Almost complete collapse. Realistically, very few people have anything worthwhile to trade aside from their time and personal possessions. \n\nMoney gives individuals liquidity so that they can get the things they need as they need them.",
"It's extremely difficult. Currency allows a common medium with which to perform trading. So conveniently, you don't need a comparison of every item to every other item in terms of worth. You just need to know how much currency your item is worth."
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3mejeb | why aren't batteries included? | Talking about toys and gadgets advertised on TV. Wouldn't it make it easier if batteries were included? Then they wouldn't have to say "batteries not included" on every commercial. Is it that hard to just include some batteries? I can buy some at the grocery store that have an expiration for 10-15 years from now - so it's not like expiration would be an issue... | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3mejeb/eli5_why_arent_batteries_included/ | {
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"Money.\n\nIt costs the manufacturer money to include batteries, making the product more expensive, making you less likely to buy it.",
"Batteries are expensive. Why include them when they cost money for the manufacturer, and they add weight to the product (increasing shipping costs).\n\nIt may be convenient for the consumers, but it's really just not worth it.",
"No one really would decide not to buy a product because it didn't include batteries. Including batteries would raise prices, which actually *would* make some people not buy the product. Simple enough.\n\nMost people have a stash of batteries at home. Plenty of products, such as remotes, do in fact come with batteries.",
"Cost and weight as well as batteries can fail when left sitting too long, or they leak acid which could cause corrosion of product.",
"All the Japanese consumer electronics I have bought come with batteries included for their remote controls. Thoughtful."
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25q21k | when a company like whatsapp is valued at $19b, where did the valuation come from? was it taken away from another product or service? | Was it created from 'nothing' and just add to the GDP, or did some other product/service lose value because of this? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/25q21k/eli5_when_a_company_like_whatsapp_is_valued_at/ | {
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"Don't use whatsapp as an example, that $19B valuation is so insane that it confuses everything everyone knows about valuations.",
"It was the price that Zuck was willing to pay to buy up the stakes held by WhatsApp's investors.\n\nIt came out of Facebook's hide.",
"Neither.\n\nIt just means the acquiring company gave the owners of WhatsApp a lot of stock, in exchange for getting to own the company. The value of that stock is the number you see.\n\nSometimes people buy just *part* of the company, so the valuation is just a math exercise. For example if I buy one tenth of a company for $1000, people say \"he values the whole company at $10,000.\""
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36uyet | why are heart murmurs dangerous for animals and not humans? | I searched heart murmur on reddit, and loads of posts came up about dogs and cats having to be put down because of their heart murmur. Yet for humans, apparently a heart murmur is nearly always 'innocent' and presents no symptoms/cause for concern at all. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/36uyet/eli5_why_are_heart_murmurs_dangerous_for_animals/ | {
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"Most heart murmurs don't cause any problems for animals either. My cat Bandit lived 10+ years with a murmur without the slightest ill effect. \n\nIn humans, murmurs that have the potential to be impairing are usually corrected by surgery. In animals, this rarely occurs. So the murmur gets progressively worse, and eventually it either causes the animal suffering directly, or makes it impossible to treat an unrelated condition (an animal with a strong murmur can't be under anesthesia), at that point euthanasia is the usual decision.\n\n"
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4f61mz | how does electrolysis actually break down water? how feeding an electric current get hydrogen and oxygen? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4f61mz/eli5_how_does_electrolysis_actually_break_down/ | {
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"H2O is a pretty stable bond, because it doesn't require a lot of energy. O2 and more so H2 are less stable and require more energy. \n\nIf you deliver that energy through electrical current, a double reaction called reduction-oxidation (redox) will take 2H2O to 2H2 + O2. \n\nOf course, as soon as you combine these two again, it will react in the opposite direction back to H2O. Good thing is that this time you receive current from it. Hydrogen cars work on this priciple. \nAlso almost all batteries work through redox-reactions with different substances. \n\n",
"Water molecules fall apart into 2 pieces on their own. They break into an H+ part and an OH- part.\n\nThe H+ is positively charged, and the OH- is negatively charged. Under normal circumstances, the H+ and OH- attract because of their opposite charge, and stick back together like magnets stick.\n\nHowever, if you apply an electric current, you can separate the OH- which gets attracted to the positive electrode, and the H+ which is attracted to the negative electrode.\n\nNow, at the negative electrode, the reason that it is negative is because your battery or power supply is pushing lots of electrons into the electrode. The electrons attract the H+, and they react. The H+ is a hydrogen atom which is missing an electron, so it can take the spare electron from the electrode, and form a neutral hydrogen atom. 2 neutral hydrogen atoms then react to form hydrogen gas which bubbles away.\n\nAs similar thing happens at the positive electrode. The electrode is missing electrons, and the OH- has a spare electron. The electron is moved to the electron, and you now have an OH. This is very reactive, and 2 OH react together to form water + oxygen. The oxygen atoms react to form O2, which bubbles away.",
"Firstly, even thought water has the formula H20, a small fraction of these molecules exist as H+ and OH- ions (this means that H has positive charge and OH has negative). \n\nIn the wire, the electrons are moving. Now you will have two pieces of metal dipped in the water connected to the wire. From one end, electrons are flowing out into the water. The electrons, being negative, neutralise the positive H+ ions. The following reaction occurs.\n\n2 H+ + 2e- = H2 ( hydrogen gas)\n\nAt the other end, electrons are taken in from the water. Our OH- ions are negative , so they give away their extra electron (they are negative because of the extra electron), which is transferred to the wire. The reaction here is\n\n4 OH- = O2 + 2H2O + 4e-\n\nThis transfer of electrons requires energy supplied from a battery, since the final products have a higher chemical potential energy than the initial reactants. The reverse process releases energy, and is used in fuel cells.\n\nAlso, in reality, the process is complicated, as pure water forms very few ions, so a small amount of salt or acid is added to make more ions. These impurities also make their way into the final products of electrolysis ( example: chlorine gas from NaCl)\n\n"
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mkdol | tax write offs. | Currently, by understanding of write offs is about as deep as [Kramer's](_URL_0_). | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/mkdol/eli5_tax_write_offs/ | {
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"You pay taxes on your total income, when you have something that can be written off you use it to reduce your income and therefore pay less taxes.\n\nLet's say you earn $5 a week in allowance, but you'd have to pay 10% every week to the bully for lunch money. So if you decided to buy a cupcake at the weekly bake sale (that would be considered an eligible charity), your weekly allowance would be considered $4 to the bully. Saving you $0.10 in taxes. ($5 x 10% - $4 x 10%)",
"Jerry: So, we're going to make the post office pay for my new stereo, now?\n\nKramer: It's a write-off for them.\n\nJerry: How is it a write-off?\n\nKramer: They just write it off.\n\nJerry: Write it off what?\n\nKramer: Jerry all these big companies they write off everything.\n\nJerry: You don't even know what a write-off is.\n\nKramer: Do you?\n\nJerry: No, I don't.\n\nKramer: But they do - and they are the ones writing it off.",
"I do kind of wonder if you and [caseymac](_URL_0_) are taking the same class or something...there are often two or three posts on a random topic that pop up on ELI5 in the same day.\n\n...not that it's bad, this is precisely the place to ask some of those questions, just seems curious.",
"I know that this isn't exactly the question you asked, but I thought it might be helpful to clarify that \"write off\" can mean different things in different situations. This often makes it a very confusing term.\n\nLet's say there is a boy named Tom. Tom starts a lemonade stand as a business. Tom must keep track of the business's *assets* and *liabilities* on a document called a *balance sheet*. Assets are things that help the business make money, such as cups, lemon presses, pitchers, tables, chairs, etc. Suppose one day, Tom drops a glass pitcher, and it shatters into pieces. An asset that was previously valuable is now worth nothing, and must be \"written off\" of the balance sheet. This is one type of write off. When accountants who are not preparing taxes use the term \"write off,\" this is usually what they mean.\n\nFor another example, suppose that another kid named Bob wants to buy some lemonade, but doesn't have any money with him. Tom agrees to let Bob have some lemonade now, and pay the money later. Tom puts the debt on the balance sheet as an asset. Bob, however, moves out of town, and is never seen again. Bob's debt must now must be \"written off\" because it is unlikely to ever be paid. When bankers use the term \"write off,\" this is usually what they mean.\n\nFinally, suppose that Tom's family tells him that he may keep 80% of the money he makes from the lemonade stand, but must put 20% into the family savings account. Imagine that Tom charges $2 per cup, and sells 5 cups of lemonade. This adds up to $10. However, imagine that Tom spent $3 purchasing lemons to make that lemonade. Tom only made $7 in profit. It would not be fair to make Tom put 20% of $10 into the family savings account because Tom did not really make $10 in profit. Instead, he should pay 20% of $7, because that is the profit he made. In other words, Tom can \"write off\" the $3 he spent on lemons. When accounts who are preparing taxes use the term \"write off,\" this is usually what they mean.\n\nMoral of the story: if you ever hear someone use the term \"write off,\" make sure you ask them specifically what they mean, because it can mean different things in different contexts. ",
"Adults have to pay taxes to the government. You pay taxes on things you buy and taxes on money you make. The government likes to use taxes to influence people's actions. Some things, the government wants people to stop doing, like smoking, so they tax them more. Then there's things that they want to encourage people to do, like give to charity & buy houses, that gives you \"extra credit\" on your tax bill - those are write offs.",
"You pay taxes on your total income, when you have something that can be written off you use it to reduce your income and therefore pay less taxes.\n\nLet's say you earn $5 a week in allowance, but you'd have to pay 10% every week to the bully for lunch money. So if you decided to buy a cupcake at the weekly bake sale (that would be considered an eligible charity), your weekly allowance would be considered $4 to the bully. Saving you $0.10 in taxes. ($5 x 10% - $4 x 10%)",
"Jerry: So, we're going to make the post office pay for my new stereo, now?\n\nKramer: It's a write-off for them.\n\nJerry: How is it a write-off?\n\nKramer: They just write it off.\n\nJerry: Write it off what?\n\nKramer: Jerry all these big companies they write off everything.\n\nJerry: You don't even know what a write-off is.\n\nKramer: Do you?\n\nJerry: No, I don't.\n\nKramer: But they do - and they are the ones writing it off.",
"I do kind of wonder if you and [caseymac](_URL_0_) are taking the same class or something...there are often two or three posts on a random topic that pop up on ELI5 in the same day.\n\n...not that it's bad, this is precisely the place to ask some of those questions, just seems curious.",
"I know that this isn't exactly the question you asked, but I thought it might be helpful to clarify that \"write off\" can mean different things in different situations. This often makes it a very confusing term.\n\nLet's say there is a boy named Tom. Tom starts a lemonade stand as a business. Tom must keep track of the business's *assets* and *liabilities* on a document called a *balance sheet*. Assets are things that help the business make money, such as cups, lemon presses, pitchers, tables, chairs, etc. Suppose one day, Tom drops a glass pitcher, and it shatters into pieces. An asset that was previously valuable is now worth nothing, and must be \"written off\" of the balance sheet. This is one type of write off. When accountants who are not preparing taxes use the term \"write off,\" this is usually what they mean.\n\nFor another example, suppose that another kid named Bob wants to buy some lemonade, but doesn't have any money with him. Tom agrees to let Bob have some lemonade now, and pay the money later. Tom puts the debt on the balance sheet as an asset. Bob, however, moves out of town, and is never seen again. Bob's debt must now must be \"written off\" because it is unlikely to ever be paid. When bankers use the term \"write off,\" this is usually what they mean.\n\nFinally, suppose that Tom's family tells him that he may keep 80% of the money he makes from the lemonade stand, but must put 20% into the family savings account. Imagine that Tom charges $2 per cup, and sells 5 cups of lemonade. This adds up to $10. However, imagine that Tom spent $3 purchasing lemons to make that lemonade. Tom only made $7 in profit. It would not be fair to make Tom put 20% of $10 into the family savings account because Tom did not really make $10 in profit. Instead, he should pay 20% of $7, because that is the profit he made. In other words, Tom can \"write off\" the $3 he spent on lemons. When accounts who are preparing taxes use the term \"write off,\" this is usually what they mean.\n\nMoral of the story: if you ever hear someone use the term \"write off,\" make sure you ask them specifically what they mean, because it can mean different things in different contexts. ",
"Adults have to pay taxes to the government. You pay taxes on things you buy and taxes on money you make. The government likes to use taxes to influence people's actions. Some things, the government wants people to stop doing, like smoking, so they tax them more. Then there's things that they want to encourage people to do, like give to charity & buy houses, that gives you \"extra credit\" on your tax bill - those are write offs."
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26uqji | why do government files have to be declassified and who sets the term on how long it has to be kept a secret? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/26uqji/eli5_why_do_government_files_have_to_be/ | {
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"Government files need to be declassified once they are politically/militarily irrelevant. This enables people to check on what the government has been up to so that nothing that is overtly unethical is going on behind the scenes. It also contributes to the information advailable for historians to utilize. \n\nThe people who set such things are ultimately a part of the government. They do have to publish set dates for release however once the existence of a classified document is known."
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73xvp0 | when does a dialect become it's own language? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/73xvp0/eli5_when_does_a_dialect_become_its_own_language/ | {
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"When the people speaking the dialect have sufficient power and/or influence to get people to accept that it is. That's it. Two language can be very similar and mutually easily intelligible but if there are two governments that have the authority to say they are different languages, then they're considered two different languages. As I have been told is the case with Serbian and Croatian (I don't speak either so I'm just going by what I was told by someone who lived in the area). On the other hand, there's Arabic. I'm told that what is spoken in Lebanon is so different from what is spoken in Saudi Arabia that they're not mutually intelligible... but they're both considered to be Arabic because there's a purposefulness to keep calling them the same language. Yet at the same time these are all different countries so there's no cohesive movement to pick a standard version of the language so the different regions start speaking the same version. ",
"We don't really have a good definition of this. There are languages that are very similar, but are considered different languages (Spanish speakers might be able to understand Galician and Catalan, and even communicate pretty well, but they're all different languages). On the other hand, we have languages with different dialects that two people speaking them won't be able to understand each other. This is true for Northern and Southern Italian, French from different regions, and Chinese especially. Just because you speak one of them, doesn't mean you'll understand all of them. And there are so many Chinese people that finding people in your region that speak your dialect, and having it evolve independently of the others is very easy.\n\nSo in conclusion: governments get to pick and label them. But there isn't very clear definitions of either.",
"The difference between a language and a dialect is mostly political. Most modern European languages started out as dialects of a particular region. Large states need a standardized language for bureaucratic reasons, so the dialect of the ruling class or region usually becomes the standard language. This is true of Castilian Spanish (see the conflict now in Catalan-speaking regions) and Parisian French (Provencal is now an extinct language). \n\nStandard Italian is a little different, as it was established as a literary language based primarily, but not entirely, on Tuscan, long before unification, which was actually led by Piedmont, where they speak a dialect much closer to French. ",
"For people who talk the dialect it is it’s own language already, unless someone have enough power and resources to convince them it is not. ",
"The classic response to this is \"When it has its own army and navy.\"\n\nThere's a thing called the Dialect Continuum, where dialects A and B can communicate, and B and C can communicate, but A and C cannot.\n\nSo it seems to A and C as though they're speaking different languages. Are they?\n\nThere are places in Europe where you can drive three hundred miles, cross a couple of borders, and everyone agrees you're now in a different country with a different language.\n\nBut you could take someone from certain neighborhoods in Boston and drop them into certain neighborhoods in Louisiana and they would not be able to understand each other. Even though they are ostensibly speaking English.\n\n(In reality they WOULD be able to understand each other because they would each immediately shift dialects to the English everyone hears on the TV, but the point stands).",
"I'll agree with what everybody else is saying about political/social pressure being a key factor as languages seem to exist on a continuum. Also, I'd like to share that I've been exposed to an English language varient that I'd like to think of as being pretty darn close to being another language, that's Jamaican Patois. I grew up speaking it but because the social capital is in the mesolect (standard English) I was told as a child that we're English speakers and it was a sign of being poor/uneducated/rural to \"chat Patois\".\n\nOnce I was older I realise how different that dialect is from standard English, trying to explain to a standard English speaker words in Jamaican music like \"unnu\" or \"dehso/yahso\" or a word like \"nyam\" which I can translate but has more implications than just eat or devour. I was like damn, this isn't just an accent like I was told by older folks.",
"As Max Weinreich said, it becomes a language when it gets an army and a navy...which is to say that the dividing line has more to do with politics than with linguistics. Things spoken in different countries may be called languages when the same things, spoken in different parts of the same country, would be considered merely dialects.",
"Disregarding all political and societal definitions and dealing solely with linguistics, speakers of different dialects of one language can still understand each other, whereas speakers of different languages cannot. American English and British English (or Scottish English or Australian English) are still understandable between each other. Obviously there are cultural touchstones, idioms, common phrases, and very severe accents that can get in the way, but if they were trapped on a desert island, they could still communicate without having to start from scratch.\n\nHowever, if you take Gaelic or Old English or ASL and there's no way any untrained English speaker could understand it.\n\nThis is similar to the most common difference between two species: Races or breeds of one species can produce fertile offspring, whereas two different species either cannot produce offspring, or the offspring is infertile (such as a mule).",
"In linguistics there's no actual difference between a language and a dialect. The difference is, as many others have already said, pretty much political, as in: we usually call \"language\" the idiom spoken by a powerful group of people, like the official/most prominent idiom in a country. \n\nThis is not always true, but usually a dialect is only spoken, whereas a language has its own literature and a written tradition in general (this includes dictionaries and whatnot). \n\nNumbers have nothing to do with the distinction: for example, Sardinians (and as such Sardinian speakers) are something like 1.2 millions out of the 70 millions of Italians, and yet Sardinian is considered its own language (with its own dialects which are slightly comprehensible but not interchangeable with each other) whereas other local languages like the one spoken in Piedmont are considered dialects (fun fact: the Italian dialects are actually Latin dialects and they can be very different from each other. Actual Italian dialects are regional variants of Italian, like the Italian spoken in Sardian vs. the Italian spoken in Sicily vs. the Italian spoken in Tuscany etc).",
"So Quebec and France both speak \"French\", but a lot of people from France can't understand Quebecois even though Quebecois understand the French.\n\nA few years ago Quebec released a movie about an Olympic swimmer that drops blown up condoms on public events called \"a vos marques party!\" ( Play on words for \"a vos marques partez!\" Or translated it's \"on your marks, get set, party!\")\n\nWhen it was filmed in French in Quebec, but it was dubbed in Parisian french before being released in France so people could understand it.\n\nIt pissed off a lot of hardcore Quebecois because they feel that quebc speaks French.\n\nDespite this, and despite having a lot of differences ( Quebec says \"char\" french say \"bagnole\" ), people still say it's the same language.\n\nI think Quebecois and french are on the tipping point before it becomes a separate language",
"It's a political decision. If the Founding Fathers had decided that the official language of the United States is American, then that would've been that and a new language would've been created.",
"As others have already explained, the distinction between a language and a dialect is not cut-and-dried, and it tends to be directly related to political and/or military power.\n\nAs a result, contemporary sociolinguistics have begun to use the blanket term \"variety\" to refer to all languages, dialects, etc. This term has come into fashion because it suggests that all ways of speaking are equally valid (e.g. African American Vernacular is just as legitimate as what we tend to call Standard American English.)\n\nThe switch to the term \"variety\" suggests a larger movement in the field of sociolinguistics away from perscriptivism (telling people how to speak \"properly\") and toward descriptivism (simply studying the different ways in which people speak.)\n\nSource: Have taken several sociolinguistics courses.",
"A dialect becomes a language when other folks speaking a different dialect can no longer understand you. Just compare UK English, Aussie English and Americanish we are almost three separate languages!",
"Fun fact:\n\nPortuguese and Spanish are considered two different languages.\n\nBrazilian Portuguese and European Portuguese (also spoken in Africa) are considered just varities of the same language. We Brazilians and they Portuguese use the same grammar. Reading European Portuguese is very, very, close to reading Brazilian Portuguese. Lots of differences in vocabulary, but very close in everything else. Obviously, there are those nationalists who believe Brazilian Portuguese should be consider its won separat language, to which I disagree.\n\nBut here's, finally, the fun fact.\n\nFor a Brazilian, understanding spoken Spanish is usually easier than understanding spoken European Portuguese. Frankly, Spanish sounds like a strange dialect of Brazilian Portuguese, while European Portuguese sounds like gibbrish.",
"According to some linguists, a language must have three main aspects to be different from a dialect. These are:\n\nIts own grammar\nIts own phonetics\nIts own lexicon\n\nUsually a dialect shares at least one of those with the language it derives from.",
"Portuguese and Castilian are similar languages, Portuguese people can understand quite a bit of Castilian but not vice versa, to the same extent. As a Portuguese, Castilian sounds like a drunken Portuguese (casual drunk). I think for a Castillan person, Portuguese might sound like drunken Castilian (Irish drunk style). Here's the kicker, the vocabulary is similar but meanings are very different, just like when a drunk person is talking about something and they make coherent sentences but you don't get what they mean to say.\n\nAlso, galician is the predecessor to Portuguese and is spoken in northern Spain, above the Portuguese frontier, in Galiza. Both are almost identical and informal speech is insanely similar but I believe both are considered different languages. I'm not sure how the Spaniards view it.",
"\nChinese has a written language and a spoken language with many varying dialects. While the writing is the same for all of China, and Mandarin Chinese is the official language, the different dialects are so different that they're mutually unintelligible. For example, Cantonese and Shanghainese speakers won't understand each other if they speak, but can if they write. \n\n\n\nThis doesn't explain the eli5 at all.",
"It’s sort of arbitrary. Spanish is closer to Portugués than different Arabic dialects are to each other. Many scholars want the Arabic dialects to be considered different languages. In my Arabic textbook when it shows a phrase it shows it in about 4 different ways representing just a few different dialects. All of which are entirely different. "
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4kdbu1 | it seems like every day something new comes out in the panama papers. is there gonna be anything actually done to the accused? who is in charge of prosecuting? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4kdbu1/eli5_it_seems_like_every_day_something_new_comes/ | {
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"Merely setting up a company in a tax haven doesn't mean you've actually done anything wrong. Its not evidence of a crime by itself.",
"They're trying to charge, put to trial, and convict, some very rich and powerful people, who have funds of money for fighting that very thing. You'll get a fall guy/gal, someone who actually goes to club fed for 5-10 years, but in reality this is the way big business does business, and not only will nobody go to jail or get fired, they will almost certainly do the very same business practice in their next venture. ",
"Unfortunately not much will probably happen. A lot of it really isn't illegal. Unmoral/unethical but not legal. And most people don't care. They are a bit apathetic to it all as they figure crap like this happens all the time and there is nothing they can do about it.\n\nIf this changed the laws it would be a good thing but sadly it doesn't.",
"Creating an offshore account isn't illegal. Putting money into that account to make international purchases isn't illegal. There's nothing to prosecute. ",
"Fortunately, even in our modern corrupt country, you can only prosecute people for breaking the law, not just doing things you don't agree with.",
"Using the tax system to minimise tax liability LEGALLY is not a crime.\n\nThat is all that's been done. Immoral? Yes. Illegal? No."
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b6s12p | why does fire, or any heat source, produce light particles/waves? and why do some non-heat or low-heat sources produce light? do they work differently? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/b6s12p/eli5_why_does_fire_or_any_heat_source_produce/ | {
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"Deep down it's all the same.\n\nFirst, electrons are given energy. But they don't like to have extra energy, so they emit light to get back to a lower energy state. Electrons can receive energy in different ways. In a fire pit old-school light bulbs, that energy is in the form of heat. In LEDs, the energy comes from the electrical current (how it works EXACTLY I'm not sure on). In a glow stick, it's the different chemicals inside reacting that pump the energy into the electrons.\n\nBut in the end it's always the same. Electrons always like to have as little energy as possible, and if you give them more, they let it back off as light."
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3t806c | why do horns sound less brassy than other brass instruments. | Instruments of the same class often sound similar to each other. For example, it's difficult for the unitiated to hear the difference between the violin and the viola. Brass instruments have a brassy tone. The horn, however, has a much mellower tone. At high ranges it sounds nothing like a trumpet, and at low ranges it sounds nothing like a tuba. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3t806c/eli5_why_do_horns_sound_less_brassy_than_other/ | {
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"There are two subtypes of brass instruments. One uses the same diameter through most of its length (cylindrical) and one gets bigger near the end (conical).\n\nCylindrical:\n\n- trumpet (all varieties)\n- baritone horn\n- trombone\n\nConical:\n\n - tuba\n - euphonium\n - cornet\n - French horn\n\nPersonally I think tuba/Sousaphone/euphonium sound quite a bit like French horns. \n\nBut there's another difference in sound from the fact that a French horn is usually played with a hand in the bell, like a mute, so I think that's part of what you're hearing too."
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6ezsl2 | why is the dmv so shitty? and why hasn't anyone brought it into the 21st century? | Everyone hates the DMV. Its slow and archaic and hasn't changed in years. Why? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6ezsl2/eli5why_is_the_dmv_so_shitty_and_why_hasnt_anyone/ | {
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"Depends on where you live. In New Jersey the DMV has been overhauled and modernized quite a bit over the past decade. They have moved as much as possible to the web, inspection stations are pretty much in and out now, and services at the MVC offices is damn near brisk.",
"Well, because it's ran by the government. It has no real reason to improve because you have to go through them. They do not have to compete for your business, there is nowhere else to go. They get your money regardless.",
"It's a syndrome common to most government bureauceatic functions in basically every country I've lived in and I think it stems from a few main factors:\n\n1. People want government services. But they don't want to pay lots of taxes to get those services. This results in generally underfunded government offices. To make up the difference workers are underpaid, or technologies aren't updated, or the offices have to charge for services that people expect to get for free. \n\n2. Government bureaucracies have to follow labor laws much more closely than private companies, because all eyes are on them. So this means it's harder and more expensive for them to fire bad or lazy workers. Might not be the case in all places but certainly is for some bureaucracies I've dealt with.\n\n3. With the DMV especially, it's one of the very few ways Americans actually deal with government workers. If you haven't been through the legal system, or needed to get permits for a project or business, or something like that, the DMV is probably your one point of contact with \"government control\" so it's unsurprising that a lot of hate would be leveled at it. The only other major agency people have contact with is the IRS, and hey, they hate that as well. "
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d7256g | - what happens to dirty recycling? if i don’t wash out my peanut butter jar, does it still get recycled? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/d7256g/eli5_what_happens_to_dirty_recycling_if_i_dont/ | {
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"Toured a recycle facility not long ago. They said it makes their job easier/quicker if everything is rinsed clean and broken down (such as boxes) prior to their getting it but it isn't at all a requirement.",
"Typically no, if it’s not clean, it gets tossed. Even worse, your dirty jars and cans can contaminate other items and get those thrown out too",
"China stopped accepting our recycling.\n\n[These days, it more likely just goes to the landfill with everything else.](_URL_0_)\n\n\nThey're just going through the motions to keep us trained up while they search for someone else to take it.",
"Some facilities that recycle plastic have the following steps to the process:\n\nUnbaleing\nMagnetic sweeping to remove any carbon steel contamination \nShredding\nAcid rinsing and washing\nOptical sorting by types of plastics\nExtruding into pellets. \n\nIf the recycling center is set up run this process, contaminants are isolated and extracted."
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6mv6vk | because most of us have descended from common ancestors, would it be fair to say that most of us have at least a dusting of inbreeding going on? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6mv6vk/eli5_because_most_of_us_have_descended_from/ | {
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"Yes, if you are very broad with your definition. Literally *all* humans are related, at least distantly. The same for members of any species, actually.",
"Definitely. Simple math reveals it as a necessity. If you start with any one person's parents, assumed each parent had two unique parents, and continued the process, the number of unique pairs grow exponentially. After 33 generations, you would need over 8 billion unique people to create a tree with no crossover. This exceeds the current world population. And while 33 generations may seem like a lot, it's less than 1000 years of time. And this assumes people groups mix evenly. Many cultures marry within their culture, meaning a smaller group of people and thus more crossover in their ancestry.",
"Actually scientists have proven that every single male can trace back to one single male they have called Y-chromosomal Adam.\n\nEvery single human can trace back to one single female called Mitochondrial Eve.\n\nNote that these two were not a couple.. they didn't live at the same time. They also were not the only humans alive at the time - but they are the only two which had at least 2 kids and via the branches of their kids we can all trace back.\n\nSo.. when two people now get together we know that both go WAY BACK (possibly 200,000 years) to Eve for sure for both..\n\nIt wouldn't really be considered inbreeding given that time frame.",
"Yes and No.\nWhy no? It is true that we came from common ancestors, but you should not think of those as this group of cavemen who were our forefathers. Our \"common ancestors\" were an abundance of populations in a very large area in Africa who often formed from \"lesser\" creatures independently. Also, they did not develop into modern humans steadily, but they evolved very differently. If you go into detail, you will find an unbelievable number of different variants of pre-humans which were in a constant, evolutionary fight, leading up go the survival of the fittest (as Darwin put it). Their populations faced changes in available resources, they moved, they fought with competitors, their size increased and decreased all the time and the populations mixed, parted and grew together. There is probably no real common ancestor out there. Additionally, at some point there were very different species or races of humans, really. The modern human is called \"homo sapiens (sapiens)\"(wise, wise human) , but there were the homo erectus (human walking tall or standing up straight), the homo habilis (handy human, human who can make and use tools, so to speak), the homo Neanderthalensis (human from Neanderthal in Germany) and so on. You can put all variants in an approximate chronological order, but the evolution of man was not a straight line and it's probably even the other way around. Due to the fact that our primitive ancestors exchanged their genes on a relatively regular basis, our kind was more closely related when the evolution of man was already happening than when it had just started (evolution did not start at some point though, it is an ongoing process since the beginning of everything; I am referring to the scientific \"beginning\" of human evolution). So no, we might not have a \"common ancestor\", but common relatives due to frequent exchange of genetic material. Which leads me to part II:\n\nWhy yes? Because some of the variations of humans proved to be dominant, effectively extinguishing other, less durable species. There are multiple theories about where exactly the forefathers of our modern humans came from and how exactly they spread across the globe. To my knowledge, the homo sapiens developed from a human species who arrived in Europe later, the homo errectus. There was also the homo neanderthalensis who had already spread a bit around Europe and slowly, but surely died out because it could not fight the populations of arriving humans from Africa. The homo neanderthalensis did not vanish completely, because it exchanged genetic material with the erectus (they had some hot cavemen sex, to be frank), but most of our genes come from homo erectus. So there is a relatively small gene pool due to the dominance of the latter which means we all are relatives to a certain degree. Also, the homo sapiens spread over the whole world and formed independent communities. Those kept their gene pool \"clean\" mostly, so they mated amongst each other rather than exchanging genes globally. That's due to trust issues, really. Trusting someone from a different population comes with a certain risk of STDs or unknown diseases in general and is therefore prohibited. So the communities (families, ethnic groups, states as a whole etc.) I talked about rarely mix relative to mixing inside their groups and therefore keep the same gene pool, approximately.\n\nIn conclusion, it depends on which stage of human development you are looking at. There is probably a certain degree of relation between you and your peers, but there was no single ancestor you all have.\n\nAlso, this explanation is full with scientific inaccuracies and lacks a lot of information. This should just give you an overview and an approximate answer to your questions. This topic is just so very large that it is impossible to pack it into one post. And I am no expert; all this stuff came from my mind. ",
"What blew my mind when I first read about this is that it's a safe bet the most recent common ancestor of all humans currently alive lived only about 3,000 years ago. Of course, other people at that time were also ancestors to subsets of people, including lineages that have since died out. But it seems that in 1,000BC, there was at least one person who could claim to be the direct ancestor, great great gggggg grandparent of every person alive in 2017.\n\nPut another way: you are at most the 50th cousin of every person on the planet.\n\nHere's a good article on the topic:\n_URL_0_\n\nThey mention the sticky problem of uncontacted tribes, in these equations, but that assumes that those tribes have been continuously isolated for thousands of years and that no indirect gene flow has occurred (having kids with a neighboring tribe, who had kids with a neighboring tribe, who had kids with...). Which seems impossible. "
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fwigq6 | why do your eyes “play tricks on you at night” like seeing shapes that aren’t there? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/fwigq6/eli5_why_do_your_eyes_play_tricks_on_you_at_night/ | {
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"So you see most color out of the center of the eye, and grayscale is mostly your side vision. At night, when there is little light to make color, you actually see better out of the corner of your eye than when you directly look at something. \n\nSo, actually, your boogeyman that goes away when you look right at it is probably there. Sorry, hypothetical 5yo child.\n\nEdit: unless you're talking about things like closed eye visuals, then idk",
"Those are not your eyes, but your brains playing tricks. To see, we create an image in our head based on the pictures we stored. We fill in the gaps with our mind. So at night you fill in a lot. \nThis is also a reason why we see a face or person in other objects, like burned toast.",
"Well, think about it. Your brain is designed to learn from patterns, and 100k years ago, identifying certain patterns was literally a life and death situation. So, let’s hypothetically say that your homo Erectus cousin Marcus died just yesterday in a dry savanna. Killed by a lioness that was covering herself almost perfectly on the dry grass. The only thing that stood her apart were the whites patterns of her ears, but your cousin decided after telling you that looked fishy, decided to “go check it out”, and died. \n\nNext time you are in the same savanna, you WILL be looking for “ear shaped” grass with distinctive white patterns. And will never go “check it out” again. In fact, you will teach your children to recognize the pattern. \n\nOur brain does not know the difference between living in the Savanna and walking around in an apartment at night. It’s always scanning for patterns to protect us from shit. \n\nI will end my rant with this. I read somewhere that our brain can recognize a snake on the floor even when our eyes haven’t yet. It is a instinctive behavior. This is so, even for children. So there, our brains are awesome.",
"A big part of it is the survival benefit of false positive vs false negative detection of a predator. In the dark your brain is working to see something. It will take any stimulus that looks fishy and alert you to seeing “something”. It is usually a false positive I.e nothing there just a trick of the eye. Occasionally (often enough to be a evolutionary driver) that slight stimulus is a predator about to pounce, in which your reaction could save your life. \n\nIf your brain ignores all of these tricks there is a danger a predator would be missed and you get eaten.",
"It's evolutionary. Back when early species of humans were walking around the plains of Africa at night, making out the shape of what might be a predator was an evolutionary advantage. Because of this, your brain is programmed to create shapes that resemble common things.",
"It was once explained to me, evolutionary it's thought that seeing things you don't like is safer than seeing things you know and are familiar with. When you're in the dark, and have to fill in a lot of information the brain fills it in with all kinds of spooky nonsense because that's the safest first assumption.",
"Our brains like to make patterns and connect things that may not be connected. When we can't see well enough our brain will assume what's there. It is an evolutionary trait that helps us make quick observations and assessments. It is better you think you see a tiger in the dark and prepare than not notice it at all.",
"Evolution. When our ancestors were moving around or were active during the night, the risk of predators were very real. You are vulnerable in the dark and your brain realised it’s better to perceive a false threat rather than miss a real one.",
"Brains are pattern recognition machines and eyes are the visual sensors for the brain. When the eyes are not giving the brain a lot of clear information the brain uses what it has to make sense of the limited information, essentially running through things it has seen before. As the limited information changes so does what the brain perceives so it seems like you are seeing many different changing things at night.",
"Because your brain tries to compensate too hard to make sense of what it can still see.\nThink it's like going ENHANCE csi style too often, but without the Hollywood magic actually making it work, your brain can't make up details it can't see. But that sure doesn't stop it trying really hard.",
"You’re in an altered state of perception. You’re eyes switch to more so relying on rods. During daylight your eyes rely mostly cones. So literally the way your brain is receiving light is different. Rods are also responsible for peripheral vision, which is really good at perceiving motion. Thus, at night most of your vision comes from your peripheral, due to the hyperactive rods, which in turn can trigger the response to motion, the feeling of something behind you, or even cause you to see things differently because your eye is now using more of the thing that normally perceives these things (motion, something behind you) and these things perceive objects differently than what you are used to (seeing objects that aren’t there/seeing objects differently). Also the period of time (like 20 minutes after last exposure to light) for your eyes to switch to night mode, can really mess with you because your eyes are between cone and rod dominance, once again impacting your perception of shapes and movement. Interestingly enough, even though it takes 20 minutes to develop “night vision”, exposure to light will almost instantly put you into “normal” vision. This is why the military uses mono colored lights, because, with only exposure to one colored and low intensity light, you will lose your night vision more slowly.\n\nThen you can just dive down a rabbit hole of other reasons that don’t have a whole lot to do with the eyes. If you’re up at night, you’re probably tired thus “weak” (vulnerable) which then amplifies the bodies survival responses (motion detection, peripheral vision...for a time) \n\nIf you’re in a “scary” place like a forest or even a new house, once again, survival tools are going to ramp up and you’re going to be more likely to perceive things that aren’t there, because it’s better safe than sorry.\n\nFinally the more used to these limited light situations you get, the less likely for these tricks because your body gets used to the altered perception.",
"Your brain takes data from your eyes and tries to make out patterns like objects. \n\nAs it gets darker, there is less light and therefore, fewer data to work with.\n\nYour brain does it's best to fill in the gaps, but mistakes happen",
"Your eyes never really see things the same as you \"see\". It takes your brain to process it and add its own bias. Your brain also reacts faster than your eyes so you often \"see\" something before your eyes do. Most common example of this is reading, you actually mostly skim each word when you read, focusing on the beginning and end of words.\n\n > Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn’t mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.\n\nIf you have no extra factor affecting you like dyslexia, you should be able to read that entire paragraph fine, even though the letters of each word is scrambled. Our brain does this with everything we sense in our surroundings. When we enter a room, we actually just look for dangers and significant things. Our brains fill in the rest with whatever makes the most sense, but sometimes what makes the most sense doesn't match with reality. That's our brain \"playing tricks\" on you, at night its even easier cause our brain has even less information from the environment and fills in more.",
"Lots of good answers here but i feel like they’re not quite there. \n\nThis is your Hyperactive Agent Detection Device or HAAD. There’s a theory that humans developed the tendency to perceive the presence of “agents”, or something with the ability to act, in response to benign stimuli when it it might be beneficial. For instance, you’re walking in the woods and you here a twig break in the trees behind you. It is likely nothing of real consequence to you, but your brain ascribes agency to the sound, convincing you that the sound was made by a bear and you should therefore prepare to engage with a threat. \n\nOr another example, you’re laying in bed at night and your eyes receive some sort of benign stimuli from the surroundings. Since your brain is built to keep your body safe, especially in a vulnerable state like sleep, it kicks your HAAD into action. Your brain then makes a quick evaluation of the visual stimuli, maybe even altering its appearance for a moment making it seem larger or more imposing, before deciding whether or not the threat is real or just perceived. \n\nEssentially, the cost (at best physical harm, at worst death) of **not** perceiving, or at least evaluating, the dark figure in your room as an agent that poses a potential threat is *greater* than the cost of quickly assuming the threat is real and that action may need to be taken.",
"Your brain is a pattern-finding machine. Literally all \"seeing\" is is your brain interpreting meaningless information delivered by the eyes (consider the case of stroke victims, who \"see\" things but are unable to identify or comprehend what is presented to their brain, and also the case of psychedelics, which turn up the pattern-finding algorithms of the brain up to 11, causing cool patterns to appear on otherwise plain surfaces).\n\nIn the dark, there is much less light obviously so your brain has a lot less data to work with. Evolution and survival needs have conditioned us to be wary of the dark and the dangers it potentially contains. So the brain is overinterpreting all the meaningless \"noise\" that we see in low-light, just in case it might be something that could eat you. And since the brain endeavors to find faces above all, we often see faces in the dark, and on walls, and in geological formations, and on burnt toast, etc."
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3y8tkj | why is it that when a plane touches down, it sounds as if the engines rev back up? | Every time I'm on a flight that lands, just as the plane touches down, the engines sound as though they're revving back up. But clearly, the plane slows dramatically once it hits the ground. Is the energy from the engines being redirected? Or is this an illusion of some kind? What is actually happening? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3y8tkj/eli5why_is_it_that_when_a_plane_touches_down_it/ | {
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"Exactly. Thrust reversers redirect thrust to help slow the plane down. If you look out the window, you can usually see sections of the engine cowling pop open to facilitate this.",
"[Here](_URL_0_) are the thrust-reversers an an Airbus A320 in the deployed position. As you can see, the engine thrust, or a portion of it, gets redirected onto the reverser panels and then gets directed forward, acting against the forward motion of the aircraft.",
"Here's a video of thrust reversed working on a 747. The rain on the ground shows the effect\n\n_URL_0_"
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9uq07n | how is it that so many different languages use the same a-z alphabet with different sounds for the letters. how is there not a spanish alphabet, a french alphabet etc.? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9uq07n/eli5_how_is_it_that_so_many_different_languages/ | {
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"Those alphabets and languages are all descended from Latin, and each letter usually makes the same sound despite the different language.",
"The A-Z alphabet, which we call the *Latin alphabet*, was developed by the ancient Romans, who in olden days ruled over large parts of Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East. Because of this their alphabet was very widely used, especially in those places that previously didn't have alphabets of their own. The parts of Europe that would later become the nations of England, France, Spain, Germany, and others were so accustomed to using the Latin alphabet that even after they stopped speaking Latin they used the Latin letters to express their own languages.",
"TLDR: Writing is hard to invent, and neighboring languages have similar words/sounds. Human laziness says people are more likely to adopt a writing system than invent one.\n\nSo I’m going to look at two ways that might answer your question. The first being the invention of writing, and the second being the relationship between languages.\n\nLet me start by saying writing is not instinctual, and Id say it’s not very intuitive either. If I asked you to invent a new way to communicate information, you might have a hard time coming up with something. So knowing that writing is something that is hard to invent, we should assume that it was done only a few times through history by well developed cultures/societies. Once writing has been invented, it would make sense that the other people who lived near a culture with a writing system would be more likely to adopt that writing system than come up with their own.\n\nAnd that brings me to the second part: related languages. Languages near each other often have a lot in common. Words can be the same/similar (leche, lait, and latte for “milk” in Spanish, French, and Italian). They also use similar sounds. As and English speaker, I don’t have a hard time pronouncing “leche” because the sounds “le” (leh ) and “che” (cheh) are used in English. But if I try to pronounce something from Chinese I have a harder time, because some sounds aren’t commonly used in English (like “Qin” in Chinese is somewhere between “Chin”, “Tyin”, and “Tsin”). So, from phonetic/syllabic alphabet perspective, a culture nearby that has developed writing would likely have a letter or combination of letters that corresponds to a sound in my language. And from a pictographic writing systems perspective, the cultural references necessary to understand the association between an image and a concept wouldn’t be too distant.\n\nThat isn’t to say alphabets haven’t been reinvented before. Both Korean and Cyrillic were developed well after their cultures were using some other writing system. But both were heavily inspired by neighboring cultures. One look at Korean and you can tell it’s Asian, and Cyrillic is unmistakably a combination of the Latin and Greek alphabets (Latin also being inspired by the Greek alphabet).\n\n\nOn a final note, as some have already said here, the “official” alphabets of Spanish, French and Swedish have a few “letters” not found in English like ñ, ç, å respectively. But clearly these are just variations of standard Latin alphabet letters, and are called “diacritics and ligatures”. They’re not separate sounds per se, they just help you know how to pronounce the word from the page.\n"
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3shgjf | why is orange juice usually sold under dairy? | In almost every grocery store, orange juice is in the dairy section.
Why is that? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3shgjf/eli5why_is_orange_juice_usually_sold_under_dairy/ | {
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"Because OJ is a complementary purchase to milk, breakfast item. OJ tends not to be a destination item like milk is. In a traditional grocery store set up. \n\nMilk, eggs and juice in back center, or a side, where it can be loaded from the rear warehouse. Meat also along the back wall. Bread often near meat but on one of the aisles or near the bakery/deli, Veggies and fruits on 1 side. \n\nIt's all designed to make you walk the ring of the store and put potential complementary goods near each other, while still making you walk to certain key destination spots. Like cereal will be fairly distant from the milk, to make you look for it, because they know that's also a destination item.",
"Because it has to be kept refrigerated, and that's where the refrigeration units are. Calling it the \"dairy section\" is just shorthand because the largest group of things there - milk, butter, cheese, yogurt - are all dairy.\n\nA store is unlikely to set up another refrigerated section solely for nondairy cold items. The only other refrigerated section is meats. Most people aren't going to want their orange juice sitting next to raw meat.\n\nAre you questioning why it is in the same section as the dairy items, or why that section is called 'dairy' when there are nondairy items in it?",
"I think it's because the juice comes from the orange's mammary gland. So it's similar to cow's milk in that regard. "
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