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1sba3g | caught between asleep and awake? what is happening in my brain when i am trying to wake up but my body wont move? | Occasionally, and most commonly when I take a nap during the day on the couch, I feel half awake (and remember it all afterwards) but I cant get my eyes to open and can't move. What causes this? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1sba3g/caught_between_asleep_and_awake_what_is_happening/ | {
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"This is called Sleep Paralysis. Basically when you go to sleep your body releases a molecule that makes your muscles inactive, this is to prevent you from moving in your sleep too much. Usually when you wake up this effect ends simultaneously however sometimes this doesn't quiet happen and this effect persists for a couple seconds to a couple minutes.\n\nSome people find this really scary while me on the other hand finds it awesome.",
"This is known as Sleep Paralysis. It occurs to everyone once in a while. It can be a frightening experience for first time experience. However, it is not as a result of health conditions. It can happen to anyone. \n\nNow that you know the term, you can google it. :)\n\n\n"
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1uzus0 | what happens when you reset a computer? why is it a good thing? are frequent resets bad for it? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1uzus0/eli5_what_happens_when_you_reset_a_computer_why/ | {
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"You are just erasing the random access memory in the computer and causing it to have to load all of the data from the hard drive.\n\nNormally your computer has most of the operating system (Windows or OSX) that it needs in what is called RAM or Random Access Memory. The computer can access this memory much faster then from the hard drive. Also application that you normally run like Skype will be in memory.\n\nWhen you reset the computer you clear all the memory which causes the computer to have to pull at the data from the hard drive. This can take a long time depending on your system. And can put wear on the hard drive, as well as other parts.\n\nThe reason you reset your computer is sometimes when you close a program, or even when you run a program, there are piece of the program left in Ram. These piece can slow down the computer or even make it crash. A reset clears the ram so it can start from the beginning again.\n\nReset the computer when ever you feel like it but try to use your operating system reset function. The computer is constantly moving stuff onto the hard drive and if you reset at the wrong moment you may leave a file in a state of not quite saved and quite loaded.",
"You will shorten the life of your computer with frequent resetting due to voltage overshoots causing intrinsic failure period of the components to end sooner. It isn't a big deal if it is daily, but if you do it multiple times a day, every day, you enter the wear out phase of the electronic components sooner. You can trust me on this. I am a reliability engineer and just a little drunk. "
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c8nh92 | why is the human anus hyperpigmented brown? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/c8nh92/eli5_why_is_the_human_anus_hyperpigmented_brown/ | {
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"Melanocyte Stimulating Hormone produced by the Pituitary gland causes skin darkening of certain body parts dyring puberty\n Could also be due to concentrated superficial blood vessels and puckered skin that makes it look darker.",
"It's not uncommon for people to have anuses (and genital tissue in general) that's darker than the rest of their skin. In regards to the anus, it's for a few reasons. The first is that the skin around the anus is a transition area from external epithelium (skin) to the internal epithelium that lines the end of the digestive tract. These layers overlap and make that area of skin thicker. The epithelium surrounding the anus is also more keratinised than the surrounding skin and thus appears darker. Also, the area around the anus has a higher concentration of blood vessels, which also contribute to the skin appearing darker.\n\nIt does **NOT** have anything to do with poop. I can't stress that enough."
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4attuh | why isn't affirmative action unconstitutional when the constitution forbids discrimination and affirms all men to be created equal? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4attuh/eli5_why_isnt_affirmative_action_unconstitutional/ | {
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"The constitution does neither of those thing.\n\nDiscrimination is illegal by laws like the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and not in all circumstances. For example, it's perfectly legal to give preferential treatment to veterans.\n\nMeanwhile \"all men are created equal\" is from the Declaration of Independence, not the constitution. It has no legal authority.",
"The Constitution doesn't affirm that all men are created equal. You're thinking of the following quotation:\n\n > We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal . . .\n\nThat's from the Declaration of Independence and not the Constitution.\n\nThe Constitution also doesn't forbid discrimination. The relevant parts of the Fourteenth Amendment state:\n\n > No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.\n\nand\n\n > The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.\n\nWhat you're probably thinking of is the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, and national origin.\n\nThe way \"affirmative action\" works in the US doesn't really violate that. Quotas, where a school reserve a certain number of seats for students of a particular race, are illegal. So are point systems where candidates are scored for admission and receive a bonus to their score based on race. There are basically two legal ways to promote racial diversity.\n\nThe first is the University of Michigan Law School method. They evaluate each candidate on the entirety of their record and then assemble a class so that it has diverse viewpoints. That necessarily involves taking into account a student's background, including race and/or ethnicity. However, it doesn't require any specific number of people of any one race or give quantifiable bonuses to applicants based on race. The Supreme Court approved this method in *Grutter v. Bollinger.*\n\nThe second is the University of Texas top 10% method. If you go to a public high school in Texas and graduate in the top 10% of your class, you are guaranteed admission to UT (though I think some students may have to go to a satellite campus for freshmen and/or sophomore year). This increases diversity because it guarantees that some students at all-minority high schools get admitted to the university every year. This method is less explicitly based on race, but is currently being challenged in the Supreme Court. It was previously heard, sent back to the appellate court due to a technicality, was then reheard by the Supreme Court, and will likely be decided soon.",
"Essentially, the [relevant court case](_URL_0_) said it's illegal for schools to have strict racial quotas because they constituted \"a racial qualification\" but that weighing race in admissions decisions more broadly was permissible because there was \"a compelling interest\" at stake. That interest was the creation of a diverse student body capable of approaching issues from multiple perspectives."
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2ff42o | why is my dog so obsessed with licking my face? | Even if I haven't eaten, if I sit down and he can reach my lap, he'll jump up and lick my face relentlessly. If I turn my face, he stretches. If I lean my head back, he climbs up on my chest. Does this mean something in the dog world? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2ff42o/eli5_why_is_my_dog_so_obsessed_with_licking_my/ | {
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"Tasting you, he's deciding if your worth eating.",
"Finally something I can answer! Dogs licking your face is actually a trait they picked up from their ancient ancestors: wolves! To understand this, we need to explore the structure of a wolf pack. A pack has two leaders; the alphas (male and female.) Below are the non-alphas, then the pups. All wolves except the pups are expected to participate in the hunt. At the end of the hunt, the little pups swarm their older superiors for super. These elder wolves, however, aren't carrying a full carcass. No, these elders are greeted with face licks for days because the pups know. They smell it. They can sense the presence of full elder bellies. By licking the faces of the adult wolves, they cause an unstoppable regurgitation reflex. The pups can then feast on half-digested-carcass-meat.\n\nTo put it simply, a dog sees you as it's elder. It knows you can provide food for it. They are acting on primal instinct to get food!\n\nThat... AND THEY LOVE THEIR OWNERS!\n\nSource: I interned at a Wolf Conservation Center two summers ago."
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26vdvj | how would reclassifying broadband as a utility affect google fiber? | Everyone is talking about the reclassification of broadband as a utility in order to effect net neutrality, which I get. How would this reclassification affect Google Fiber, either positively or negatively?
Would this add more complications to Google placing infrastructure, or would it help them?
*Note: I'm not arguing against reclassification at all, I'm just asking a question about side effects in this case* | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/26vdvj/eli5_how_would_reclassifying_broadband_as_a/ | {
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"It might help them in terms of legally being able to lay down the fiber. You cant just go to a new city and start putting your fiber lines on the posts and digging trenches in peoples yards, the local govt has to approve it. So being a utility may help them get easier approval from local government's to start laying it out. But the main factor is really money, even if you get approval to lay fiber, its crazy expensive to lay out. If google doesn't have to cash to lay out the fiber then they cant do it. So why cant google expand fiber faster? They don't have enough cash!!!"
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a5bdm9 | why do some metals bend while others simply break | I understand that different metals obviously have different properties, but what actually determines flexibility in metals? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/a5bdm9/eli5_why_do_some_metals_bend_while_others_simply/ | {
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"There are many variables involved in this question. Temperature of the metal, surrounding pressure, other environmental concerns aside, many properties of substances are determined by the types of bonds between the elements. Some combinations of elements naturally fall into strict, lattice-type arrangements. This is due to the amount/location of electrons surrounding each particular element/molecule. Substances with these types of arrangements can be strong or brittle, but when they break they usually do so in relatively clean lines. Substances with different arrangements of molecules will respond differently to pressure. \n\nThis is a very brief overview because I’m not an expert and because there is actually quite a lot to unpack in this question. If you’re interested look into Chemistry - I think that would go further than Geology in getting to the answer of this particular question. ",
"The biggest factor contributing to a metal's ability to bend ( also know as it's ductility) is the metal's crystal structure. There are several different ways that the atoms in a crystal can arrange themselves, and these different structures tend to have different properties. The three common structures in metals are face centered cubic (FCC), which is soft and ductile, body centered cubic (BCC), which is a bit stronger but less ductile, and hexagonal close packed (HCP), which is very brittle. Soft, easily bent metals like copper and aluminum tend to be FCC, iron is BCC and stuff like tungsten that breaks without bending much at all is HCP. The reason that different structures behave differently is hard to express with just words, but boils down to how easily the atoms in the crystal can slip past each other. FCC has a large number of possible slip directions for the atoms to move along, so it bends, while HCP only has a couple so it tends to just break. Other factors like defects in the crystal structure and heat treatment can also affect ductility, but those topic can get pretty complex very quickly. Feel free to ask any additional questions you have though."
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3ytzqy | how is black light a thing if the colour black is the absence of light | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3ytzqy/eli5_how_is_black_light_a_thing_if_the_colour/ | {
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"Blacklights are not literally black light. The light emitted from them is just far into the violet-UV part of the electromagnetic spectrum.",
"Black light is just a name - it's actually ultraviolet, not black. A pure UV light won't emit anything in the visible spectrum so that could lead to the name black light, but many will show some sort of shade of violet/purple in addition to the invisible UV component."
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29egc7 | why can i spell words perfectly fine when i write them down, but find it almost impossible to spell off the top of my head? | Title | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/29egc7/eli5_why_can_i_spell_words_perfectly_fine_when_i/ | {
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"text": [
"Visual versus sound memory prevalence? Could also be concentration, by the time you are on the 4th letter you lost count of where you were, something that doesn't happen when writing."
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4zz7jf | how does the military (army) structure/organization work? | How do the brigades and divisions fit into each other? Why are there so many sergeant types? What's the difference between a colonel and a brigadier general if they both command a brigade? I've never found a fully comprehensive guide on the internet about this, much less an ELI5 type of explanation. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4zz7jf/eli5_how_does_the_military_army/ | {
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"[This old thread is excellent](_URL_0_).",
" > Why are there so many sergeant types?\n\nThis is because of how heavily NATO militaries rely on their NCOs - the Soviets, for instance, relied on only three Sergeant subranks. Remember the grizzled Gunnies advising the green Lieutenants? That's how it's supposed to work; a corps of veteran NCOs acts a strong backbone, even if they don't have the skills for OCT and becoming a full-fledged officer.\n\n > What's the difference between a colonel and a brigadier general if they both command a brigade?\n\nBrigades used to be a wildcard, but the recent trends mean their role is shifting. Furthermore, the rank of an appropriate officer can vary by two-three levels depending on what kind of unit you're looking at.\n\n > How do the brigades and divisions fit into each other?\n\nMilitary units are like nesting dolls. A single commander can only keep track of so many units; the Soviets assumed three, NATO assumes four, the US briefly tried five. Therefore, under the Soviet doctrine, you get three tanks in a squad, three squads in a platoon, three platoons in a company, three companies in a regiment, three regiments in a division, three divisions in an Army, three armies in a Front; multiple fronts and fleets would compose a Theatre.\n\nWhere the brigades are? They're really beefed-up regiments; the Soviet used them primarily for special assignments, such as tactical nuclear missiles. The division used to be the primary measuring stick until recently, when NATO began to beef up brigades instead as they are more flexible than a full division.\n\nAt each of the above levels, in addition to the three/four/five line units, each unit begins to pick up more and more organic support units, such as a battery of 81/82 mm *battalion* mortars. These assets can be deputized to lower-level units for specific missions. Going upwards, we see this baggage train bloat: the Soviet 8th Guards Army, stationed right in the Fulda Gap, had 3 mechanized rifle divisions, an armoured division, a security and logistics battalion, 2 missile brigades, an AA missile brigade, an artillery brigade, an AT gun *divizion*, 2 helicopter regiments and a squadron, a combat engineer brigade, a float-bridge regiment, a signals regiment, a tele-relay wire regiment, a radiotechnical regiment, a radiotechnical battalion, an E-war battalion, a materiel support brigade, and 2 maintenance battalions.\n\nSee also: _URL_0_",
"For this I will be talking about American military. Different Armies around the world are structured different and thus will have a change in ideology. Please keep in mind at different times under certain conditions any rank can and have stepped up to fill voids in the ranks. Also different jobs within the army has a different structure for how their ranks are formed. Meaning an e5 (sergeant) can fill the roll of an e6. Also keep in mind foul language will be included. \n\nIn a nut shell E1-E4 are consider the work force of the army. The comprise of the largest population and do most of the labor work but also have the least amount of responsibility. Generally the first 2-3 years these soldiers are learning the in and outs of being a soldier. \n\nNext you advance to the rank of sergeant. Typically an E5 serves as a (fire) team leader. He is in charge of roughly 3-5 soldiers and his entire goal in life is training. He makes sure his soldiers know what the standards are and meet them. He teaches them how weapons work, he teaches them battle drills, he teaches them how to assemble tents. Makes sure they are getting food and water, getting sleep. He literally makes sure they are trained to best of his ability and quality of life is good as he can make it. Team leaders and soldiers share the closest connection within the Army (usually) because they spend the most time together and extremely close bonds are formed. Often times those bonds exceed the bonds formed by brothers and sisters growing up. 2 of these Fire teams form a squad which is ran by an Staff sergeant (e6).\n\nThe staff sergeant entire life revolves around satisfying the platoon seargeant (E7) and keeping a moativated squad. Theres a juggling act that happens in this stage. The e6 must ensure that the E5s are being trained for advancement, ensure all soldiers in the squad are metting standards, being trained, and provide the maximium amount of purpose, motivation and direction. Anything an e5 can't figure out he seeks the help of an e6 to guide him along the way. Typically E6s are running around doing paper work. Fixing pay issues, making sure the extra duties are not forgotten. Shit like that.\n\nThen we move on to the platoon sergeant. Sergeant first class (e7) often nicknamed the mother or father of a platoon. This is the grumpiest fucker in the Army and is usually the make or break point if you're considering an extremely long career in the Army. His days are comprised of going to meetings with other senior NCOs. The company first sergeant passed down a list of shit that must be completed. Most of it is dumb and makes zero sense to anyone. He must then attempt to make it make sense to the platoon and accomplish the goals. On the flip side, all the bullshit and stuff people fucked up (the privates-specialist, the E5 and the e6) the platoon sergeant must go and explain what happened and resolve those issues. The platoon sergeant goal in life is to make sure his entire platoon can appropriately fill any roll that's required at any given time. Wether that's taking out trash, pulling guard duty, or organizing a team who can accomplish a more complex task such as conducting a battle plan. In return the platoon sergeant is often telling people to set up tents, make sure trucks are properly serviced and working properly, equipment and property is accounted for and serviceable. The E7 always has an objective to advance in rank. He often times has to keep everyone in the platoon morale as high as possible. All those privates and specialist can make or break an e7. If his troops are moativated, morale is high, and he has the respect as a good NCO everyone will break their backs to do the best job they physically can. If you have a really shitty platoon sergeant, typically your platoon is jacked up and everyone runs around half assing their work and it reflects to the higher ups. \n\n1st sergeants and sergeant majors are e8s and e9s. They are senior NCOs and literally sit in meetings all day and do paper work. Occasionally the will stroll around and see how things are going. Most of their time is spent in front of computers reading emails and trying to make sure they have the most updated information. They hold massive amounts of useless formations through out the day and week. Nobody truly understands why and everyone just wishes they would stop. E8s and e9s often times are ranked depending on their responsibility levels. Meaning an e8 who is a company first sergeant has greater authority and responsibility over an e8 (master sergeant) who has no company even though they are the same rank. Command sergeant majors work the same. They typically have a higher responsibility level and authority due to fact they are the highest \"ranked\" NCO in a unit. Sergeant majors who are not in a command roll are not to be fucked with though. They are the most hardcore of them all and often do not possess the ability to sugar coat anything. They have been shit on and seen all done all type soldiers. (There are times they are also complete idiots and get stuffed in broom closets so they don't contimante the rest of the world) \n\nOfficers work the same. Except for officers usually spend their days making plans. The higher rank you get as an officer the more assets you can use in your planning. Such as a company commander will utilize the assets of his company and request other assets. Battalion commanders will use all assets and request support from other battalions. Birgade commanders utilize their entire birgade. Generals often times have authority over divisions and big elements but their jobs are just like the senior NCOs. Mettings and shit. The higher ranked officer you are, the more complex and technical the plans become. The ins and outs of how all task will be completed are focused on by officers\n Example of how it work is like this.****** Operations order comes out somewhat like this: conduct a raid at 0300 on the town of xxxx. Alpha company will take lead. Bravo flanks left, Charlie flanks right. Transport will be handled by 2nd battalion transport company Xxxx. Pick up is at 0200.***** or it can be something as lame as planning out live fire excercise at the local range. \n\nThen company level officer dig further into planning, equipment planning and shit like that. Officers focus on planning and focusing on the how to do something. NCOs (sergeants) make it all happen as painlessly as possible. \n\n",
"You need an organisational diagram. It's a lot easier to understand that way if you're not used to the terms.\n\nI assume you want American stuff?\n\nOkay, [this](_URL_0_) is from the second world war, but the general theme remains the same, I think.\n\nCan't help you with the 'sergeants' thing; we only have sergeants and colour-sergeants. Well, there are sergeant-majors, but those are actually Warrant Officers.",
" > Generally, commanding many is like commanding a few. It is a matter of dividing them into groups. Doing battle with a large army is like doing battle with a small army. -Sun Tzu\n\n\nThe military is built on commanding 3-5 people at a time. A general doesn't command 30,000 people individually. He gives orders to his 3-5 brigade commanders. Go here, take this giant chunk of land and hold it. \n\n\nEach brigade commander (colonel, 5000 men) gives orders to their 3-5 battalion commanders (lieutenant colonel, 1000 men). Go here and take this part of the land so we can take this giant chunk of land. \n\n\nEach battalion commander commands their 3-5 company commanders (majors. 200-300 men). Go here and take this city. \n\n\nEach company commander gives orders to their 3-5 platoons (captains or lieutenants. 50-60 men). Go here and take these city blocks. \n\n\nThis is where officers stop and we get more into non-commissioned types. This is because now we're now in the business of doing actual tasks on the ground. Killing folkes or otherwise enabling killing folkes (maintenance, food, medical etc.) Platoons now rely on various forms of sergents. They are going to take these buildings. \n\n\nSquads/sections have 2-3 fire teams commanded by a junior leader. They'll take a building.\n\n\nAnd finally fire teams have only 2-4 people in them. Which means everyone from the general down to our junior leaders only ever has to command 3-5 people to get the job done of taking over a big chunk of land. ",
" > What's the difference between a colonel and a brigadier general if they both command a brigade?\n\nIn the US context, here's how it works: \n\nThe original scheme in World War I was that an infantry division (commanded by a major general) would have two brigades (commanded by brigadier generals), each of two regiments (commanded by colonels) each of three battalions (commanded by lieutenant colonels). \n\nAround 1940, shortly before we entered WWII, the brigade level was eliminated, as was one of the regiments. Now there were three regiments (still three battalions apiece), directly under the division headquarters. In this new organization, there weren't any infantry units for brigadier generals to command, so they would serve as assistant division commanders and artillery commanders and such. \n\nIn the late '50s, after Korea, there was an attempt to remove yet another level of command. Instead of three regiments of three battalions, there would be five large battalions (or small regiments, depending on how you want to look at it) called \"battle groups,\" commanded by colonels. \n\nThis proved awkward and unwieldy, however, so in the '60s the divisional organization changed again. The brigade level was revived, but the regiment was not (except for ceremonial purposes), so we ended up with something similar to the WWII-era structure: Three brigades, each of three or four battalions. Only, these new brigades were commanded by colonels. \n\nAnd this is essentially the organization the Army still has today. Brigadier generals, despite the name, haven't commanded brigades in many decades. \n"
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5a01p3 | what physically causes a 'blackout' when you get a head injury? | On my 10th birthday(around 11 years ago) I was playing soccer at the school yard, I tripped over something and I hit the low section of a window frame with my head, just a few centimeters away from my right eye.
All I can remember is that I lost my balance and next thing I know I was sitting in a chair inside the school with some teachers around me.
I don't remember anything that happened between me falling and me being taken to the chair and I felt like I "woke up" from something. The teachers told me I was not unconscious and I was able to walk inside, to the chair on my own. Later on I just had to go to the GP where his nurse stitched the injury. After that I could go back to finish the school day.
So basically I'm wondering;
- What physically causes this memory loss?
- If I wanted to, is there any way to 'regain' this sort of memory? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5a01p3/eli5what_physically_causes_a_blackout_when_you/ | {
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"When you suffer a strong hit to the head it makes your brain slosh around and bump into the walls of your skull. This causes damage to the tissue which may stop it from functioning properly.\n\nWe're not 100% sure what exactly causes people lose consciousness, but there are a couple ideas. But first we have to clarify that losing consciousness and not remembering what happened are two different things. In your case you had \"traumatic amnesia\" which means the hit to your head caused the part of your brain that makes memories to stop working for a bit. This is why you don't remember what happened but people said you weren't unconscious. You won't be able to regain this memory because nothing was \"stored.\" \n\nNow for loss of consciousness, like I said we don't know for sure what happens but there are a few ideas: One is that the trauma causes the part of your brain that regulates when you're \"awake\" and the transition between sleep & wake (called the RAS) to malfunction which makes you \"lose consciousness.\" \n\nThe second idea is that trauma cases a part of the brain called the Pontine Tegmentum to release chemicals that inhibit the function of the RAS. \n\nA third idea is that the force of the movement that caused the injury \"disconnected\" some nerve fibers for a second. The amount of force is thought to play a role in how severe the disconnects are, this could explain why some people are just dazed, some forget and others lose consciousness completely.\n\nA fourth idea is that the trauma caused a bunch of brain cells to fire all at the same time, much like a seizure. This would mean the brain was overloaded and couldn't work properly.\n\n[Here's an journal article that talks about this in a lot more detail](_URL_0_)"
]
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3g6gff | graduate degrees. | I understand a Masters is usually a 2 year post bachelor degree, but what are the differences between Ph.Ds, post-docs, medical degrees, professional degrees, etc. Also, how long does each take to acquire? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3g6gff/eli5_graduate_degrees/ | {
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"Professional doctorates are degrees like the juris doctor (law), doctor of medicine, and doctor of dental medicine/doctor of dental surgery. They are advanced training that prepares someone for a profession. They typically focus on classes and professional experience, and have a limited (if any) research component. The time depends on the degree. A JD typically takes 3 years, while an MD, DMD, or DDS takes 4.\n\nA PhD is a doctor of philosophy. \"Philosophy\" refers to learning and study in general, not specifically to the field of philosophy (you can get a PhD in philosophy, but you can also get one in biology, economics, or english). The focus of a PhD is research, typically leading to the writing and defense of a thesis/dissertation. This is often far more work than the classes you have to take. A PhD can take as little as three years, but can take as long as it takes to write and successfully defend a dissertation. This will depend on the field, the university, and the student.\n\nA post-doc is a shorthand way of saying a post-doctoral fellowship. It's a position typically for PhDs (sometimes MDs) who want to do research to get more experience before starting their own lab. Most post-docs are 3 years, but some people do more than one."
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afavsp | how come radio waves can be used to transmit very high quality data for tv/internet but the radios used by police departments and air traffic control tend to be garbled and staticky? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/afavsp/eli5_how_come_radio_waves_can_be_used_to_transmit/ | {
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"\"Radio connections\" can be of two types: analog or digital. \n\nIn an analog connection, radio waves are converted to electricity by an amplifier and this turns directly into mechanical forces on a speaker. Any distortion in the radio waves during travel is represented faithfully to the speaker and you hear scratching. \n\nIn digital connection, sound waves are translated into a sequence of packets which are transmitted in their encoded form to the other \"radio\" which then receives each packet and translates it back into sound. \n\nThe use of \"packets\" in networking protocols allows for error checking and confirmation. Packets often contain a checksum which is the result of a mathematical operation on the packet's contents. If the receiver computes the checksum of a received packet and it is wrong, it can request the packet again from the sender. \n\nThe result is a perfect recreation within the receiver, of the sound data stream sent generated by the sender. It's the same reason there isn't \"static\" in a Netflix video stream. \n\nBack in the previous millennium, TV was sent over analog radio signal and distortion of the image was quite common. \n\n",
"It basically boils do to that TV uses larger, higher bandwidth channels that can transmit a lot of information, while police radio etc. use narrower channels that don't carry as much data.\n\nWhy is it like this? The radio spectrum is a crouded place. The FCC has allocated TV channels the large amount of space they need for their purposes, but for the sake of example let's say a local police department may only be allocated 24 kHz of radio bandwidth. With that space they can choose to either have one 24 kHz channel or split it into two 12 kHz channels. Obviously the bigger channel will allow more data through it and with that better voice quality. But if the department needs to have two channels, they'll be forced to essentially squeeze 24 kHz worth of information through a 12 kHz pipe. This is where the lower audio quality come from, basically cutting off the information you don't need in order to make it fit. This is called audio compression. \n\nIt should also be noted that compression algorithms are designed with this, and the audio quality on modern radios is actually quite good, better than the typical \"radio\" sound effect used in movies and TV.\n\nThere's other factors in play related to analog vs digital, AM vs FM vs FSK vs CPM, etc., but that's essentially a broad strokes explanation of the lower audio quality."
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4ratzo | how come you feel light-headed after hyperventilating? | My understanding is that it has something to do with CO2 in the bloodstream, but I'm curious why people don't faint when they are having panic attacks. If they are hyperventilating for 10+ minutes straight, how do they stay conscious? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4ratzo/eli5_how_come_you_feel_lightheaded_after/ | {
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"Some times they do. Also as some one who has had many panic attacks it's not always hyperventilating all the time. It kinda comes in waves. In my opinion panic attacks are your fight or flight system is engaged but neither fight or flight will solve the situation so you get \"stuck\" sorta and the whole point of your adrenal system is to help keep you alive so passing out wouldn't be affective so it self regulates to cause the relaxing so you don't pass out but as it is a respond to an irrational reaction in your mind it comes right back and the cycle starts over. Just my own perspective.",
"Low oxygen can make you pass out, low CO2 has several physiologic effects but generally won't make you actually pass out. ",
"Carbon dioxide when dissolved in water forms the weak acid, Carbonic acid, which is a critical component in the body's Acid/Base balance. If you hold your breath, the very opposite of hyperventilation, you soon begin to feel uncomfortable but it is not because you are \"running out of oxygen\" it is because you are experiencing a buildup of CO2 in your bloodstream and it is driving your Acid/Base balance toward the acid side of things. Your blood pH is getting lower. The oxygen saturation rate in your blood will change very little in the 30 seconds or so that it takes to begin the onset of [respiratory acidosis](_URL_0_)\n\nHyperventilation does the exact opposite, discarding too much CO2 drives the blood pH higher, it has no effect on oxygen saturation rates, but it's effects are unpleasant none the less.\n\nFainting as a result of hyperventilation would be a self limiting phenomenon. In someone in the psychological state that leads to hyperventilation fainting would promptly shut down the hyperventilation, slow the breathing rate, and result in a return to normal acid/base balance.\n\nHospital emergency rooms often treat people in dire emotional distress suffering from the ill effects of hyperventilation, it's a feedback loop. Some sort emotional distress leads to hyperventilation, which leads to unpleasant sensations, which feeds the belief that something is *terribly wrong* which is frightening and increases the degree of emotional distress that got the whole thing started. People report a tingling numbness in their face and extremities and it's terrifying. \n\nThe treatment is simple, quickly effective, and returns things to normal in a surprisingly short time. They are given a paper bag to breathe in, it recycles the CO2 in their breath and the [respiratory alkalosis](_URL_1_) is soon reversed."
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5l13pu | what determines how high you can fall, land on your feet, and not get hurt? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5l13pu/eli5what_determines_how_high_you_can_fall_land_on/ | {
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"It will depend on many things. Height, muscle and bone strength, skill(at landing), and the surface to name a few. "
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3s4lik | how did people in remote, underdeveloped african villages get water? | Many small villages in Africa have very limited water supplies and often have to walk miles to replenish their bottles with dirty water. Could their populations have even developed to their current level with such sparse supply? Or was there once more widespread access to water that was limited somehow through colonialisation?
Sorry if my question seems a little ignorant but it comes from a geniune curiosity.
Edit: Spellin | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3s4lik/eli5_how_did_people_in_remote_underdeveloped/ | {
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"They have surface water access via rivers or lakes, but you do not want to live right next to the surface water source in Africa as that means you will have to be dealing with lots of large dangerous animals when they come for water. That is why they build their villages a good distance from the water sources. \n\nAccess to water was not limited via colonization. "
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1p4s2y | why can i feel bad weather coming in my arthritic knee? | I have arthritis in my right knee (I know that it's weird that it's only in one knee) and while it doesn't hurt when bad weather is coming, I can definitely feel a change. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1p4s2y/eli5why_can_i_feel_bad_weather_coming_in_my/ | {
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"I don't know, but my old wrists are better than the local weather report...",
"Can confirm this phenomenon. I broke my femur above my knee last year and it drives me crazy when the weather gets bad. Air pressure maybe?",
"As far as I know, there are no definitive answers but some people think it has to do with the change in barometric pressure. The problem with this is that if a small drop in pressure gives a solid \"sign\" like pain, a much bigger and quicker drop like coming up from scuba diving or lifting off with a plane should be A LOT more painful. \n\nA more commonly accepted explanation is that it's a combination of selection bias and confirmation bias. That means that you almost always remember the times your arthritis acts up and the weather changes and almost never remember when it acts up and the weather doesn't change. In addition when you see the weather forecast you probably expect your arthritis to act up when the forecast is bad. ",
"I have arthritis in my hip and my spine. When it is raining out I usually just lay on the floor, unwilling to move.",
"There is no explanation really because its actually not true. The idea of arthritis and joints predicting the weather is very old, but like many other phenomena (think full moon associations), it disappears under rigorous double blinded study. Most likely, the persistent belief is due to confirmation bias. To explain, there are 4 cases.\n\n1. You notice your knee hurts and the weather is bad, has been bad, or will be bad soon. This confirms your theory.\n\n2. You notice your knee hurts and the weather is fine.\nYou aren't reminded of your theory and the data point is lost. (That's not a personal accusation, it's how we all work.)\n\n3. Your knee doesn't hurt and the weather's bad. Again you generally don't notice or quickly forget.\n\n4. The weather and your knee are ok. This is the default mode for both so you'll remember that these generally line up and include them as positive evidence for the theory.\n\nThe general trend is made worse by the fact that people generally make special excuses in the moment for disco firming evidence and then forget entirely. \n\nObviously, don't take my word for it. Look up confirmation bias and arthritis-predictions on the web.\n\nTLDR: Confirmation bias is the reason for arthritis predictions, full moon-ER \"correlations\", toilet seat arguments, celebrity deaths-in-three's and generally all good/bad luck superstitions.",
"It's actually all in your head. I'll grab the studies for you tomorrow if you like but the research points to a confirmation bias of sorts. You remember pain -- > weather change but not pain -- > no weather change or no pain -- > weather change."
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2hz7qw | how does youtube make a link start at a certain time of the video without changing the link at all? | For those who don't know what I'm talking about it's the share option right under the video and over the description box. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2hz7qw/eli5how_does_youtube_make_a_link_start_at_a/ | {
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"It does alter the link by appending a parameter called `t` to the end. For example, if you enter 9 seconds and check the \"Start At\" button, it appends `?t=9s`."
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9al5ga | how are modern day cpu's or gpu's designed? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9al5ga/eli5_how_are_modern_day_cpus_or_gpus_designed/ | {
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"There is a circuit programming language called [VHDL](_URL_0_) (VHSIC Hardware Description Language -- VHSIC stands for Very High Speed Integrated Circuit but sometimes the 'v' referred to Verilog in the past) that allows digital circuits to be designed in code and simulated in operation in computer simulation. VHDL descriptions of circuits can --if relatively modest in scale and performance-- then be loaded into Field Programmable Gate Arrays or Application Specific ICs that simulate the circuit for testing in hardware. FPGAs are like a set of generic logic gates that can be programmed by a companion Programmable Read-Only Memory array. ASICs are similar but, like usual Read Only Memory, can only be programmed once. \n\nThis coded design description can then be entered into Electronic Design Automation systems that take the VHDL code and generate the geometric patterns that correspond to the physical shapes of semiconductor materials that are deposited on each layer of a silicon wafer. These drawings are then miniaturized, duplicated, and printed into 'masks' for the actual deposition on silicon wafer in various processes that are similar to screen-printing or generally called 'lithography'. \n\nVHDL is also used with FPGAs to make 'virtual computers' where simulated circuits function as programs, doing most of their operations in one clock cycle. This has been used to make custom co-processors for scientific work, but requires a conventional companion computer to program the FPGAs. It has been proposed that --when we reach the limits of Moore's Law with traditional microprocessors-- whole general purpose computers may someday be based on this, using self-addressing dynamic gate array devices that translate programs into temporary virtual circuits. This is similar to the electronics described in Star Trek canon and what various futurists refer to a 'computronium'. ",
"There's generally four different groups of engineers that work to bring a new chip to market. \n\nOne group designs the circuits. Another designs the fabrication (fab) process to build it. Packaging figures out how to encase the system to protect and install it (this is often the most complicated part), while testing develops the systems to validate a chip coming off the line meets the spec and is binned accordingly. \n\nAll of these teams work together and iterate off each other's problems to build the final system. It's an extremely complicated process that moves quickly, with dozens of engineers in each group. \n\nA quick example of some of the workflow would be a circuit designer comes up with a way to eek out 2% power efficiency by modifying a circuit. The packaging people look at it and figure out how to alter their process to build the system, while packaging figures out how it impacts their process, and finally testing verifies the changes improve or worsen yields. Sometimes you'll have changes in one area that aren't possible in another, or positive gains in one area have too much costs in another. "
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4wsorw | - how does somebody become paralyzed? | Can someone explain how our body can become paralyzed from leg down ? what causes our body to stop moving essentially | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4wsorw/eli5_how_does_somebody_become_paralyzed/ | {
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"Paralysis is commonly caused when the nerves that send signals from the brain to the limb are damaged. There are medical causes, including birth defects, and mechanical causes, like crashing one's motorbike. Being paralyzed from the legs down might be caused by spinal cord damage in the lower back.",
"Analogy: light switch turning on a light bulb. The light switch is the 'brain' sending signals and the lightbulb is the 'body part' (hand finger arm leg). Any event that disrupts this circuit prevents the electricity or 'brain impulse' from reaching the lightbulb thus turning off the light.\n\nMore depth: Nerves allow your brain to communicate with your body parts. There's a large 'circuit' of nerves that run inside your spine from the back of your brain to your tailbone (spinal chord). If your spine is severed (cut) (one of the most common causes of paralysis) your brain can no longer communicate with certain parts of your body.\n \nMost in depth: Typically the higher up the spinal chord (closer to the head/brain) the worse the paralysis is because the brains electrical impulse is unable to travel very far. also some people can become paralyzed on one side of their body. This is usually caused by a stroke on one side of the brain. This causes that side to die and the opposite side of the body to be paralyzed. But overall it comes down to the brain being unable to communicate(via electrical pulses) with a body part! Hope this helped a little bit!",
"Think of your spinal cord as a telephone wire. When you move parts of your body, your brain is basically \"calling\" those body parts and saying \"go up and down\" or \"bend\", etc. In turn, your body parts \"call\" your brain back by telling you what's going on: \"this is hot\", \"this hurts\", \"this is heavy\", \"time to adjust position\", etc. When the wire gets cut (spinal cord is severed), your brain's calls can't get through, so nothing moves. Your body parts' calls can't get through either, so they can't communicate what's going on to your brain. That's why paralyzed people can't feel or move anything (though many feel pain or experience spasms, since sometimes little messages can still get through). \n\nA lot of things can cut the wire or make the brain unable to make \"calls\". Spinal injuries, neurodegenerative diseases like ALS (which basically strip the protective sheath off of your nerves -- think like if something ate away all the insulation on a telephone line or electrical wire), or problems in the brain like a stroke or some cancers can all cause paralysis. Sometimes it's reversible (or partially -- a friend of mine has been paralyzed from the shoulders down for ten years from an accident, and two years ago, through a lot of physical therapy and some luck, regained partial use of one arm), but many times it is not. "
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7z1t25 | - what do defense lawyers get out of defending mass murderers, knowing they will lose the case? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7z1t25/eli5_what_do_defense_lawyers_get_out_of_defending/ | {
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"Assuming the murderer in question isn't wealthy enough to pay for his defense, they get recognition and publicity. Looking good in front of the cameras for a high profile trial is worth your client's weight in gold. Performing well in court in a high pressure environment also boosts your reputation with your colleagues, which can lead to promotions and job offers.",
" > What do Defense lawyers get out of defending mass murderers, knowing they will lose the case?\n\nThey get paid. Most of the time lawyers still get paid if they lose the case, and for most working people their paycheck is sufficient justification to do their jobs.\n\nAlso defense lawyers probably get the satisfaction of performing a critical function in our legal system which is the right to a legal defense for *everyone*, even people guilty of heinous crimes. Someone has to do the job of defending them even if it is ultimately doomed to failure.",
"The goal isn't to win and get the client off the hook in a lot of cases. At some point it ends up as making sure that the clients rights aren't infringed upon. This can include things like making sure evidence was handled correctly, the jury is impartial, and the charges fit the crime.",
"If the defense lawyer is hired, it's a chance to prove skill at being a defense lawyer. A good lawyer is respected not for the % of cases they win, but what they do with the cases they handle.\n\nIf they're appointed as a public defender, they're fulfilling a foundational principle of the US legal system that all persons are innocent until proven guilty and must be granted competent counsel in a fair trial.",
"Because it is our job?\n\nWhen it comes to criminal cases, the chance of \"winning\" (whatever that actually means) has no bearing on whether we do a case and our duties.\n\nThese questions almost crop up on a daily basis but it is always helpful to answer. The best answer is this:\n\nWhat would you like to happen if you were accused of a crime and put before the criminal justice system? "
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3kn03e | what is happening on cern right now? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3kn03e/eli5what_is_happening_on_cern_right_now/ | {
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"First, a bit about CERN in general:\n\nAll of physics except gravity is bound up in this neat bit of physics and mathematics known as the standard model. The standard model is awesome, but has the major flaw that it cannot explain gravity (which is explained by Einstein's theory of relativity). I'm not just saying that it currently doesn't explain gravity; there are theoretical reasons why there is no way to have both theories work simultaneously, so it seems likely that at least one, and possibly both, are wrong.\n\nThe way we prove theories wrong is by observing things that they say won't happen. On the large scale, we have all of human history confirming the standard model, so that seems a bad place to look. Instead, the promising place to look is on the tiny tiny scale, where we are able to measure things we couldn't measure even 20 years ago. CERN's job is to do a shit ton of experiments on this tiny scale and see if anything contradicts the standard model. The most recent major accomplishment of CERN was to find the Higgs Boson, a particle that the standard model said should exist, but that no one had ever seen.\n\nA lot of news about CERN is overly sensationalist, partially because it sells and partially because no reporter alive understands what CERN is doing. Dunno what you're reading, but the more extravagant the claims, the more likely I'd guess they are false.\n\nThe new stuff:\n\nThe recent news (earlier this month) that I heard out of CERN was about tau leptons. Leptons are a group of particles and tau leptons are a certain kind of lepton. CERN has been breaking up a kind of particle called a meson into it's constituent parts, and noticing a lot more tau leptons than the standard model would predict. It looks like they have done this enough to indicate that it's probably a real phenomenon, but not enough to publish anything on quite yet. AFAIK no one has an alternative theory ready at hand to explain why this is happening, but the hope is always that it's connected to dark matter (though it probably isn't)"
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4ynmn7 | how did early people give birth to children without proper tools and sanitation? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4ynmn7/eli5_how_did_early_people_give_birth_to_children/ | {
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"Tools aren't generally required. Babies have got quite a bit bigger as people have got better fed, so years ago they were a bit easier to squeeze out.\n\nSadly though, the most important thing is that lots of mums and babies died. Infant mortality was high, and things like puerperal fever killed a lot shortly after birth.",
"Most births aren't complicated and they come out just fine. \n\nNeedle and thread aren't exactly high tech tools. But the lack of sanitation make that riskier. \n\nBut simply put more people died of childbirth back then. And unless you were of fairly hardy stock, you didn't live long enough to reproduce.",
"In comparison to doctors, midwifes had better sanitation and a higher percentage of mothers/babies survived when delivered by midwifes.",
"As other's have said, for a lot of births, tools aren't necessary. For an uncomplicated birth, it pretty much just happens. The mother will get the urge to push, and the baby will be born. However in a more complicated birth (such as one with hemorrhaging), it wasn't uncommon that mother, baby or both may die. \n\nThere was also puerperal fever, also called childbed fever. As I understand it from my limited research, it was usually a result of infection introduced by doctors (who did not think it necessary to wash their hands between patients, or even between touching a corpse and a live patient), or by the placenta not coming away fully and cleanly, and leaving parts of it inside the uterus."
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8qwkhb | why did the invention of the cotton gin increase the demand for slaves and not decrease demand? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8qwkhb/eli5_why_did_the_invention_of_the_cotton_gin/ | {
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"If memory serves, the whole industry was dying because it wasn't economical, but the cotton gin actually made it a viable business again and so it started back up. ",
"It made cotton cheaper to produce overall, increasing demand for cotton. But it didn't solve the *other* labor tasks involved in cotton production, such as planting and picking, that still used slaves."
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b97sep | why is it that when you breathe your chest/stomach area rises with the inhale and falls with the exhale, but when you intentionally take a deep breathe (inhale) you suck in your stomach rather than jutting it out? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/b97sep/eli5_why_is_it_that_when_you_breathe_your/ | {
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"To take the biggest breath you possibly can (known as a forced vital capacity breath), you have to contract the diaphragm and external intercostal muscles more forcefully. Doing this (in conjunction with other muscles used during forceful breathing) pulls the rib cage up and expands it outward and this prevents the outward abdominal movement you're referring to. ",
"Breathing is all about air pressure. Boyle's law says that if you have x amount of gas, it will be under high pressure in a small container and low pressure in a big container. In order to breathe in, we make the pressure in our lungs lower then atmospheric pressure by making our lung-container bigger. To breathe out we make the pressure in our lungs higher then atmospheric pressure by making our lung-container smaller.\n\nWe change the size of our lungs by changing the size of our chest cavity. Our lungs are kind of stuck to the chest wall kind of like if you've ever seen two glass slides with a little water between them. So when the chest wall moves, the lungs move with it. We change the size of the chest cavity in two ways, with our diaphragm and with the muscles between our ribs.\n\nThe diaphragm is a dome-shaped muscle that sits right behind around the bottom of your breast bone. When you breathe in, the diaphragm flattens, pulling down on the lungs making them bigger and pushing down a little on the organs in your belly area which tends to make your belly stick out a little. The muscles between your ribs pull them up and out, again pulling your lungs out and making them bigger. When you breathe out, all those muscles relax, pushing in on the lungs and making them smaller.\n\nSo that's all day, every day, just sitting there not thinking about it breathing. You're diaphragm moves a little, your rib muscles move a little and we get enough breath for whatever. Most people, when they think about taking a deep breath do it almost completely with their chest muscles. So much so in fact that they'll usually pull their shoulders up and back a bit to help really spread the chest. Most of the time you don't really suck in your belly much, it's just that your chest is expanding so much it looks like it is in contrast or they've expanded their chest so much that their abdominal muscles are pulled a little taut.\n\nIf you really want to go for maximum breath though, you have to go for the big chest expand and the low diaphragm. Watch somebody who's singing or playing a wind instrument and you'll notice that when they breathe in not only does their chest get bigger, but so does their belly. This makes more room for the diaphragm to pull down (and may even pull it down a bit) and allows them to get a really huge lung full of air to support singing/playing for long stretches between breaths.",
"Because you’re doing it wrong. \n\nMost people when they have to consciously breathe do so incorrectly, possibly because of the learned visual cues we give to children so they can “see” breaths being taken. We tend to puff out our upper body so they can see it, since breathing healthfully is far less visible with a shirt on. This results in people associating physical tension with breathing in. \n\nThis is why studying singers, musicians, yoga practitioners etc have to re-learn how to breathe. Because we’ve all been doing it wrong. "
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3ankd2 | trademarks: how can there be a dc comics and a dc shoes? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3ankd2/eli5_trademarks_how_can_there_be_a_dc_comics_and/ | {
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"They're in two completely different lines of business. DC Comics isn't trying to sell shoes and DC Shoes isn't trying to sell comics, so there's not likely to be confusion between customers of the two companies.\n\nSo if you wanted to trademark McDonald's and sell, say, cement, you could, but you couldn't sell food under that trademark.\n\nThe key question is whether a consumer is likely to be confused and think that one XYZ company is affiliated with another. XYZ Widgets and XYZ Books aren't likely to be confused. XYZ Clothing and XYZ Lingerie probably would be."
]
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||
5upu93 | if no normal person can withstand water boarding can't it be used to get anyone to admit to doing anything just to make it stop? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5upu93/eli5_if_no_normal_person_can_withstand_water/ | {
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"Yes. That is the problem with torture in general. It isn't a way to discover actual truths.",
"yeah that's pretty much one argument against torture. that it's ineffective and people will just say anything to get it to stop. ",
"Specifically because it will get people to admit to doing anything to make it stop. The information gained from torture is not useful because it is not truthful. They just want the torture to stop so they will tell you what you want to know, not what you actually need to know. ",
"confessions made under torture (any torture, not just waterboarding) have been deemed unreliable because there are way too many false positives. people say whatever it takes to make the pain stop\n\n[CIA torturers themselves](_URL_0_) admitted this, but continued(s) to use it anyway, because torture is fun i guess",
"That is why torture is not a good intelligence gathering tool. If you torture somebody, they will admit to anything in order to get you to stop. \n\nIt all depends on what is being asked and what information a person is trying to obtain. \n\nFor instance \"Admit you killed Abraham Lincoln!\" is going to get false confessions just to make it stop. A good example is \"Admit your heresy and beg forgiveness\" used in the inquisition under torture. The fallacy here is that you have no way to verify what the person is admitting to. Did they tell you what you wanted to hear in order to stop torture, or did they really admit to something? There is no way to tell. \n\nHowever an example of usable intelligence would be \"Tell me where you planted the bomb\" or \"where are the machine gun placements on this map\" or \"Who are your accomplices\" etc because those can be verified as true or false. \n"
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3vmamw | why do people make ginger bread men and houses? it just seems weird to make a little house with candy for the holidays. how did this start? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3vmamw/eli5_why_do_people_make_ginger_bread_men_and/ | {
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"Gingerbread Men and houses came from 16th century Germany, and is also based off a folk tale. \n\nEDIT: [Original Gingerbread story](_URL_0_) Sorry for garbage page quality. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"http://www.storyit.com/Classics/Stories/gingerbreadman.htm"
]
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||
43k5sh | why isn't a 2x4 really 2x4? | Or you know any size of lumber isn't really the size it says. It's always a little smaller. Why? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/43k5sh/eli5why_isnt_a_2x4_really_2x4/ | {
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"2x4 is the \"nominal\" size and refers to the rough cut / \"green\" board and you can actually by them that way.\n\nAfter they are dried they are planed for a smoother finish and this gives you the slightly smaller size of 1-1/2\" x 3-1/2\"",
"Like others said, it's because the nominal size is what the lumber is cut at while it's still full of moisture, and then it shrinks smaller as it dries. \n\nBack in the day, drying lumber was a much more haphazard process, and so it was harder to control what the eventual size of the dried boards would be. Today the wood used for lumber is generally more uniform, and often dried in kilns, and then planed smoother, which allows for the finished boards to be more consistent. Modern 2x4's are consistently pretty darn close to 1.5 x 3.5 inches.",
"If you live near a sawmill you can get rough cut dimensional lumber that's actually 2x4. It will have a rougher finish, knot holes and bark will be on some boards and some boards will be bowed a bit. If you ever look at what old houses are built from its similar to this."
]
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3g1xe6 | why does your hearing go away when you pass out? | So I gave blood today, and it wasn't really that bad during the actual blood-giving. I felt pretty fine. I walked about ten feet to the station where they give you free cookies and juice, and as soon as I started chowing down on one, I felt immensely tired. I promptly passed out(I thought I fell asleep because I do remember dreaming for those few seconds).
The one thing I acutely remember is that it was almost exactly like the movies; I woke up with a bunch of people over me(they laid me down on the ground) and at first their voices were distant and muffled, and slowly my hearing returned to normal, but I couldn't stop thinking about how it seemed like that was exactly like how passing out is depicted in movies. What exactly happens to your hearing? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3g1xe6/eli5_why_does_your_hearing_go_away_when_you_pass/ | {
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"From a cognitive neuropsych perspective, it's more likely that the perception is missing, not the sensation itself. In other words, you're *hearing* the noise, but you just can't *perceive* the noise. It doesn't process. Hence why it sort of comes back in a rush (hopefully so, anyway!).\n\nUnderstandably, it's hard to have people who pass out hooked up to an fMRI or the like, since sudden loss of consciousness is usually a rather bad thing. I haven't come across a wealth of studies related to the \"waking up\" part, though someone in neuroscience with a focus on injuries might have a better perspective (I mostly work with neuropsych).\n\nAnecdotally, when I had a stroke the first thing to come back was actually my hearing, and not my vision. I began processing people's concern, and (since I thought I was still walking down the hall), I was about to help them help the random stranger. It was at that moment that I realized I couldn't see or move, and then things started gradually coming into focus.",
"Same, dude. Turns out I have some fight or flight response (forgot what it's called) and I found out when I got my blood drawn for the first time a few years back. I said \"I feel dizzy\" and then nothing. As I was regaining consciousness everything was black, but I felt my legs kicking and I thought \"am I running?\" THEN my vision and hearing faded in, and I realized I was actually convulsing. Scariest thing ever.\n\nThe second time I was at a tattoo convention with my dad, and I decided I'd get pierced. I went to the booth of my now favorite piercer, sat down, and did the thing. The first ear was alright, but the second I felt weird, next thing I know I'm convulsing again! For some reason I started laughing insanely, then I look over and see a shit ton of convention goers staring at me, and I laughed even harder! Eventually the piercer got me to shut up and gave me sugar tablets and water. He handled everything sooo well.\n\nTurns out, I don't faint if I'm lying down! Yayyy\n\nTL;DR: I faint and convulse "
]
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bqv677 | if everyone actually recycled their plastic, would using plastic be ok for the environment? is not recycling the real issue? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/bqv677/eli5_if_everyone_actually_recycled_their_plastic/ | {
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"Recycling still has an environmental impact, although less than manufacturing new plastics. Not all plastic can be recycled either, and recycling is not very profitable. We used to export a lot of our recycling to China, but they don't accept it anymore, leading to a shortage of places to process it. So while recycling is better than not, it's no silver bullet and the economics behind it are a bit in question right now.",
"The issue with plastics is that, contrary to other materials like paper, glass or metal, recycling plastics is very difficult. Specifically, when you recycle plastic, the 'quality' of that plastic is reduced (a process known as 'downcycling'). If you recycle a clear plastic bottle, for instance, that plastic will never form a clear plastic bottle again because the process used to recycle it lowers the quality of the plastic, and will instead be used in stiffer, opaque products like pipes and vehicle parts. Similarly, when those products are in turn recycled, they generally end up as even 'lower grade' plastics, e.g. in insulation. So plastic can only actually be recycled a few times, and each time it's recycled, its quality reduces. \n\nWhilst recycling plastic is obviously a lot better than just throwing it away into the environment, it is still not sustainable. There's no such thing as 'free' recycling - all recycling requires some amount of energy and processing. However, whether other materials (such as glass) can genuinely be sustainably recycled, this is not the case for plastic. So recycling is a step in the right direction, but unfortunately it doesn't change the fact that single-use plastics are fundamentally unsustainable. Obviously, companies involved in the production of single-use plastics are not particularly happy about this representation of their products which is why they give the impression that recycling plastics is the solution, but it isn't. The only genuinely sustainable solution is to simply stop using single-use plastics in the first place. There have been attempts to make biodegradable plastics that cause less environmental damage but so far, most of the attempts have been demonstrated to biodegrade poorly in natural conditions so again, whilst certain companies like to give the impression that their product is the solution, it's not as simple as that."
]
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4ph6a6 | how can "game deal" websites sell steeply discounted pc games? | I just bought Cities: Skylines for $11 off a reputable "game deals" website but I'm confused about how that mechanism works--the face value on steam is $30. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4ph6a6/eli5_how_can_game_deal_websites_sell_steeply/ | {
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"Some keys sold at a massive discount have been stolen, bought with a stolen credit card, or were bundled with some other software. See _URL_0_\n\nSome distributors would rather sell 100 keys at a $1 profit instead of selling 2 at a $25 profit.\n\nSome studios might heavily discount their keys to increase the amount of microtransactions in the game and they make a bigger profit. ",
"There are a couple ways that game deal site's can sell at a discount and still turn a profit.\n\na) Take less profit: Retailers by the games from the publisher at wholesale prices that are cheaper than they sell them to you, usually somewhere between 50-70% (especially low outside of North America) of the Manufacturer Suggested Retail Price (MSRP). The difference between wholesale and retail prices is their profit, they can eat into their profit to sell cheaper.\n\nb1) Sell you the game from a cheap region: MSRP is not always the same everywhere, some places where people have lower buying power (Brazil, Russia, China) sometimes have cheaper wholesale prices to allow retailers to sell cheaper, but nothing stops them from selling to people in higher priced regions over the internet.\n\nb2) Code strip - Physical copies cause some weirdness, wholesale can sometimes be cheaper than digital, especially if someone needs to free up space in a warehouse. Brick and mortar retailers in developing nations will sometimes code strip (open up the physical box to get the key code and then throw away the box) and sell the box copy codes on the internet to NA/EU consumers.\n\nc) Outright fraud - A criminal will use stolen credit card numbers to buy game keys, then sells the game key to a game deal website who sells them to a consumer. The key gets delivered to the criminal immediately, and while the fraud gets discovered eventually, it takes at least a few days, long enough for the criminal to sell the key on.\n\nAdded note: The undiscounted $30 cost on Steam is in fact the MSRP. Steam effectively buys their keys on demand at 70% of the $30 cost from the Publisher."
]
} | [] | [] | [
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"http://blog.indiegamestand.com/featured-articles/steam-key-reselling-killing-little-guys/"
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3ehm0x | why do dealerships such as carmax advertise "no haggling" as if it's good for the consumer? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3ehm0x/eli5_why_do_dealerships_such_as_carmax_advertise/ | {
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"why isn't it good for the consumer? a lot of consumers simply don't like the added stress of haggling. so you go in, you know exactly how much you pay. take it or leave it. if it's priced too high. market will correct automatically since they won't sell any cars. ",
"A lot of consumers, especially introverted ones like myself, prefer to do the research online to find the best price, and then simply go to the place and buy the thing. Having to talk a sales person down is an added annoyance and gives me anxiety.",
"Many if not most shoppers do not like the added time and stress of haggling for goods. It is actually better to just have the price clear and you can choose to take it or leave it as it is. ",
"A lot of car buyers don't like the stress of having to deal with an oily car salesman. For many, the experience of walking, being told a price (or even seeing it on a sticker) and deciding whether or not to buy that car, is very refreshing and a lot less stressful. \n\nWith that being said, if you're confident enough you can walk into 'traditional' dealerships with a strong hand, especially if you have decent credit, for example. Don't be afraid of walking out if you don't like what you hear, and (this is something I only learned recently) it's usually a good idea to go towards the end of the month - salesmen have quotas they need to feel and so might be a bit more desperate to make any sort of deal. ",
"People think they're getting a better deal by haggling than they otherwise would have gotten, because they assume that without haggling, they'd have had to pay whatever price the dealership first suggested.\n\nBut, that doesn't make sense. If dealer knows haggling will occur, they just set the initial price higher and then let you haggle them down. If anything, the lack of transparency in pricing — for instance, the fact that you can't shop around as easily — almost certainly means that consumers get *worse* deals when haggling is involved, on average.",
"In a lot of cases Carmax actually is good for the consumer. There aren't many dealerships that have a nationwide distribution of used cars. Cars have different resale value in different parts of the country and carmax is able to capitalize on that and in a lot of cases benefit themselves as well as the consumer while providing the simpler experience a lot customers prefer.\n\nExample: 4 wheel drives have lower resale value in the south. A carmax buyer will go to the auction and just pay whatever it takes to buy a certain 4 wheel drive vehicle. Carmax then ships the car to a northern state where the market retail value is much higher. They paid less than the dealers in that area and therefore make more money when selling it. In the meantime they can offer an easy, no haggle price to the customer and use the same process with the trade in.\n\nWith the advances in online purchasing available to other dealers, most dealers could do this...except...logistics. Carmax has the transportation and purchasing formulas tuned in way better than just about any dealership at this point.\n\nSource: Exec at multi-franchise dealer group (not carmax), have been in the business for a long ass time in just about every capacity.",
"Generally their sticker price will be lower (though rarely as low as a \"haggled\" price). You pay for less stress and wasted time.\n\nNot everyone is good at bartering. It makes it better for that type of customer."
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839tui | why does a cottonbud feel so good inside an ear whereas any other object would give discomfort? | i | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/839tui/eli5_why_does_a_cottonbud_feel_so_good_inside_an/ | {
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"text": [
"The Vagus nerve may be stimulated through the ear and produce pleasurable sensations throughout the body as the nerve runs from the brain to the butt. I would imagine the soft nature of a cotton swab enhances said effects."
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4shb0w | how to calculate a visit to the doctor -- are doctors required by law to state the price before every procedure they execute ? if not, how are prices for procedures selected ? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4shb0w/eli5how_to_calculate_a_visit_to_the_doctor_are/ | {
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"This is one of the huge problems with the US medical system.\n\nMost hospitals have what's called a \"Charge Sheet.\" This is a big list of what every procedure/item costs.\n\nThe problem is, most of the time it's health insurance--either private or public (medicare, for example) actually paying these costs. The hospitals are talking to the gov't or other insurance companies, drug companies, etc. and negotiating the prices. Not individual people. These charge sheets are often kept secret to--I guess--avoid competition.\n\n",
"You've gotten some useful half answers here, and the reason for that is the cost of health care in the U.S. varies by a number of different factors, namely whether you have insurance, what insurance provider you have, whether your doctor/hospital is considers \"in\" or \"out\" of your insurance providers \"network,\" and the type of procedure you have done (routine check up versus open heart surgery). \n\nIf you don't have any insurance, you can ask upfront what the cost may be. If it is a small or routine procedure, like a physical or office visit (perhaps you have a cold and need medicine), your doctor's office should tell you how much the cost for the visit will be. If you are prescribed medicine you will have to ask the pharmacist how much it will cost. This should also apply for routine surgeries like a hernia repair, or knee replacement etc. As the type of procedure gets more complicated, set costs are likely to be harder to estimate.\n\nIf you have health insurance, your health insurance provider negotiates costs of different procedures with doctors and hospitals. The doctors and hospitals that agree to pricing terms with the insurer then become the \"in network\" healthcare providers. When you visit them for routine things like those above, you likely pay a portion of the cost (called a \"co-pay\"), while the insurer pays the rest. The doctor may not be able to tell you how much you will pay because he/she does not know the specifics of your personal plan, and different insurers negotiate different prices (I might pay $10 for an office visit to a doctor because I have Insurance A, while you might pay $15 because you have Insurance B). When you visit a doctor out of your insurers network, they can't tell you how much something will cost because again, they don't know what your insurance plan covers or how much your insurer will be willing to pay.\n\nWhen you need to have a major procedure like a surgery or a treatment (like chemotherapy), you can contact your insurer and ask how much they will cover and what you will have to pay (they will have a list of costs for these types of procedures for both in and out of network providers). Your insurer will also tell you what costs and how much they will cover for emergency or what is called \"catastrophic\" treatment.\n\nSo in short, doctors/hospitals can provide some estimates for the smaller, more routine procedures, but generally different prices are negotiated by different insurers, so the doctor cannot tell you for certain how much something may cost. In your case with the dentist, you should have asked whether the procedure was necessary or needed immediately, and if not, you could have rescheduled it and checked with your insurance to see what it would cost."
]
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428pqf | alzheimer's disease, latest research and where we stand on finding a cure? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/428pqf/eli5_alzheimers_disease_latest_research_and_where/ | {
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"I'm no expert but, if you need research material or just want to test something that may help. \n\nLook into Piracetam or Noopept. Noopept in a more potent version of Piracetam. They increase oxygen and blood flow to the brain, increasing nerve growth and repairal of damaged neurons etc. \n\nA friend of mine had damaged himself due to prolonged use of MDMA and after looking for a solution for over a year himself unsuccesfully, I found this which helped him in just 2 weeks. There are studies that show evidence of it protecting the brain from harm and also having a chance of Alzheimers coming on earlier on in ones life. "
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||
3m1a1i | why is it ok to drink milk that has been warmed up in the microwave or on the stove but it is not ok to drink milk that is left out of the refrigerator for an extended period of time? | why is it ok to drink milk that has been warmed up in the microwave or on the stove but it is not ok to drink milk that is left out of the refrigerator for an extended period of time? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3m1a1i/eli5_why_is_it_ok_to_drink_milk_that_has_been/ | {
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"text": [
"Because milk left out has had time for bacteria to grow. Heated up milk may be a better environment to grow bacteria, but you drink it way before they can reproduce enough to cause trouble. ",
"The proliferation of bacteria. Milk that has been left to warm becomes a petri dish full of nasties. Milk that comes from the fridge and warmed up has few bacteria. ",
"Homogenization is a BEAST! Did you accidentally leave the milk or the cottage cheese out all night? It's OK. It won't hurt you.",
"Bacteria are the problem, and bacteria growth is a function of time + temperature. Milk that has been warmed quickly hasn't had the time for harmful bacteria to multiply.",
"Also...room temp is the ideal growing temp for bacteria. And like the others said the time the milk spent warming up to room temperature also has an impact."
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5e00df | is there a reason why we hate certain smells or are we trained from the beginning to hate them? | I just rewatched the futurama episode where Zoidberg's gf liked his nasty smell because she never smelled anything else before. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5e00df/eli5_is_there_a_reason_why_we_hate_certain_smells/ | {
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"Evolution has weeded out most people who do not respond negatively to rotting smells. Being repulsed by smells like that prevent someone from dying by eating spoiled food and thus live on to pass those smell genes.",
"It's an evolutionary trait.\n\nThink of your sense of smell like a chemical sensor. Things that are good for us or edible smell good. Things that are poisonous or harmful smell bad. (for the most part anyway)\n\nIf you'd never seen hot chocolate or bleach before, and I put a cup of each in front of you and told you to drink one...just the smell of the bleach would tell you it's probably not good for you.",
"Disgust is one of those emotions that has helped humans stay alive over the course of our evolution! We become disgusted towards many things (especially certain smells) because it protects us from hurting ourselves. When it comes to foul smells, products that shouldn't be digested often smell bad to us to ensure that we won't eat them (ex: rotten food). Of course, smell is just one factor when it comes to being disgusted.\n\nFun fact: New mothers can recognize & actually prefer the smell of their own child's feces over other children's! (Not sure why someone felt the need to do a study on this, but a study was done none the less)"
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5d2v5y | how can certain over the air television stations broadcast 2160p content without "buffering", while streaming 4k requires faster than average internet? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5d2v5y/eli5_how_can_certain_over_the_air_television/ | {
"a_id": [
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"Over-the-air or radio boardcasting is not real 4K content, but upscaling from 1080p. Only streaming can get you real 4K contents at the moment. The reason is, it requires a total new / upgrade infrastructure to support high demanding of bandwith. \n\nSource: _URL_0_"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"https://www.cnet.com/news/atsc-3-0-what-you-need-to-know-about-the-future-of-broadcast-television/"
]
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||
3o6etq | how the 2nd amendment protects ammunition with the right to bear arms. | How come we cannot regulate ammunition to the nth degree when the second amendment only allows the right to bear arms? "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." Why can we not impose significant restrictions on the purchase of ammunition? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3o6etq/eli5_how_the_2nd_amendment_protects_ammunition/ | {
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"text": [
"probably for the same reason they can't cut out your tongue, to abrogate your first amendment rights.\n",
"I'm not sure if there is any case law supporting this, but it would be the same reason that you can't restrict access to paper or ink or the internet (at least, not without due process of law) as a way to suppress the first amendment: the tools needed to be able to engage in constitutionally protected acts are themselves protected as well.",
"Because trying that kind of bullshit in court just gets you an annoyed judge. It's like claiming that a criminal defendant can't ask questions of a witness against them -- sure, the Sixth Amendment just says that you can *confront* witnesses against you, but if that didn't include asking questions it would be completely stupid. Courts assume that text in the Constitution is meant to actually accomplish something, and allowing guns without ammunition doesn't accomplish much of anything (without bullets, I wouldn't even consider a gun to be \"arms;\" it'd be basically a prop). ",
"Having arms means nothing if you can't buy ammo. It's a loophole which clearly violates the intent of the amendment.\n\nThe prevalent argument for the anti-gun side is a) the Second Amendment is dated (extreme side) b) \"a well regulated Militia\" is not the same as \"private individuals have a right to own guns\" (less extreme). The point of contention is generally not about how much ammo you're allowed to have for said guns."
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2ja97y | do gnats, flies, or other insects get concussions or other injuries when you swat them away? | When you swat a gnat or something, it goes from a leisurely slow flying pace to hundreds times faster because you slap it. Surely this has some effects? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2ja97y/eli5_do_gnats_flies_or_other_insects_get/ | {
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"text": [
"It gets knocked away by a cushion of air created by your hand. This is why fly swatters have holes in them, so they move through the air smoothly. ",
"They certainly do if you hit them into something. I've swatted them with my hand into walls and \"stunned\" them.",
"I've smacked flies so hard that they've died, so I suppose the answer is \"yes\".",
"I remember seeing some macro pictures posted here a few months ago showing a fly that the person hit with their hand or something. One of the eyes did looked caved/dented inward.\n\nIt looked pretty cool but it was so long ago I can't find the post. Sorry.\n\nEdit: I found a different picture showing kind of what I saw. _URL_0_",
"we should rename this sub to \"lazy scientists\".",
"Flies and gnats don't have what we would call a \"brain.\" They have bundles of nerves, but they're too simple to get what we know as concussions. You have to have a brain to get a concussion. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[],
[
"https://m.flickr.com/#/photos/bogush/9600181111/"
],
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|
7nihlj | where does the sound from the doorbell come from? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7nihlj/eli5_where_does_the_sound_from_the_doorbell_come/ | {
"a_id": [
"ds20wx8",
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"score": [
2,
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"text": [
"Usually there will be a box somewhere on the wall that contains the chimes or the circuitry. They tend to be installed pretty high up.",
"Do you mean \"where is the source of the sound in my house,\" or \"where does the doorbell 'ding dong' sound originate\"? Because the second question is a good one.",
"These days there are two types of doorbells: wired and wireless. Both have a chime box that will be located somewhere inside the house. Typically with a wired doorbell, the chime box is hidden away somewhere inconspicuous, high up on a wall. Perhaps in the corner of a hallway, where you would never notice it unless you were looking for it. A wireless doorbell is a bit different. There are battery powered chime boxes, or ones that plug into an outlet. The battery powered ones may be mounted on a wall like a wired one would be, but they could really be anywhere, like the back of a shelf or something like that. Plug in ones would obviously be plugged into an outlet somewhere, but lots of outlets are behind furniture, so it could still be concealed. Also, there are extenders, which will ring multiple places in the house. \n\nAnd I don't know what it is about the sound, but it seems to always be hard to pin-point the source."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[]
] |
||
51moym | why do we keep using ice to treat sprains when there is no evidence showing that it helps healing. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/51moym/eli5_why_do_we_keep_using_ice_to_treat_sprains/ | {
"a_id": [
"d7d424o",
"d7dh78b"
],
"score": [
8,
2
],
"text": [
"Ice causes the blood vessels to constrict, which deadens the nerves and reduces inflammation. This makes a sprain hurt less. However, icing it generally also requires keeping your joint still for a time so that the ice can maintain contact; holding it still also helps the joint heal.",
"Ice should be used on acute, swelling type injuries. It does reduce inflammation by constricting blood vessels. It also reduces bleeding into other tissues and muscle pain. Gate control theory: the temperature stimulus input is able to suppress pain by decreasing available space for pain neural torrent. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] |
||
4nc41a | abortion laws in the us | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4nc41a/eli5_abortion_laws_in_the_us/ | {
"a_id": [
"d42lnoz",
"d42lsag"
],
"score": [
2,
2
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"text": [
"laws on abortion vary by states, so there is no one universal law.\n\nthis is a legal question for r/legal",
"While it varies by state it is generally legal to get an abortion in the U.S. with some restrictions again dependent on state. \n\nAbortion has been formally legal since 1973 and de facto legal in various parts of the country since the beginning of the nation. Abortions have also been mandatory for some mentally ill individuals during parts of the 20th century. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] |
||
u3r3b | why getting water up your nose sucks so very, very much. | Whether its drinking, shower, or swimming pool, it all feels the same, and it's terrible. Obviously it's uncomfortable to get water where it shouldn't be, like the eyes or ears, but why does it feel so shitty when you get it up your nose? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/u3r3b/eli5_why_getting_water_up_your_nose_sucks_so_very/ | {
"a_id": [
"c4s4bx7",
"c4s5mx7",
"c4s5z0l"
],
"score": [
23,
2,
9
],
"text": [
"Because water is not supposed to be there, quite literally. Pain is not just your body trying to fuck with you, pain is an indication that something is wrong and needs to be fixed. \n\nIf there's water in your nose, then it is probably on the way to your lungs, and if lungs fill up with water - you drown. \n\nYou know how sometimes you can choke on a gulp of water? That's literally when water gets in the wrong pipe. In your throat a single pipe (which is your mouth) separates into two: one to your stomach and one to your lungs. There's also a little cap on the lung pipe, it closes when you swallow stuff. Choking is when you accidentally breathe and swallow at the same time. The pain is an indicator that something is endangering your lungs. Coughing is your body's reaction and an attempt to remove the foreign object (whether it's water or food). ",
"You may feel an odd \"heavy\" feeling of water getting far up your nose. Behind / above / below your eyes are a few cavities in your skull called your sinuses. Air passes through them on the way to the lungs. Water can fill these spaces up, and be pretty disorienting. It can throw off the balance of your head, and just generally feel terrible. People can get infections in the sinuses, but typically the sinuses keep themselves pretty clean by catching airborne (and waterborne) material in its mucus walls, which slowly drip out the nose, or your throat. ",
"You may be wondering why it hurts, if the inside of your nose is wet all the time anyway.\n\nIt has to do with salt balance. Pure drinking/shower/swimming pool water is too devoid of salt, which severely swells and irritates the mucous membrane. If it happens with seawater or a nasal irrigation spray, it hurts much less, because their balance is closer to that of your mucous membranes.\n\nSo now you know how snails feel when that bully pours salt on them."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[]
] |
|
4f2zjg | what information about me can a police officer see when he "runs" my driver's license? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4f2zjg/eli5what_information_about_me_can_a_police/ | {
"a_id": [
"d25g07l",
"d25humi",
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111,
2
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"text": [
"Mainly, if you have any warrants out for your arrest. Also, to verify the information on your license.",
"If your DL only has a 1d barcode, it is usually your DL#.\n\nIf it has a magnetic strip, it usually contains [basic AAMVA information](_URL_0_) that mostly mirrors what's printed on the card, including personal information:\n\n- name\n\n- address\n\n- DL#\n\n- expiration date\n\n- DOB\n\n- sex\n\n- height\n\n- weight\n\n- hair/eye color\n\nand various permissions you have:\n\n- class (A/B/C/M)\n\n- restrictions (corrective lenses, modified vehicle, etc)\n\n- endorsements (school-bus, towing double/triple trailers, hazmat/tank vehicle)\n\n\nIf your DL has a 2d barcode, it usually has all the same information encoded on the mag-stripe, and may also include a compressed version of your photo, your SSN, or digital-fingerprint encoding. However, this encoding varies from state to state (well, the core is usually the same, but the extra stuff is less standardized)\n\nOnce the officer has your DL# and/or your car's license plates, they will run a search, either radioing in the information or using a handheld or a ruggedized in-car computer. This will usually turn up any outstanding warrants as well as any alerts such as BOLO (be on the look-out), Amber/Silver alerts, sex-offender/parole/concealed-carry status, stolen-car, etc.\n\nsource: I used to write law-enforcement record-management software for such handhelds & in-car computers at a former job (early 2000s when PocketPC PDAs were the hot stuff). Yay, VB6. 😛",
"What if you have a warrant in one state and get \"run\" in another? Will they expedite?"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_stripe_card#United_States_and_Canada_driver.27s_licenses"
],
[]
] |
||
37sr2e | maximum security prisons and normal prisons whats the difference? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/37sr2e/eli5maximum_security_prisons_and_normal_prisons/ | {
"a_id": [
"crpkii6"
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"score": [
15
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"text": [
"Maximum security (aka Supermax) in the united states, every single prisoner has a one man cell with a sliding and locking door controlled remotely from a secure location. They're allowed out of their cells for one hour per 24 incarcerated\n\nAny movement outside of a cell block is tightly restricted in full restraints and an armed guard of correctional officers.\n\nHigh security has 2 man cells with their own toilets and sinks. They can go into the exercise yard, and are usually permitted into the cell block\n\nThey're surrounded by double walls and electric fences. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
6vm9vm | why do we sometimes get suddenly thirsty with no intervening period of "slight thirst"? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6vm9vm/eli5_why_do_we_sometimes_get_suddenly_thirsty/ | {
"a_id": [
"dm1dkft"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"Your brain filters out information that isn't relevant. It also filters out information that isn't changing very fast. A slowly increasing amount of thirst is not going to get flagged by your brain as vital, relevant information until it reaches some threshold, especially if you are distracted by other information. Just because you didn't consciously register the sensation of slight thirst doesn't mean that your body was unaware of it."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
jltdm | eil5: what is the difference between wpa and wpa2? | I came across this article [Wi-Fi Security: Cracking WPA With CPUs, GPUs, And The Cloud!](_URL_0_) and wondered what was the actual difference between the two standards. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/jltdm/eil5_what_is_the_difference_between_wpa_and_wpa2/ | {
"a_id": [
"c2d6xbu",
"c2d6xbu"
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"score": [
3,
3
],
"text": [
"WPA uses an encryption method (RC4) that is not secure anymore. So, the data transferred can be read \"easily\".\n\nWPA2 overcomes this weakness using AES, which is (for now) completely safe.\n\nActually WPA uses TKIP, which is based on RC4, and WPA2 uses CCMP, which is AES based.",
"WPA uses an encryption method (RC4) that is not secure anymore. So, the data transferred can be read \"easily\".\n\nWPA2 overcomes this weakness using AES, which is (for now) completely safe.\n\nActually WPA uses TKIP, which is based on RC4, and WPA2 uses CCMP, which is AES based."
]
} | [] | [
"http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/wireless-security-hack,2981.html"
] | [
[],
[]
] |
|
2a2p3z | does the copyright thing on the bottom of websites mean anything? if it says copyright 2011, does that mean i can use their info since it is expired? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2a2p3z/eli5_does_the_copyright_thing_on_the_bottom_of/ | {
"a_id": [
"ciqw90t",
"ciqwacy"
],
"score": [
3,
5
],
"text": [
"\"Copyright 2011\" does not mean the copyright expired in 2011. It means it was copyrighted in 2011. ",
"Doesn't quite work like that in most cases.\n\nTypically the 'copyright 20XX' just means the website was published in that year, and they are claiming copyright on that website's design/content from that year onwards. If I were to go and use that websites assets/content without permission, they could pursue action against me on the basis that they had clearly noted that the content on their website is *copyrighted* and I have *infringed* on that copyright.\n\nNow, copyright permissions can be complicated as far as what on the webpage is actually covered by copyright. I'm guessing here, but I believe it is safe to say that for most countries/legal situations that any designs, logos, or published self-hosted/owned content would be considered 'copyrighted' in some way. \n\nNot having the 'copyright' box at the bottom is not a waiver of copyright either. Photos, videos, music, logos, etc. can all have copyrights as well.\n\nIn general, the only time you should use information on the internet - text, video, audio, picture, etc. - for *non personal* or *profit-based* intent, you should take the time to ensure you are not infringing on the copyright of any given item you are relying on. That means contacting website owners and seeing if the assets you are using have some form of licensing scheme available.\n\nSome websites will deny use of their materials for *any* reason - e.g. 'All Rights Reserved.' My flickr is set up this way. Others might go with Creative Commons, which allows you to say something like 'Hey, the material on my website is mine, but you can use it as long as you follow the following requirements:'\n\nHope that makes sense - the TL;DR is that copyright doesn't typically expire within that short of a timespan. It would probably take years to decades for the copyright on a website to expire, if at all.\n\nYou can read the factsheet for the U.S [Copyright office](_URL_0_). Websites would still fall under their provisions wherein publication and claim of 'Copyright' over the website would be enough.\n\n > A work that was created (fixed in tangible form for the first \ntime) on or after January 1, 1978, is automatically protected \nfrom the moment of its creation and is ordinarily given a \nterm enduring for the author’s life plus an additional 70 \nyears after the author’s death.\n\nSo if I published a website with photographs in 2014, and ensured all of them were properly copyrighted and registered, I'd get 70+ years *after I'm dead* for that copyright to persist."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[
"http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ01.pdf"
]
] |
||
105bwy | why can i run for long distances, do cardio intensive workouts for long periods of time, and do a lot of fitness activities in general, yet be catching my breath after walking up a flight of stairs (when not working out)? | I'm sure a lot of people have the same question. I find it weird that I can do all these physically intensive workouts and actions and yet be out of breath when I walk up a flight of stairs on a regular day just walking around. What is really going on? Is it just because my body isn't expecting to do something physical? Always something I've been curious about. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/105bwy/eli5_why_can_i_run_for_long_distances_do_cardio/ | {
"a_id": [
"c6aj1ib",
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"score": [
3,
2
],
"text": [
"Because it is such a normal part of life, you may not realize how much physical effort walking up stairs actually is. Not only that, different muscle groups are focused on when walking up stairs vs. running or doing aerobics.",
" > Is it just because my body isn't expecting to do something physical? \n\nPretty much. \nOne of your heart's jobs is to pump blood around your body so that you can do the things you need to do. The blood it pumps carries oxygen around your system which is necessary for making your muscles work. It takes time for your heart to get up to speed though so when you suddenly go up the stairs you're momentarily using up more oxygen than your heart is supplying. This deficit is what causes you to feel out of breath. You start breathing hard in order to re-oxygenate your blood so your system can catch up. \nYou generally don't feel this when jogging, for example, because your heart has more time to get up to speed - especially if you take the time to warm up before you start a work-out. Once your heart is providing enough blood flow to your limbs, they have what they need to operate and you don't feel out of breath. You'll notice you can breathe even harder while exercising than when going up the stairs and still feel good about it. "
]
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[],
[]
] |
|
1652hv | would minting the "$1 trillion coin" raise inflation? why / why not? | Paul Krugman (NY Times writer) says that making the coin would do "no economic harm at all" (_URL_0_) but this fox news article disagrees and argues that it would raise inflation _URL_1_ | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1652hv/would_minting_the_1_trillion_coin_raise_inflation/ | {
"a_id": [
"c7ssje3",
"c7strg2"
],
"score": [
2,
5
],
"text": [
"This is a matter of controversy among reasonable people, so it's impossible to give one particular answer as the correct one.\n\n(It's worth noting that the Fox News article doesn't argue that it would raise inflation; it just says that some people think it will.)",
"Yes it should raise inflation, it is essentially the same as \"printing money\" which we do in a crisis to drive down interest rates. \n\nThe disagreements come from how much inflation would rise, likely not much at all, which is why Krugman is advocating we mint it.\n "
]
} | [] | [
"http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/07/be-ready-to-mint-that-coin/?smid=tw-NytimesKrugman&seid=auto",
"http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/01/07/funny-money-pundits-float-1-trillion-coin-as-answer-to-debt-ceiling-standoff/"
] | [
[],
[]
] |
|
23gzjq | why are there so few lefties? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/23gzjq/eli5_why_are_there_so_few_lefties/ | {
"a_id": [
"cgwwz7i",
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29,
2,
42,
17,
29
],
"text": [
"3 of the last 4 US Presidents have been lefties. Perhaps they're just natural leaders, and you need way more followers than leaders.",
"It is a sad fact and I subject myself to get down-voted, but in the post Soviet Union they used to retrain kids who were born lefties. In school they were allowed only to use the right hand, I remember one kid had to withdraw after the first grade. I know for fact that whatever the number of the lefties is in US - in Eastern Europe it's much less, especially for those who started the school before mid 90s. ",
"No one knows why. There are several theories, but not one of them has been shown to be correct.",
"There's a RadioLab episode that tackles this very topic: _URL_0_",
"I always find this really interesting. My mom, dad, brother, and paternal grandmother and (not that it matters but) her 3rd husband are all/were left handed. And then there's me who's right handed. I feel kind of left out. :("
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[],
[
"http://www.radiolab.org/story/whats-left-when-youre-right/"
],
[]
] |
||
f3jox8 | how do you make the fire hotter? i mean fe something melts in 3000°c and what do you do to make the fire achieve a higher temperature and how does it work? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/f3jox8/eli5_how_do_you_make_the_fire_hotter_i_mean_fe/ | {
"a_id": [
"fhj7urn",
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"score": [
18,
10,
7
],
"text": [
"You can do two things: burn a fuel that burns hotter or burn the fuel faster. The latter is often done by pumping in additional air or even pure oxygen. Forced air coal burns at a very high temperature.",
"Historically in Europe, temperatures required to melt iron were obtained by making the furnaces bigger. The furnace loses heat to the environment through through its surfaces, but the bigger the furnace, the smaller the surface-area-to-volume ratio is, and the hotter it gets in the inside.",
"1. Different chemical reaction create different amount of energy as heat. You can look at energy density you see the difference. Wood have an energy density of 18 MJ per kg, but Natural gas have an energy density of 53.6 MJ per kg, so you can get more heat by burning natural gas vs wood, which gonna help you get higher temperature.\n2. When you burn something the chemical reaction need an oxydizer, usually oxygen. So if you can provide the fire with more oxygen, more chemical reaction will happen, which will create more heat and increase the temperature.\n3. Limiting the heat lost. A fire in open air will get decent oxygen, but it will also lose a lot of heat to the air surrounding it. If you can make your fire inside an isolated furnace, you will lose less heat to the outside and your fire will be able to accumulate heat until it reach an higher equilibrium temperature, where the amount of energy it create equal the energy it lost to the outside. The higher the temperature, the faster it lost the heat, so you can just accumulate the heat to infinity, you gonna reach an equilibrium at some point, the better your isolation the higher the equilibrium.\n\nNote that you don't necessarily need to reach the 3000 celsius temperature, there is some chemical tricks to melt something at lower temperature."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
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||
2my56l | how did anonymous continue to control @kukluxklanusa for days? | On November 16, Anonymous took over the @KuKluxKlanUSA handle on Twitter. I understand that there are myriad ways this could have occurred. What I'm curious about is how they were able to KEEP it for four days (and counting). Whether you support it or not, I don't understand how Twitter (as a company) didn't get involved in this pretty substantial campaign and return the account to the actual "owner" or deactivate it. ELI5... or 6? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2my56l/eli5_how_did_anonymous_continue_to_control/ | {
"a_id": [
"cm8n1rc",
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],
"score": [
11,
3,
3
],
"text": [
"\"Twitter comes to the rescue of the KKK\" not good publicity. ",
"It isn't Twitter's fault in anyway. Anonymous most likely made educated guesses on the password instead of actually hacking the site. No security is compromised, just weak password protection by the KKK.\n\nHow Anonymous managed to maintain control is easy. Once they got in, they simply changed the password. XD",
"We're not talking about the Dallas Cowboys or Apple Computer here. The KKK as a whole doesn't exist. It's made up of several local groups with their own leadership structure and lots of infighting between them. KKK's don't have offices, organizing one is like keeping a bowling league together. This was probably just some moron's account with a very recognizable name."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[]
] |
|
1mbhy2 | were there restaurants/bars/cafes in the soviet union? | You always hear about things like "bread lines" and "food shortages" in the Soviet Union, how did restaurants function with these supply issues? Or were there simply no restaurants to speak of?
When McDonalds opened in Moscow they set up their own supply chain, but surely they can't have been the only restaurant in town. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1mbhy2/were_there_restaurantsbarscafes_in_the_soviet/ | {
"a_id": [
"cc7n4kf",
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"score": [
41,
10
],
"text": [
"Yes, there was plenty of bars, restaurants, cafes in the Soviet Union - even in the early days. \n\nLenin believed a certain amount of capitalist enterprise was *healthy* for an economy to be efficient. For example, he allowed farmers to sell privately *any* grain they produce over their quota. This incentivized meeting quotas! \n\nOf course, in the Soviet Union - the realty property was owned by the government, who authorized restaurant permits. This was difficult, even today. In the US, we give permits to just about anyone. In Eastern Europe, you had go through an elaborate process to *prove* your store would be successful, prove your business sense, etc. What you get is a skewed statistic. We look at the US, \"oh, over 50% of restaurants fail within the first year!\" - but in Russia, it maybe 10% that fail within the first year. However, only the best of the best entrepreneurs get a *chance* to try.\n\nGrocery stores in the Soviet Union were different than here. You would give the clerk your shopping list, and they'd gather the product for you and check you out. All the food was behind the counter. You can pay for it in cash, and it was expensive, but there's not a particularly long line - no different than entering a bakery in the US for example. \n\nThere was a lot of rationing - and the government would alot a certain amount of bread and milk per family (free at point of pickup). When supplies ran short (usually in the winter.. cause few imports, nothing grows), there was long lines for government bread. The traditional stores still had bread, but it was marked up significantly. Most people waited.\n\nAfter Gorbachev's Glasnost Policy, the Soviet Union no longer had any trouble with long lines or supply shortages. ",
"I actually wrote my thesis on the food supply chain in the former USSR. The reason McDonald's developed their own supply chain, early on, was because there was no real distribution infrastructure to support a 3rd party operation. State restaurants were supplied by state farms, factories, etc. A \"distributor\" was the kind of middleman that communism generally despised.\n\nSome of the info here is a bit inaccurate. The restaurants that /u/Pinwurm is describing were known as cooperatives, and they did have to go through a pretty rigorous vetting process. U Pirosmani in Moscow is the first place that pops in my mind when I think of these kinds of restaurants. However, the vast majority of restaurants were state enterprises. Eating out was not and still is not as widespread there as it is elsewhere. Most of the time, restaurants were located in hotels, or near wedding halls. Cafes served simpler food and were usually located in places where people were out for an excursion. Bars were usually part of a hotel operation, as well. There's really no tradition of bellying up to a bar and just ordering a drink. One normally drinks in the company of friends in someone's home or near the metro or something like that.\n\nFood shortages - when food was short, you'd just hear a lot of \"Soup? Nyet\". \"Fish? Nyet\". \"Cutlets? Nyet\". Restaurants didn't care if they didn't have food on the menu - they were places of employment, they didn't have to worry about competition - why worry?\n\nMcDonald's supply chain has actually changed a lot since the early days. Now they source most of their product from within Russia, and their suppliers also supply other companies. There are plenty of middlemen, although some old Soviet systems remain which still makes it less efficient.\n\nI also ran a restaurant in Moscow in the early 90's. We had to order our exotic stuff from Western Europe, and it was trucked in. We got our burger meat from McDonald's, as they were also kind of a supplier. They sold burger buns and meat. Most of our produce came from the market, which is a conglomeration of stall vendors. Even when things were at their most bleak in the USSR, the rinok almost always had plenty of food to buy. It was just prohibitively expensive."
]
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[],
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] |
|
3gjgp7 | why can the immune system kill off agents that cause particular diseases but not others? | I understand that, in the case of HIV/AIDS and other diseases of the immune system, the body's protection mechanisms are crippled, rendering us unable to fight the invaders off.
However, why do we need to take antibiotics to cure other STDs like Chlamydia and Gonorrhea? Is there a particular class of invaders that the body cannot naturally fight off?
Also, why don't we develop immunity to these diseases once we fight them off (with the aid of antibiotics)? Is it because the agents mutate quickly and the immune system cannot identify them, like in the case of flu, or is a different mechanism at play here? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3gjgp7/eli5_why_can_the_immune_system_kill_off_agents/ | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"There are a few different dynamics to consider here.\n\nFirst of all you have a number of bacteria and viruses that specifically attack and or denigrate the immune system, such as HIV, like you mentioned. \n\nThen you have others that have figured ways to hide from or convince the immune system that they aren't really that bad. Examples of hiding from the immune system would be something infecting the brain, where there is a blood-brain barrier preventing the immune system from assisting or in the intestinal tract where most of your fight against pathogens is done by stomach acid or helpful bacteria naturally living inside of you. The immune system uses chemical structures on the outside of pathogens to identify which entities are harmful vs. which are not, similar to locks and keys. If a pathogen can mimic the lock of a human cell, it will be ignored by your immune system's keys as they have been trained not to defend against your own cells.\n\nNext you have the differences between bacteria and viruses. Bacteria are much larger and can usually reproduce on their own. They also don't reproduce as quickly, and don't reproduce in the same quantities. Most of their time is spent outside of human cells where they can be attacked by the immune system. Viruses on the other hand, cannot reproduce on their own and spend most of their time inside your cells. Your cells don't necessarily show your immune system that they are infected and your immune system does as it usually does and ignores them. The virus can take their time, taking over all of the cell's resources and reproduce on a huge scale before releasing all of the offspring to your body.\n\nWith much higher numbers of offspring the viruses have an advantage of having a higher likelihood of developing a mutation that makes your immune system unable to recognize the virus. \n\nRetroviruses (such as HIV) can also inject copies of their DNA or RNA into your cell's genetic code. When this happens, they can lay dormant indefinitely, and wait for your immune resistance to them decrease before reactivating and creating more offspring again. This is one of the reasons why certain diseases may never have a cure. \n\nMany diseases that we provide antibiotics for could be fought off by your own immune system. Typically your pain and suffering and the length of the infection would be longer. Other times, your immune system may take too long to fight, and you may be dead or permanently harmed before your immune system wins.\n\nSorry if any of this is incomplete or not completely accurate, it's been a decade since I graduated with degrees in molecular and microbiology, haven't used them since."
]
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23i91f | how come _url_0_ and _url_1_ have different selections? | I've been curious about this for a while - why does _URL_0_ and _URL_1_ have different selecitons that are officially offered, as in the orders are fulfilled, by Amazon?
Take, for example, _URL_2_ , which is offered on _URL_0_, yet not on _URL_1_
And then there are other times where they are offered by third party, yet not by Amazon themselves.
How does this work?
Is it a licensing issue? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/23i91f/eli5_how_come_amazoncom_and_amazonca_have/ | {
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"I'm assuming each region has it's own warehouse with it's own supplies."
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"http://www.amazon.com/Kotobukiya-Tsugumori-Knights-Sidonia-Plastic/dp/B00BQ6Q4X4"
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[]
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|
9sfjpn | why does dust stay on moving cars? shouldn't the air flow of the moving car be able to blow the dust off? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9sfjpn/eli5_why_does_dust_stay_on_moving_cars_shouldnt/ | {
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"When a fluid flows over a surface there is a portion of the flow called the [boundary layer](_URL_0_) where the velocity profile is decreasing towards the surface of the body, eventually reaching 0. My best guess is the dust is within the boundary layer, and the force being exerted on the particle is less then the force attracting it to the car due to the low velocity. The Boundary Layer increases in thickness the further you get from the front of the body.\n\nThere is also a geometric reason. If the geometry for the body contains sudden changes like sharp angles, then the flow will separate from eh body and create a recirculating region where the fluid will essentially double back on itself. The magnitude and direction of the fluid velocity in this region is different from the velocity of the air moving over the vehicle. \n\n",
"Because the electrostatic force between the particle and the car is larger than the force pulling the particles off. The force which tries to remove the particles is dependent on the cross sectional area of the particle, where the air is pushing against. As dust are very small particles, the force applied by the air moving around the car is not enough to counteract the electrostatic force.",
"* Some dust is a little sticky,\n* Some dust is not.\n* The dust that isn't sticky totally blows off.\n* The sticky kind doesn't. "
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3ap99e | why do manufacturers still make plugs that hog up the whole power strip? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3ap99e/eli5_why_do_manufacturers_still_make_plugs_that/ | {
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"I rekkon!!! between my router and NAS I use a whole 4 outlet strip. 2 whole powerpoints wasted while there are starving people in the world. \n",
"Because customers have not sufficiently demonstrated to these manufacturers that this is an undesired design.\n\nManufacturing a product which sells successfully is likely to continue indefinitely until the market changes. Preemptive product improvements will be tailored around expected future uses of the product, not peripherals like its charging cable.\n\nThere are three possible incentives to force a company to change the design:\n\n* Customers stop buying the product\n* Customers complain *en masse* about some features of the product\n* Legislation, licensing and code requirements imposed by governments can force a design change\n\nEven if customers stopped buying the product, without the customers explaining that the plugs are the reason why, likely the manufacturer would just assume the competitor makes a better widget and try to adapt in overall use or quality, never thinking of the plug.\n\nCustomers would have to complain in droves to change the design of a peripheral like that.",
"Because somehow they need those massive things for functioning. There is this though.\n\n_URL_0_",
"Your question misses the point. \"Why do powerstrip manufacturers not all design for power transformers?\"\n\n_URL_1_\n\n_URL_0_\n\n_URL_2_"
]
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"http://www.amazon.com/Quirky-Pivot-Outlet-Flexible-Protector/dp/B004ZP74UK"
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"http://www.amazon.com/Accell-D080B-007K-R-PowerSquid-Outlet-Multiplier/dp/B004LZ5XMU",
"http://www.amazon.com/Tripp-Lite-TLP825-Protector-Outlet/dp/B000UD3LPI/ref=sr_1_6?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1434998439&sr=1-6&keywords=long+power+strip&pebp=1434998453479&perid=1XB4TPYMJ1P1GY2KGKYB"
]
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||
15snwg | what's with the christian fish symbol thing? | Seriously, I've seen this all over the place and I have no idea what it means... | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/15snwg/whats_with_the_christian_fish_symbol_thing/ | {
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"According to word of mouth of a Christian: Way back in the day when Christians were persecuted and killed the fishy symbol was their secret sign.",
"The greek (latin?) word for fish is icthus, the first two letters of which are shared by the initials for jesus christ (i was used in place of a j, back in the day). I don't have a source right now, since I'm on my phone and also a little tipsy, so take that with a grain of salt.",
"It's called an [ichthys](_URL_0_), and it's got a few layers of symbolism attached to it. The Wikipedia article has a pretty good explanation of them."
]
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ameewo | how is puerto rican’s paying american taxes without voting rights not taxation without representation? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ameewo/eli5_how_is_puerto_ricans_paying_american_taxes/ | {
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"It is. The same is true for all of the other territories, and Washington DC. DC is so salty about they actually have \"Taxation Without Representation\" on their license plates. \n\n\nThe thing is, this is exactly how it's supposed to work. Before a territory becomes a state it must fulfill certain requirements and request ascension to statehood. Puerto Rico in particular goes back and forth on the issue, and in current politics, the GOP has political incentive to block their bid if they tried, but they just haven't tried for a while. In terms of specific tax policy and Puerto Rico in particular, the current situation actually results in less taxes for Puerto Ricans.",
"Does anyone have a boatload of tea perhaps? "
]
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[],
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||
85hi6x | how does sense of timing work? | In schools they've always been able to explain five senses but I've never heard an explanation of how does sense of timing work. I mean, nobody taught me how to judge how to clap in sync with a beat, cross the street without a crosswalk without getting creamed by a car, or even catching a thrown pen by my co-worker.
What's that about? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/85hi6x/eli5_how_does_sense_of_timing_work/ | {
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"\"sense of timing\" is not a sense in the traditional sense, that is it is not a mechanism your body uses for developing n understanding about the physical world. It is A learned behavior based on a pattern of learning. If you've never caught something thrown at you and somebody throws something at you, you're probably going to miss it. With practice, you learn how to. "
]
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[]
] |
|
2iaubb | what if i permanently decide to breathe using my mouth and not thru my nose? any health effects? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2iaubb/eli5_what_if_i_permanently_decide_to_breathe/ | {
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"A dry tongue, and possibly a sore throat. At least, that's what happens whenever I breath only from my mouth when I have a cold or something...",
"Major health effects NO. But minor problems like gingivitis (gum inflammation) can occur especially when you sleep with mouth opened, because bacteria can grow as they have enough oxygen. ",
"Your nose has a natural filtering effect so breathing through your mouth marginally increases the risk of sickness",
"I believe there are health effects by not breathing through your nose, although they would take a long time to materialise, \nbreathing through your nose, slows down your breathing, warms, humidifies and moistens the air, which is good for your lungs, the nose filters the air, and breathing through the nose takes more oxygen into the lower lobes than through the mouth would, I remember that a teacher in Biology class, along time ago suggested that continuous long term breathing through the mouth may eventually damage your lungs by partially drying them out.\n\nEdited - dehumidifies to humidfies",
"All that hair and mucus in your nose? That's meant to catch airborne junk that could make you sick. It works as a filter to keep stuff out. It also moderates how much air you're taking in. \n\nIf you breathe through your mouth, not only do you open yourself up a little more to getting sick, but you'd also probably develop some irregular breathing.",
"Biology student + Was a mouth breather\n\n- Sore throat\n- You'll inhale more microbes and bacteria since there is no filtration system in your mouth\n- Your teeth gum will be exposed more to bacteria, resulting in inflammation.\n- Bacteria in your teeth will flourish since they have more oxygen resulting in more teeth decay\n- Cold air will affect your vocal cords resulting in a change in your voice + inflammation in your vocal cords from inhaled bacteria, very dangerous, it can damage your vocal cords\n- Tuberculosis !",
"Hi, I have allergic rinitis, and for the first twenty or so years of my life i breathed through my mouth exclusively, and now i still do most of the time as i don't really feel like i get enough air breathing through my mouth. I almost never get sick, haven't had a cold in years. \nI do have sleep apnea, but i have no idea if that is a side effect of sleeping with my mouth open or if both are a side effect of my tiny nasal passages.\nThe only side effect you will notice is certain foods (primarily milk) will make you wake up with fuzzy tongue like a three day drinking bender.",
"I'm middle aged and have been a mouth breather for as long as I remember due to some sort of sinus issue I never remember to ask the doctor about. I actually didn't know it wasn't normal until a few years ago. I just don't feel like I'm taking enough air in through my nose so I breathe through my mouth. \n\nI have moderate dental issues, not like meth addict teeth or anything, just more cavities than average, that is about it, but I also grew up eating very sugary food. No lung issues at all, no sore throat, I almost never get sick.",
"You're gonna lose a lot of friends, really fast",
"I'm a mouth breather when I'm alone, but I was taught that it's impolite in public. \n\"The only time your mouth should be open is when you're speaking or visiting the dentist.\" \nI can hear my mother talking already..",
"You can't be a Ninja if Your a mouth breather, They will hear You coming. You may however become a Samurai!",
"I'm 28 and I've been a mouth breather at night since I was a kid. Also have to breathe through my mouth when I exercise hard because I just can't get enough air through my nose. Had a septoplasty done a few years ago in an attempt to fix this, also had the turbinates (sp?) burned in an effort to have more space in my nose for air to get through. I dont think it worked well enough as I still breathe through my mouth for sleep and exercise, though I definitely get more air than I used to. \n\nThe only health issue I've had because of it is my lips get chapped and my tongue gets so dry it can crack overnight if I don't drink enough water in the evening. I haven't experienced the constant sore throats, dental issues or tuberculosis that other posters have suggested. \n\nThat being said, your nose is there for a reason. Use it if you can. ",
"If you made the decision when you were actually 5, you may end up with an underdeveloped face, orthodontic issues that are worse than they should have been, a weak chin and poor facial profile. \n\nThe tongue is supposed to be pressing against the palate to stimulate and control maxilla growth and direction. Without that pressure, the maxilla underdevelopes, the mandible (lower jaw) underdevelops as well as the cheekbones. \n\nThe underdeveloped jaws can cause breathing issues and will most likely cause Sleep Apnea. This is in addition to the general issues with mouth breathing including bad breath, dry mouth and throat, and expose to more microbes and the issue that the function of the nose is to prepare air to be inhaled into the lungs. \n\nIF you are interested, checkout Orthotropics and the work of Mike Mew. ",
"Someone asked if they should become a mouth-breather. Reddit; this is my first disappointment caused by you.",
"A couple of months ago, I had surgery to correct my deviated septum along with excess tissue removal from my sinuses, and turbinate reduction. Since the swelling has gone down, a whole new world of nose breathing and even scents have been opened up to me. \n\nI have to think about closing my mouth and breathing through my nose. \n\nI've always had constant sore throats. My mouth and throat usually were very dry in the mornings. My sense of smell and taste are pretty under developed, which was really detrimental when I was in culinary school. I tend to over season food because only strong tastes and smells were apparent to me. ",
"Dramatically lower risk of STIs, since you won't be getting laid ever again.",
"As someone who has to breath through their mouth, I don't seem to have the issues that are being stated in this thread. \n\nI have had sinus surgery to correct issues and still can't breath through my nose. I am stopped up the majority of the time and have to force myself to breath through my nose if I try to. "
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31jts4 | how does lemon juice prevent an avocado from turning brown / spoiling? | You know the trick. You use half an avocado for your breakfast and then squeeze some lemon juice on the unused half and it keeps it fresh.
What up with that? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/31jts4/eli5_how_does_lemon_juice_prevent_an_avocado_from/ | {
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"It does not prevent it, but the citric acid slows down the oxidation process which is what turns them brown. ",
"The browning is caused by enzymes that are released from the cells when they are cut. Enzymes are proteins which are long chains of amino acids which fold in a very particular way. If the 3D structure of the enzyme changes in any way, it's function will decrease or stop. The way the enzyme is folded is in part determined by the pH. Change the pH, such as the addition of lemon juice, the rate of browning decreases. "
]
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61f6kn | how much of our fingerprint do a reader need to be recognized uniquely? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/61f6kn/eli5_how_much_of_our_fingerprint_do_a_reader_need/ | {
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"Source: I'm a final year forensics student and currently writing a paper on fingerprints. I'm in the UK so ymmv.\n\nDepending on what you mean by 'reader' and how sure you want to be the answer varies. \n\nFingerprints are examined on 3 levels by people and databases. The first level is the general shape (whorl, arch, etc) and is not unique. To get this information you could use a full print, half, or less depending on what there was in that section (e.g., it isn't an arch if it has deltas).\n\nThe second level is a closer look if you like. You look at where the ridges end, how the paths they take look/ where they split etc. This is considered unique and mostly in criminal cases can be done from a pretty small sample. \n\nThe third level looks at exact heights of the ridges, distances between them, positions of pores and more. This is unique also and also needs only a small sample to be identified. \n\n\nDepending on where you are a fingerprint could be identified (by comparing a found print to one that you know the origin of) by finding 16 'matches' of features, 14, other numbers, or up to the person comparing.\n\n\ntldr: not much if there's something to compare it to."
]
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||
ad0554 | how do automobile manufacturers estimate fuel economy for new cars? and how reliable are these estimates for normal driving conditions? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ad0554/eli5_how_do_automobile_manufacturers_estimate/ | {
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"They are required to actually test it (or prove it's the same as something already tested). The EPA picks a couple and checks that the manufacturer didn't lie.\n\nAs for the procedure, they figure out using weight and wind resistance how much power is required to accelerate at various speeds, then program a dyno, and run the car though a specific acceleration/deceleration curve in different conditions. [A quick overview of the process is here](_URL_0_), but this method means everyone must do a specific amount of stops, idle for a specific amount of time, count starting the car in the winter, and highway driving. The entire procedure is a full book, and the end result is every car is tested with exactly the same test and the exact same conditions, so while the MPG numbers try to be real world, it's much more accurate to say that the MPG number is for comparing cars as they all used the same test."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"https://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/fe_test_schedules.shtml"
]
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||
do1q0s | i'm trying to download modern warfare but it's only downloading at 30mb/s when the test i do says my download speed is 300mb/s? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/do1q0s/eli5_im_trying_to_download_modern_warfare_but_its/ | {
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"text": [
"To my knowledge most speed tests are in megabits not megabytes. Their are about 8 megabits in a megabytes. So that's not far of what you are getting pinging to the server you are testing from",
"Your download speed may be 300, but the server may only be able to upload it at the slower speed. Either may be a bottleneck somewhere between. Like any transmission system, the actual speed is that of the slowest link in the chain.",
"Your speed is only one factor. The upload rate of the server you are downloading from also matters. There is only so much bandwidth-- if many people are downloading it at the same time and the server is near its bandwidth limit, it'll divide it up among the people downloading. That's probably the server limiting its upload speed for everyone to 30mbps, so no matter how fast your speed is it can't download faster than the server is giving it data."
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bjb202 | if you are born abroad at your country’s embassy are you your home countries nationality then? do traveling people try to be born in the jurisdiction of their home/other country? is that even a thing. i imagine pregnant women trying to give birth in embassy offices. help. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/bjb202/eli5if_you_are_born_abroad_at_your_countrys/ | {
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"Most nations grant citizenship based on blood, not geography. In fact outside of the Vatican I cannot think of a single country that doesn't grant automatic citizenship to newborn children of their citizens - assuming the paperwork will be filled out eventually. \n\nIf your parents have the citizenship of a country you will have that citizenship as well, regardless of where in the world you are born. A german mother will give birth to german children no matter if she goes in to labour in germany, Canada, or Thailand. Her children might *also* get the citizenship of the country they are born in depending on the nation in question (some nations, mostly in the Americas, will grant citizenships to anyone born in their juristiction, regardless of their parents citizenship)."
]
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||
2it4cc | why is it that even though i listen to music at the same volume every day, some days it sounds louder or softer than normal? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2it4cc/eli5_why_is_it_that_even_though_i_listen_to_music/ | {
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"Assuming it's on the same device, maybe the background noise changes. The more background noise, the quieter it will sound.",
"Your ears adjust to volume over time. What sounds super loud at first will eventually sound not super loud. It could just be on the days that it sounds softer than normal, you have expereinced much more loud sounds, and so your ears are adjust to the loudness."
]
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[],
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1bpf65 | in the recent falklands referendum, argentina requested for there to be no international observers from latin america, why? | In this BBC article:
_URL_0_
It says "Election observers from different countries oversaw the vote, including representatives of Chile and Mexico - despite an Argentine request for Latin American countries not to take part." and I was just wondering why Argentina would want that? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1bpf65/eli5_in_the_recent_falklands_referendum_argentina/ | {
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"Argentina doesn't think the issue is whether or not the people living there want to be part of Argentina; they claim that the people are British citizens, living on illegally stolen Argentine land. So by taking part in observing the referendum, Chile and Mexico look like they're saying the result of the vote is important, and Argentina doesn't want that."
]
} | [] | [
"http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-21750909"
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[]
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1splrt | would it be possible for animals to have sex and babies with another subspecies? (like chimpanzees having sex with orangutans) | I mean, they have a sex drive as well. So if I was a lonely Raven I would totally try to have sex with a pigeon...
Is it possible, that something like that would ever happen? Could they even have babies like that? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1splrt/eli5_would_it_be_possible_for_animals_to_have_sex/ | {
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"This doesn't work in most cases.\nOne case where it works is for example horse and dunkey, their children can be two different subspecies, depending on which of those two is the male and the female. The problem here is, that this animals can't recreate further.",
"It depends on a lot of factors.\n\nFirstly, orangutans and chimps aren't actually subspecies, they're entirely different species. Generally speaking an animal from a different species is either clearly physically different (think tiger and lion) or unable to produce fertile offspring.\n\nThis isn't foolproof though. As others have pointed out, the horse and donkey are different species, but can mate and have offspring (although the offspring can't reproduce). There are quite a lot of examples of animals which are clearly separate species mating and having babies. In some cases, these offspring are capable of reproducing themselves. One such example is the polar bear / grizzly bear pair, children of which are called \"grolars\" and are fertile.\n\nIn answer to the case you proposed, they could physically complete the act, and there is a chance offspring would be born. Chimps and orangutans parted ways a while ago, but so did a lot of other species which we've seen produce offspring. On a more disturbing note, it is possible that humans and chimps or bonobos could mate and produce offspring. Fortunately this has never happened, although one mad scientist did send out advertisements for volunteers...",
"Only when very closely related. For example, the entire Panthera family can interbreed with the offspring having varying degrees of fertility. Certain whales can with dolphins. "
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2p1yua | both apple juice and apple cider are %100 apple juice. why do they taste so different? | Personally, I'm an apple cider kinda guy. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2p1yua/eli5_both_apple_juice_and_apple_cider_are_100/ | {
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"In the US, \"juice\" is what you get from boiling apples & then filtering off all the solids while cider is just the result of pressing the apples. They taste different because you're extracting different parts of the apple.\n\n"
]
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|
5j5cp7 | why is it the more you focus on something, the harder it is to achieve the desired outcome? | I often find myself so heavily engrossed in whatever I'm doing that nothing is clear anymore. I have to take a break and come back to it to see clearly again.
OR I'm trying to find X within a timeframe, and it seems to be the only thing I can't see (even if it's in plain sight). And the closer it gets to the deadline the harder it becomes to find it.
Why is this? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5j5cp7/eli5_why_is_it_the_more_you_focus_on_something/ | {
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"text": [
"I see what your saying but disagree. You statement assumes it is true and I don't think it is."
]
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|
eadagt | why is there still so much poverty in south africa even after apartheid? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/eadagt/eli5_why_is_there_still_so_much_poverty_in_south/ | {
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"South Africa has a much larger population than its economy and the vast majority of the population was living in \"poverty\" conditions during apartheid this means that it would take a huge amount of money to bring the housing and other measures of individual wealth and prosperity up to what would be considered reasonable in many developed western countries, when this is combined with a high crime rate and corrupt and inefficient governments under the ANC leadership progress has been devastatingly slow. The government could take radical steps to redistribute the wealth, but they don't want to scare of the people with money and bring the South African economy crashing down.",
"Looking at per capita GDP, South Africa is 86 out of 186 (IMF). That's below the world mean, but significantly above some of its neighbors. There is a lot of poverty because it is a poorer than average country, not because of apartheid. \n\nOn the other hand, the Gini Index of income inequality ranking is very high (= inequal) at 2 out of 157 (WB - not exactly comparable). Only Lesotho is worse. That's no doubt an apartheid side effect, as land ownership was very unequal during that period. The overall low GDP prevents policies from balancing this inequality quickly."
]
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3d9drt | what is the difference between currency manipulation and quantitative easing? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3d9drt/eli5_what_is_the_difference_between_currency/ | {
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"So in many ways they're similar. Quantitative easing (effectively making more money available) and direct manipulation of exchange rates through actions on the exchange market both impact international trade. It's really about how its done and why. \n\nCurrency manipulation is typically sterile (the monetary base doesn't change, just the amount on foreign exchange markets) and the intervention is one-directional and long lasting. This indicates the government is putting consistent pressure on currency markets in one direction for the benefit of trade and not in response to domestic circumstances.\n\nAs the St. Louis Fed [writes](_URL_0_) the difference is basically why each is done. QE is a domestic policy that happens to impact foreign trade a little bit while direct manipulation of exchange markets is a trade policy that happens to impact the domestic economy a bit."
]
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[
"https://research.stlouisfed.org/publications/es/11/ES1105.pdf"
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||
37u67a | why are more men in the us overweight, but twice as many women who are classified as extremely obese? | _URL_1_
^
_URL_0_ | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/37u67a/eli5_why_are_more_men_in_the_us_overweight_but/ | {
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"Let's put aside the whole \"what defines obesity\" etc thing for a sec. Just believe that there is a definition that those numbers are derived from.\n\nThen, it just means that while fewer women are fat, the fat ones tend to be REALLY fat. Conversely, men are fatter generally, but they don't tend to be blimps. \n\nI know that the numbers might look contradictory at first, but it's just expressing that the fatness distribution is different between the sexes.",
"So the simple ELI5 is really probably \"we don't know\". I don't know of any studies that actually investigate that so everything you see will be speculation, including this.\n\nThe BMI/muscle mass thing is true (in that muscular guys will be considered overweight) but I'm skeptical that it is that significant. \n\nOne possibility is that being a bit overweight is a bit more acceptable on a man (e.g. looser clothing etc. ) and so men who have a few extra pounds are less likely to worry about losing it. \n\nOTOH, women tend to be shorter and have less muscle which means lower BMRs. Thus, it is much easier for them to get to the \"extreme obesity\" point. ",
"Maybe partially due to survivorship bias - extreme obesity is more dangerous for men. So perhaps many of them die and are therefore not represented in the statistics.",
"Totally my opinion but maybe because while a lot of men don't care, a lot of the extremely obese women have mental problems (insecurity, depression, etc) that causes them to overeat. Just my two cents that if a woman is unloved, more bad things happen to her. "
]
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"http://www.niddk.nih.gov/health-information/health-statistics/Pages/overweight-obesity-statistics.aspx",
"http://www.niddk.nih.gov/health-information/health-statistics/PublishingImages/bySex.jpg"
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4094nv | how do overweight people digest so much more food than healthy weight individuals? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4094nv/eli5_how_do_overweight_people_digest_so_much_more/ | {
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"They don't. Their stomachs are bigger so it can hold much more food (as it has been stretched out) but the chemical rate at which stomach acid can break down the food and have it pass through the digestive track is largely the same. "
]
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[]
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||
2jc7pd | why do men's trousers have an inside button and sometimes two other buttons on the fly? | I don't even button them. Should I? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2jc7pd/eli5_why_do_mens_trousers_have_an_inside_button/ | {
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"text": [
"The inside button is called a \"French Fly\" and it's there to help the front of your pants stay flat and not wrinkle while you are wearing them. "
]
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|
3arorj | how my cat knows i'm in a bad mood? | Like, when im in a bad mood, He comes up to me and curls up on my lap. He only does this when im upset though. Why? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3arorj/eli5_how_my_cat_knows_im_in_a_bad_mood/ | {
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"How do you act differently when you're in a bad mood than in a good mood? Are you more likely to sit quietly, or for a longer time? Your cat can pick up on non-verbal cues from you that it's a good time for some lap time, even if not the particular cause. \n\nOn the other hand, studies have shown that many kinds of animals display a certain level of sympathy or empathy which leads them to try comforting others. Over many years of experience and learning about cats, that's the best reason I've seen.\n\nAs far as a scientific reason like what's going on in their brains, no idea if that's been done."
]
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|
5i6hxy | how does a vacuum help keep liquid hot/cold in a yeti container or any container? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5i6hxy/eli5_how_does_a_vacuum_help_keep_liquid_hotcold/ | {
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"Heat is what you have when atomic particles are vibrating. Heat is transferred when atoms bump into each other, when an atom that has a whole lot of shakin' bumps into a more still one, energy is transferred causing the hot one to be a little less hot and the slow one to shake a lil more and get warmer. This can happen with air, it can happen with fluids, it can happen with solids. They can all transfer heat, which is how your tasty soup loses it's warmth after a few hours.\n\nBut if there's a vacuum... heat can't transfer by conduction (what I just described), because there's *nothing* between the inner hot soupey chamber and the cool outside. No atoms, so no bumpey, so no heat transfer. There's probably contact *somewhere* and the vacuum isn't perfect, but if very little is touching it'll definitely slow the process of heat dissipating away.",
"So there are three kinds of heat transfer; convection, conduction, and radiation. Of those, convection and conduction require matter to come into contact with other matter, while radiation does not. Radiation, therefore, is the only kind of heat transfer that can happen across a vacuum.\n\nIt just happens that radiation is a *really* shitty way to transfer heat, particularly at temperatures in the general vicinity (so, +/- 100 deg F) of what we would call \"room temperature.\" As a result, a vacuum is an excellent way to insulate something from heat transfer going in either direction across that vacuum.\n\nThis is also why the International Space Station doesn't really have any problems generating heat to stay warm, but *does* have problems shedding heat in order to stay cool."
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9y466k | how do our bodies develop immunity to certain illnesses? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9y466k/eli5_how_do_our_bodies_develop_immunity_to/ | {
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"After the body fends of an infection the body produces what is called Memory cells that remember the infection if it ever gets into the body again and fends it off this time with greater success having the antibodies for the job ",
"ELI5 the immune system in the body keeps a record of dangerous organisms by leaving around markers inside the body that can detect the organism when they try to attack the body again. These records have a time limit before they become useless. For some organisms it is a few days and for others it can be a entire lifetime. \n\nThese records help the immune system in the body to look up the attackers weakness and make weapons for it. \n\nThese organisms change shape and form ever so slightly in some cases and drastically in others each time they attack the body. So these records have a time limit on them since they would eventually become useless anyway.\n"
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1w0dyd | if conservatives want small government, then why do they support prohibition of drugs? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1w0dyd/eli5_if_conservatives_want_small_government_then/ | {
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"Because saying conservatives want \"small government\" isn't true, its just an approximation. They want \"different government\". They want it small on some stuff, and big on other stuff.",
"Because conservatives don't really want small government. That's libertarians. What you call \"conservative\" really refers to people who are in favor of government maintaining the status quo socially but do not want government intervention economically. So the government can define marriage and prevent people from taking drugs and killing people, but it can't break up monopolies or regulate industries.\n\nLiberals favor government intervention economically, but not socially. So women get the right to choose and sexual preference shouldn't be legislated, but the big banks should be broken up and oil should be outlawed altogether. \n\nMany libertarians are for \"small government\" and would gladly do away with drug laws. They might also do away with the FDA, but that's another thread."
]
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1znvfh | how do those massive car pileups work for fault/insurance purposes? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1znvfh/eli5_how_do_those_massive_car_pileups_work_for/ | {
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"I will always remember this from drivers ed. It is the car that caused the first accident to take place. Any other accident that happens because of the initial accident will be covered under the car that caused the first accident. "
]
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||
4dd3tz | why do energy companies like con edison give you tips on how to use less energy? | I see ads on the NYC subway where Con Edison gives tips on how to reduce your energy use. Why are they trying to get you to use less energy? Doesn't that mean less money for them? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4dd3tz/eli5_why_do_energy_companies_like_con_edison_give/ | {
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"As a regulated utility, they make a profit based on negotiations with the state, not based on exactly how much electricity they sell. In fact they can get paid to reduce demand, as a substitute for getting paid to build more supply.",
"PR and goodwill. Mind you, utilities are highly regulated, and they are granted something of a monopoly by the govt since competition is not efficient for such a product. Some of that regulation may mandate that they spend a certain amount on efficiency.\n\nThey may also have an interest in curbing energy demand if it will put them over capacity and require a substantial investment.",
"Con Edison is one of many utilities that has Revenue Decoupling; they are allowed a specified return on investment from generation resources and this is not a function of kWh sold.\n\nFurther, New York established an Energy Efficiency Resource Standard (EERS) in 2008. The EERS sets energy savings targets for kWh, kW and cubic feet of natural gas that New York utilities to attain annually. \n\nEERS are often tied to performance incentives or under-performance fines for the utility, but for Con Ed it is at worst revenue-neutral due to Revenue Decoupling. Decoupling is desirable to multiple parties because:\n\n1: it gets the utility company on board with encouraging energy conservation\n\n2: the utility likes it if they see themselves as at risk to losing energy sales (such as shutting down factories). ",
"The price we pay for electricity is set before the price they spend generating the electricity is set. As such, using less power increases their profit margin.\n\nExample: you pay 12 cents per kwh. Power is sold from cheapest generation to most expensive. The cheapest power might only cost the power company 2 cents per kwh to buy. So they are making 10 cents per kwh at that usage. Now let's say it is a very hot workday with lots of ACs running. They now are buring up all the 2 cent power, all the 7 cent power, and all the 10 cent power and they still need to provide more. So they will start buying power at 15 cents per kwh and sell it to you for 12. If demand stays up then they might have to buy 20 cent per kwh generation and still sell it to you at 12.\n\nBy conserving power we help reduce the amount of electricity they have to sell at a loss.",
"The generation and sale/distribution of electricity is a very complex business, and there can be multiple reasons why a utility would want to reduce the amount of energy its customers use, but I will offer a few main ones:\n\n1) The amount of electricity a utility has to supply to its customers at any given moment in time rises and falls based on how many people need that service at that moment. This is called demand (or load), and it is highest at times when everyone is in their own homes, usually in the mornings and evenings when we are awake, cooking, watching tv, doing our laundry, etc. If the demand for electricity is higher than the amount of electricity the utility can generate, you start to get brown-outs (momentary losses of power) and black outs (full losses of power) in parts of the power grid. Utilities can actually be punished for these types of incidents, as they are supposed to be providing a reliable, steady source of power to their customers. Teaching people how to reduce the amount of energy they use when they are home reduces the demand on the grid at these high-demand (or peak) times. Its better to sell a little less power over all than to risk the damage and associated fines and other punishments that may come from not being able to supply enough power to meet the demand.\n\n2) Utilities are heavily regulated and are under increasing pressure to reduce their environmental impacts, primarily the amount of carbon dioxide they emit (especially those that use coal and oil to produce power). One way to do this is to reduce the amount of power you need to generate (generating less power means generating less CO2 emissions). So again, teaching your customers how to use less power can help your business.\n\n3) People like saving money, and if you can provide your customers ways to save money on their utility bills, they tend to be happier. This can help from a public relations point of view, and help you retain customers (although generally this point has less of an impact as most utilities have areas they serve almost exclusively). However, keeping customers' rates low may make them less likely to seek out other, independent sources of power like putting solar panels on their roofs (although many utilities will actually \"buy back\" power you generate at your home in order to help with peak demand times as explained in point #1).",
"**I'm a lawyer for a regulated utility! I can answer this!**\n\nSome of the things people have said are **right.** Some are wrong. Here's a pretty good answer:\n\n* First and foremost, the utilities are regulated by the government, usually by state \"Public Utility Commissions.\" These Commissions (sometimes in conjunction with the state legislature) simply MANDATE that the utility spend money on energy conservation, which the utility is then authorized to collect in rates. (I.e., they don't really make a profit on it; it's just something they have to do. There's no way around it.)\n\n* Second, sometimes the government provides incentives for reducing energy use and increases energy efficiency, so it's profitable for the utilities to provide these programs, even if it reduces energy use. \n\n* Third, as others have said, it's good PR and marketing.\n\n* Fourth, believe it or not, some utilities legitimately care about conservation and the environment.\n\n* Fifth, reducing energy usage at peak times can reduce strain on the system, make it easier to implement renewable projects, and have a positive impact on all other sorts of infrastructure issues. \n\nNow, let me correct where some people have been **wrong**. \n\n* **A lot of people believe that the utilities make money by selling more and more gas or electricity. That SEEMS like it would be right. But it's WRONG.** Most utilities don't make money by selling energy; sure, they collect money that way; but most states mandate that the utilities make 0% PROFIT on energy. In other words, most utilities are required to sell you energy more or less AT COST. \n\n* How utilities make money is on capital. Most states allow them to collect (in rates) a certain return on investment on the capital projects that they need to ensure reliable service (usually 10$%-ish). So a brand new shiny transmission line involves a lot of capital ... they can make money on that. Replacing old pipes ... they can make money on that. Building a new power plant ... they can make money on that. Of course, if everyone uses less and less energy, that may require less infrastructure, which in turn makes less money--but the key thing is that they don't make money on energy itself. So if everyone in a state manages to reduce electricity usage by 5% (which ain't bad!), that doesn't really change the need for their capital projects, so it doesn't really affect their profits. \n\n* Likewise, the state probably gives them incentives for reducing energy usage and increasing efficiency, so they may actually make MORE money when energy usage is reduced. \n\n**TL;DR**: Utilities are mandated to do this; they get incentives to do it; and they don't make money based on the amount of electricity or gas they sell; it's based on their capital investments. ",
"It's s short-term measure for them, if they can stave off massive investments in their infrastructure. Because I DIDN'T return one of their surveys, my local powermongers actually sent some bitch to my house. After explaining how I was not about to toss two grand worth of appliances that were only 5 years old and working fine, just so I could use their incentive coupons (10% off!!) to buy maybe 6 or 8 grand worth of appliances so my power usage would go down. And, I'd see a savings of a hundred bucks. IN TEN years.",
"Isn't it ComEd? Commonwealth Edison?",
"Not sure where you live, but if the majority of your electricity comes from fossil fuel generation it isn't a good thing for the environment or society in general.\n\nUtilities don't want to contribute to the shortening life span of the planet, and are trying to find ways to reduce our consumption with more energy efficient technology that is coming up.\n\nEven small things like light bulbs, when you think about 100,000 homes using energy efficient lighting goes a long way to helping out the demand on great big coal generation plants.",
"They want to sell all the power they produce. If they need more than they produce, they have to pay somebody else for it because they have a legal obligation to give everyone power. Buying it on the the open market costs more than generating it themselves.\r\rConservation allows d them to supply power to everyone they must sell it to without having to build expensive new power plants or buy it.\r\rRemember. The population keeps growing and new power plants are expensive, taking years to build and pay off ",
"This sort of behavior is similar to peak load pricing. The problem arises when you think about *when* people use power the most. At 5:30 PM in the summer, everyone's just come home from work and turns their AC on. The electrical grid needs to be able to put out enough power to run everybody's AC at one time, but that's a lot of power to have on standby at 3:00 in the morning. This is combined with the fact that upgrading a utility to a larger scale (bigger electrical plant in this case) costs a LOT of money, so they try to put it off until it's totally necessary. This results in electrical companies trying to get their customers to use less electricity, even sometimes paying their customers to do so.",
"I work for con Ed and have heard the CFO speak about this very issue. Some of the answers in this thread are close, but the real reason is because they were going to have to spend crazy amounts of money in Brooklyn/queens to open a new substation. With reducing the demand and energy efficiency programs, that has been put off for at least a few years",
"It's cheaper for you to use less energy than it is for them to build additional power plants. They actually make more money on people using less energy than they do if people use more energy because of what it costs them to build more power plants to handle the additional demand. ",
"One thing I didn't see on here is economies of scale. As many people know increasing how much you produce typically reduces the per unit cost but at a certain point the cost rises again. Think of a lemonade stand. If you own 1 lemonade stand and your cost, lets say, is purely on the price of lemons if you buy 1 bag of lemons per day a bag of lemons might be 3 dollars and lets say you make 100 cups of lemonade then your cost is 3 dollars out of 100. then lets say you grow your business and you need to buy whole cases of lemon bags. a case is 10 bags but only $20 dollars so thats only $2 per bag but you can still make 100 cups per bag making your cost only $2 per 100. Then lets say you buy whole truck loads for $1 per lemon bag. I'm sure you see where this is going, the more you buy the less each one costs. But what happens when none of the lemon distributors have enough lemons to sell you? Maybe you have to invest in an orchard and plant more trees to get more lemons next year, maybe you have to out bid competitors and just spend more per lemon. Either way the cost to produce more than you are making is going to be expensive so maybe it would be cheaper to just ask people to stop buying so much lemonade. You could also just charge more for lemonade to lower how much people buy, but that can have lots of economic complications especially motivating people to buy green limeade before you have really had the money to invest in limes yourself.\n\n\nThe main point to understand about this aspect of management is that we have passed our peak efficiency in economies of scale so we need to reduce consumption for those companies to be more efficient. Note that this has nothing to do with energy efficiency, but the efficiency of how much money the company makes based on how much effort it puts in."
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7vlsxn | how does a toilet/sink function as both a sink and a toilet at the same time? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7vlsxn/eli5how_does_a_toiletsink_function_as_both_a_sink/ | {
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"The water from the sink drain flows into the reservoir for the toilet flushing. Not very complicated at all, and honestly grey water systems like that should be more common "
]
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||
753e52 | what determines the type of batteries a toy or electronic would need? why not have one universal? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/753e52/eli5_what_determines_the_type_of_batteries_a_toy/ | {
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"Each device has different demands on size, voltage needed, and total charge desired.\n\nMost things you buy batteries for use alkaline batteries, or were made originally to use alkaline batteries. The chemistry of them means one cell generates 1.5V. If you need more voltage, you need more cells.\n\nIf you've got the space and want it to last as long as possible, you'd want to use a larger battery (like a D battery in a flashlight).\n\nIf you've got less space, you need to use a smaller one. AA in remote controls, even though C batteries (while huge) would last for a very long time.\n\nIf you need more voltage, you need multiple batteries. It's pointless to produce an alkaline, 4-cell, 6-volt battery because it'd be about the same size as four 1.5V batteries, and would require manufacturing a whole other kind of battery with no real benefit. Far easier to sell only single-cell batteries, and just have some devices use more than one at a time.\n\nBetween all these factors, there simply isn't a single kind/size battery that meets the needs of every device.",
"It's kinda hard to fit D cells into a game boy. \n\nSize limitations are probably the number one reason for the number of battery styles. Power consumption would be a reason to use bigger batteries if they will fit. "
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4e816m | why do balloons hold/attract so much static? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4e816m/eli5_why_do_balloons_holdattract_so_much_static/ | {
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"Rubber is an insulated material. That means charges cannot move like they can in metal (a conductor). Because charges can't move, when they are transferred from other materials, they build up due to rubber's poor conductance. The build-up of charge leads to the static, because it's built up to the point where it can't hold any more, leading to discharge."
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9dyolz | why do camera negatives come out in inverted colours? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9dyolz/eli5_why_do_camera_negatives_come_out_in_inverted/ | {
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"I can only speak for black and white: it's Due to the light sensitive paper. Using a pinhole camera as an example, basically the composition of the scene is projected upsidedown on to the photo paper. Areas reflecting more light (highlights) trigger the paper more, causing them to grow darker when developed, while shadows with little reflected light leave those areas of the paper untriggered and whiter once developed. It helped me to think of the reflected light as a 'burning' force on the paper/film. More light=higher reactivity=darker result. \n\nSource: built and used a pinhole camera in highschool ",
"The original photographic chemical reaction created a negative image. Film was coated with a silver halide. When this chemical was exposed to light it would convert to tiny crystals of silver metal which would leave the film opaque. The film would then be washed, and the unexposed silver halide would dissolve, leaving unexposed parts of the film clear.\n\nIn other words: light exposure - > film goes opaque. No light - > film goes transparent.\n\nTo make a positive photograph - you just take a photo of the negative. This would be done, by taking a large piece paper (coated with silver chemicals), and using a projector to project the negative onto the paper. You would then process the paper in the same way as the original film. The paper would show white where there was no light exposure. The silver would show black.\n\nThis same basic principle was used in colour film, but it worked on a multicolour basis. It used multiple layers of silver halide on the film, each sensitive to different colours of light, and the silver metal was used to start a different chemical reaction which caused a colour changing dye to change from colourless to a specific colour.\n\nA blue sensitive layer of silver halide/dye chemicals in the film would in response to blue light, create a yellow dye (opaque to blue).\nA green sensitive layer of silver halide and dye, would create a magenta dye (opaque to green)\nA red sensitive layer would create a cyan dye (opaque to red).\n\n\n"
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9vfdhi | why is it a civic duty/responsibility to vote? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9vfdhi/eli5_why_is_it_a_civic_dutyresponsibility_to_vote/ | {
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"As US citizens, we believe in a government run \"by the people, for the people.\" In order for that to be the case, *the people* need to participate by voting, running for office, and voicing opinion during legislative sessions.\n\nIf we don't vote, we can't guarantee that the government will run in a manner that we all want.",
"Voting is a way to make change it maintain status quo in a society. Since a society is only a thing if it has members (a country with no citizens is only a country in paper) so the citizens have to make sure they are headed in the direction thats best for them.\n\nSo you (not you specifically but citizens) have a duty to make sure that you and those around you (and loved ones) are on the right path.\n\nObviously people have different ideas of whose best choice and what laws we should have so voting is one way to figure that out"
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6jaytf | what would happen to the u.s. economy if pennies were removed from currency? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6jaytf/eli5_what_would_happen_to_the_us_economy_if/ | {
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"Not much. We'd be fine and prices would be rounded to the nearest nickel when it needs to be.",
"It would improve. The time and energy we spend handling pennies is worth more than the pennies themselves. Additionally, we lose money with every penny we mint. No one (except jarden zinc products) benefits from pennies. If we got rid of them, prices would not rise, charitable contributions would not fall, and we could stop wasting time shuffling so many low-value metal discs around everywhere.",
"They did this in Canada and I love it. In cash things get rounded. Paying credit you pay the exact amount. No more copper to carry. ",
"Nothing would get worse, it would be cheaper all around for everyone. Stores would save money not counting out pennies, credit cards would still charge the exact amount, and we'd save millions on minting currency where each penny costs 3 pennies to mint. You'd pay 2 cents more on occasion and 2 cents less on occasion and it would all average to the right amount.\n\nI think, though, you are asking 'why don't we?' in which case it's simply inertia and the fact that the American government is one of the least responsible and effective forms of government. The American government can't do *ANYTHING* where there's well-funded or well-organized or popular opposition unless it's a national crisis. This is simply a matter of having a bad Constitution - we have even stopped pushing our pages of garbage off on states we conquer, Iraq got a proper parliament for example.\n\nSo you'd got a handful of people who don't want things to change and a handful of people who make money selling the government zinc and that's enough to stop it happening because no one else really cares enough to spend billions to make it an issue."
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3z7oj8 | why do women seem to have such a strong affinity for the way their men smell than men's affinity for the way their women smell? | I've read the debates/discussions about pheromones. I also understand the whole thing about positive associations. But there seems to be so much disparity between how much women like the way their men smell versus how dispassionate men are about the way their women smell. It is as if women are happily and fervently addicted, whereas men simply casually endorse it. Is there a reason for the disparity? Similar to how I can smell acute differences in Yankee Candles for hours but BF cannot tolerate walking through the doors? Is the difference real, and what (if any) is the reason for it? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3z7oj8/eli5_why_do_women_seem_to_have_such_a_strong/ | {
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"There is like a billion dollar industry all revolving around making women smell like different things. Women are excited when men smell good because they try so little and it's so rare. It's just expected women will be wearing 80 types of scented things at all times 24 hours a day. ",
"Well, one reason that may attribute to this is that women have a more acute sense of smell then men. There is almost certainly more to it then that, but I think it has something to do with why men casually endorse it. Hopefully someone pops in to elaborate further, and worse case scenario, you could take the question to /r/askscience, I just don't know if you would need to ask the psychology or biology folks."
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brj4dy | how do all servers across the world ensure unique ip addresses? | I could be totally wrong here, but I’ve always been under the impression that IP addresses are unique in that for every address, there is one and only one server/computer, and viceversa. How do you accomplish this given all the different manufacturers, countries’ internet protocols, etc.? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/brj4dy/eli5_how_do_all_servers_across_the_world_ensure/ | {
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"It's not actually the case. Unique addresses are required for a particular network but not for every computer there ever is. It's like how you can't have two cities with identical names in the same state, but two states can each have a city with the same name.",
"Others have done a good job covering the basics, so I'll go into more of the technical details.\n\nThe right to use Public IPs is assigned to companies and groups by organizations like ARIN (North America) and RIPE (Europe).\n\nQualifying organizations (Large companies and ISPs) apply for and pay a fee to use IP address space and are assigned blocks of unique IP addresses that they are free to use as they see fit. This address space is advertised to the rest of the internet using BGP (Border Gateway Protocol) which tells the internet where those IPs are located and how to get there.\n\nIf you attempt to advertise IP space that doesn't belong to you (effectively stealing IPs) your peering partners (who your WAN network is connected to) will soon recognize that and filter out (block) the advertisements effectively dropping your network off the face of the internet until you fix it. This can cause serious havoc to the internet and is taken very seriously.\n\nHowever the vast majority of organizations and private individuals are too small to warrant having blocks of IPs dedicated to them (the smallest issueable blocks are 256 IPs, while most companies only need 1 or 2). So instead it's more practical for most companies and persons to effectively lease IP addresses from larger organizations (ISPs).\n\nWhen you make a connection via an ISP they lease you a temporary unique IP address which is assigned to your modem. In the case of businesses (for an additional fee) a static or permanent unchanging address(es) can be assigned to the service. These addresses are unique and unchanging and therefore better suited for hosting websites and the like."
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36mi7j | carbon capture and storage (beccs) is this a feasible solution to negative co2 emissions? | I have been reading about climate change and there is lots of talk about Bio-energy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) is this a feasible solution to CO2 emissions? Do we have carbon capture storage yet? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/36mi7j/eli5_carbon_capture_and_storage_beccs_is_this_a/ | {
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"text": [
"We have carbon capture technology. It's not exactly a huge success, and mostly it's only economically feasible if combined with Enhanced oil or natural gas recovery."
]
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4dkewz | how can picking a lock break the lock? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4dkewz/eli5_how_can_picking_a_lock_break_the_lock/ | {
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"You'd have to break your pick. \nA typical key lock involves a bunch of vertical pins in vertical holes. \nA key pushes those pins to the right height so you can turn the key. \nLock picking involves pushing those pins up and turning to try to get the pins to stick in the right height. \nBut if you really screw up, you can break the thing you were using to push up the pin, and it get's stuck in the vertical hole. \nSo the pin isn't in the right position and you might not even be able to put a key in at all.",
"One problem you can run into is if you turn a deadbolt, or any pin tumbler lock that can turn at least 180 deg, the top pins can fall into the lock core.\n\nThere's usually a little grove in the bottom of the core--I think it's there to manage dust or something, I could be wrong. Anyway, if you turn the core 180 deg, the top pins will fall into that groove. Usually, this just jams the lock and you can push the top pins back up and continue turning the cylinder. You can use the back side of a tension wrench for this--just press it into the grove and move the pins up all at once. Sometimes the top pins will come all the way down and you risk damaging the springs if you turn any further.\n\nHowever, if the lock is masterkeyed such as in a big building, there will be little tiny disks of varying sizes which accompany the top pins. If you turn a lock like this too far, those disks will fall through the grove and *all the way out of the lock*. This is when you enter a world of pain and sorrow. You must stop right there, disassemble the lock, and hope you can piece together which tiny disks go with which pins and in what order. Sometimes a pin stack will have multiple tiny disks. Anyway, if this happens, you will need a copy of every key that's supposed to go to the door in order to put the tiny disks in the proper places.\n\nAnyway, the big lesson here is never turn a lock more than 180 deg after you pick it. If for some reason you really have to, rotate the core a little, stick the back end of your tension wrench all the way into the grove at the bottom of the lock, then turn. That way the tension wrench blocks the top pins and any tiny disks from falling into the groove at all."
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6gvlqn | why can dirt easily get under your finger nail but it seems like water can't get under there enough to easily wash the dirt away? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6gvlqn/eli5why_can_dirt_easily_get_under_your_finger/ | {
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"Water is getting there fine. The presence of water doesn't necessarily mean something will be cleaned.\n\nYour nail is pressed against your skin, so dirt that gets wedged there will be pressed as well. The best way to clean your nails is to scrape out the dirt, not trickle some water on your fingers. ",
"If you want to actually remove dirt form under your fingernails while washing your hands, you need to rub your fingertips in a circular fashion against the opposing palm. Think of it like you're trying to scratch the skin of your palms. This is going to work best if your fingernails are neatly trimmed. Water and soap might be flowing over your fingernails when you run your hands under water, but it can't really flow under you fingernails because the isn't a large enough space for water to really flow. Because water adheres to surfaces, water that is touching a surface is moving more slowly than the water that is further away from the surface. In terms of a circular pipe, water is moving fastest at the center of the pipe. In terms of the space under your fingernails, there's basically just enough room for water to get in there and stick to things, but not enough room to allow for a channel of flowing water. "
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fgy58n | is fire weightless? why doesn’t it float away into the atmosphere? | Oxygen and Nitrogen make up a significant part of the atmosphere. Fire always stretches upwards, assuming no wind, leading me to believe it’s less dense than air. Oxygen is highly flammable. That should be everything fire needs to sustain itself while flying away into the sky. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/fgy58n/eli5_is_fire_weightless_why_doesnt_it_float_away/ | {
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"First of all, you need three things for fire to happen, heat, fuel and oxygen. Oxygen is not a fuel but provides a required component to the equation. Take away any one of these three components, and you can't have fire.\n\nFire is a reaction, and during that reaction, some molecules release ~~are transformed into~~ their energy, in this case, heat and light. The fire itself is essentially mass-less. But the mass of the oxygen and fuel is being transformed into other compounds. ~~energy~~.\n\nEdit: Oversimplification led to inaccuracy.",
"What you see as fire is the light released by plasma, ionised gas produced by the combustion reaction. Electrons in the atoms of gas are excited to a higher energy level by the energy released in the reaction and when they fall back down they release photons, light. This is why fire can be different colours, as the frequency of light released is dependant on the amount of energy the electrons transition by. Higher energy corresponding to high frequency, shorter wavelength light (blue and purple). This is the same reason you can see hot things with an infrared camera, as warm bodies will be releasing light in the infrared range of frequency",
"Oxygen is not \"flammable\" but it *IS* an oxidizer, which means it makes any *existing* fire more intense.\n\nAnd when you see a fire, you are actually seeing the fumes burning, not the actual wood or whatever. The heat from the fire causes the fuel to give off flammable gasses, those gasses burn, which increases the heat, which causes more gasses to be given off, in an endless circle until there is no more gasses to be had. In that process, it damages the wood or other fuel provider and reduces it to ash.\n\nSo the fire relies on those gasses to burn, and that's why it stays firmly in place and doesn't fly off into the sky.",
"Fire occurs when a chemical reaction produces enough heat the surrounding air is hot enough to glow in wavelengths our eyes can see. Once you get far enough from the reaction, the air cools to the point it no longer gives off that light.",
"Fire also needs fuel - the substance which is being burned. \n\nThe flames we see are the visible part of the chemical process of burning, and they basically *are* trying to float away.\n\nThe reaction is tied to the fuel source, so as flames rise away from their source, they go out.\n\nThe greater the fuel supply and the stronger the reaction, the farther away flames can spread.",
"Fire stretches upwards because it heat the air, which make the air expand, more less dense and rise up, dragging the fire with it. But that's only work in gravity, because without gravity you don't have buyouncy and the denser cold air won't go down pushing the hotter less dense air up.\n\nHere a video about that.\n\n [_URL_0_](_URL_0_)",
"You're thinking about fire as a physical object. Let's look at what fire really is. When something burns, it's chemical structure breaks down. It gives off gases when it gets hot enough. Think of it like boiling a lot of water and seeing steam. Now when it gets really hot, those gases glow. That glow is what you call fire. It's not much different than the electric burner on your stove glowing. On a cool burning fire, like a candle, you can pass a finger through the flame without injury. On a hot burning fire, you can pass through the gases/smoke and get burns even if you're not in the actual fire. \n\nIn the case of an electric element in a stove, you can have it hot enough that it glows without actually burning. On the flip side, you can have something burn without being on fire. Certain chemicals have \"invisible\" flames which is just hot gas that's burning but not glowing.\n\nThose gases do go into the atmosphere. You can see smoke rise very high. The bigger and hotter the reaction, the larger the flames. But why don't we see flames rising thousands of feet with the smoke? Because it cools down. Look at that pot of boiling water again. Stand on a chair, and put your hand above it. Then get off the chair, and stick your hand in the pot of boiling water (well actually don't do that.) You can feel the difference in temperature. It's much cooler the farther away you get. Remember, since the fire is simply really hot gas, when it cools down, it stops being fire. If you keep those gases/smoke close to the fire, and hot enough, like in a house, the smoke can, and does burn. But let it into the atmosphere, and it's simply not hot enough to glow.",
"Fire is weightless, and it does float away. As it floats away from the heat, it stops glowing and becomes just regular gases in the air. The stuff floating up from the fire was part of the fire, once. It needs the fuel to keep burning, glowing, etc. so as it goes up, it stops being fire.",
"The fire is tied to the fuel source, like a log, which is burning. The visible flame which you see is a result of the combustion occurring at that fuel source. This results in heat and light. The heat rises, making the flame travel upwards.\n\nThe oxygen by itself can't burn without the fuel source (which is fortunate, otherwise we'd all be dead of self-sustained skyfire).\n\nSo as the flame moves away from the fuel source, there is no longer any reaction generating heat or light and the visible flame dissipates as its energy radiates away."
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161xcy | why do modern game pads use a 'abxy' scheme, instead of using the alphabetical order 'abcd'? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/161xcy/why_do_modern_game_pads_use_a_abxy_scheme_instead/ | {
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"Starting with the original 8-bit NES had only two action buttons; A & B. It's major competition, the Sega Master System and Atari 7800 simply labeled them \"1\" and \"2\".\n\nWhen we get to the 16-bit era, Atari is done with hardware., the Super Nintendo added two more buttons, labeling them as X & Y. The Sega Genesis had 3 buttons; 'A', 'B' and 'C'. The NEC TurboGrafx-16 only had two buttons. If you look at the SNES controller, it visually groups AB and XY together - as if they're meant to work together.\n\nThe next generation of hardware gives us the Sega Saturn with ABC + XYZ, The Sony Playstation with shapes & L/R shoulder buttons & the Nintendo 64 with A, B, Z (trigger), \"C\" up/down/left/right & L/R shoulder. The only real divergence here is the Saturn where, IMHO, ABC + XYZ stick in the memory better than ABCDEF.\n\nNext generation brings us Dreamcast (AB, XY, L/R), PS2 (shapes again), GameCube (AB, XY & L/R) and the introduction of Microsoft with the XBox (AB, XY). Looking at the GameCube, it's obvious the naming reflects the intention of using the X & Y buttons as secondary buttons. The Dreamcast just carried on from the previous generation but decided to simplify things down to only 4 buttons. Microsoft had worked with Sega during early development of the Dreamcast's OS & it's pretty clear from looking at the devices that the XBox controller is just a clone of the Dreamcast's.\n\nThe current generation of hardware gives us the PS3 and XBox 360 - both of which simply copy the previous generation's controller - and the Wii, which has simplified their controller to only have two primary action buttons.\n\nSo, to answer your question, \"modern\" PC gamepads copy the XBox. The XBox copied the Dreamcast. The Dreamcast was a variation of the Saturn. The Saturn had 6 buttons and somebody decided that ABC XYZ felt better than ABC DEF - making it clear which buttons were on the top & bottom.",
"Most-likely several different reasons ranging from marketing to speech to future-proofing.\n\nB sounds like D sometimes, which may get confusing in speech. B, C, and D also rhyme, making them somewhat similar. It's harder to confuse the sounds \"AY\", \"BEE\", \"EX\", \"WHY\" with each other because they all sound different.\n\nAlso imagine a company wants to make a new controller with 6 buttons instead of 4 while maintaining compatibility with previous games. With the original SNES configuration (the Xbox is flipped):\n\n YX\n BA\n\nis much easier to add new buttons to using new letters while the original four buttons stay in the same configuration\n\n ZYX\n CBA\n\nwhile a configuration like this\n\n DC\n BA\n\nrequires you to move the C down to the bottom row and add two more letters to the top row. Now the C and D buttons aren't in the same spot as before relative to A and B, and that causes confusion.\n\n FED\n CBA",
"I'd guess that (aside from historic reasons) it's easier to instinctively distinguish between the keys. AB and XY \"feel\" separate (\"12 and the other 12\") yet connected within pairs, unlike ABCD (\"1234\"), which is just a one long series. If you'd be told to press C, you'd feel like it's a \"button 3\", while with X it feels more like \"the other button 1\". I suppose that makes it easier to memorize the layout."
]
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5offh5 | why has there not been any recent space exploration? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5offh5/eli5_why_has_there_not_been_any_recent_space/ | {
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"Other than launching/maintaining satellites into Earth orbit, there isn't much left to do at the moment, and no country or company (SpaceX possibly excluded) wants to throw funding at space missions without a solid purpose."
]
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||
3z11zn | mansplaining. | Bonus points if you can mansplain like I'm 5 about mansplaining | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3z11zn/eli5_mansplaining/ | {
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"I'm not a man, so I can't mansplain, but mansplaining is essentially when a man (often cis and hetero) inserts his own narrative in a conversation that he often isn't involved in, and is things that women involved in the conversation already know. \n\n_URL_1_\n\n_URL_0_",
"Out of context,this is the nearest I can get to a demonstration - \n\n\n*There's a site called reddit, not many Fratboys use it because it can be quite complicated, but what you need to do is make an account, choose a user name, then find a subreddit - that's what the parts of the site on different topics are called - then make what's called a self post - that's a post that doesn't link to another website.*\n\nAt this point you'd be thinking \"clearly I know all that, as I've just posted a question\"\n\nNow imagine you're a woman and you get the same sort of response when it's something you obviously know a lot about because it's about the job you've done for 5 years, or it's about something you've experienced and the 'mansplainer' hasn't, like period pains, or pregnancy.\n\n",
"(For the purposes of this post, we have assume you're a woman of average or above-average intelligence.)\n\nOkay, so: a man is a person like me, male. That's the opposite of you, a female. Now, if you take the word \"explain\", take off the first syllable -- that's the \"ex\" part -- and then add the rest to \"man\", you get \"mansplain\". Well, not quite: we have to add an \"S\", but I won't go into that because it would be too difficult for you to understand. Just take my word for it.\n\nSo, we have a word called a \"portmanteau\" (that's French, by the way, and don't worry if you can't pronounce it properly): \"mansplain\". And \"mansplaining\" is when a *man* ex*plains* something to you in a way that is patronizing.\n\n\"Patronizing\" is when somebody treats somebody like a child and talks to them like they're stupid or something. The thing is that some men think that women are stupid (or something) and need to have everying explained to them by a man. So, these men will often explain things to women that the women already know, and do it in a patronizing way.\n\nNow, this may surprise you, but women don't like having things \"mansplained\" to them. They prefer it if men don't try to explain things to them unless they (the women, I mean) ask for an explanation. And if they ask for an explanation -- and this is important, by the way -- they don't like being patronized. In fact, there are even women -- quite a lot of women in fact -- who know quite a lot of things already.\n\nFor example: suppose a female computer programmer is talking to one of her colleagues about a program she is working on, and a male friend who isn't a computer programmer overhears, and then interrupts the conversation to explain what a \"program\" is, that's \"mansplaining\".\n\nI hope I haven't made that too difficult for you to follow. I know it's quite complicated, but when you think about it for a bit, it's not that hard really.",
"It is when a man assumes a woman doesn't know something, and adds a unintentionally condensing explanation they wouldn't use if they were talking to a man.\n\nWhile it is a real thing, the term is often applied with too wide a brush to any time a man attempts to explain something to a woman. There is nothing wrong with making general demographic assumptions. Men as a rule don't know much about, say, makeup, so there would be nothing wrong with a female speaking adding extra explanation to a story would make sense to a male listener.\n\nThe real problem is when your assumptions are insulting. Assuming a women doesn't know what a cover 2 zone defense is is probably ok. Assuming she doesn't know the name of the local football team is not. However, it is usually more polite to ask than to just dive in to an explanation."
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