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How do NFC Credit cards work? Do they store the credit card number? How are card numbers not stolen by people with NFC readers? | Firstly, there are no NFC cards, they are RFID. The distinction comes from power. When using NFC payment on phones, the phone transmits the signal, costing some battery life. On RFID cards, you obviously don't charge them, the card reader actually sends a tiny amount of power to them so they are able to transmit the si... |
Why are none of the major news websites reporting on the Ukraine riots? | I feel the Ukraine riots is well coverd in the media, but I have not visited many international news-sites. But the main reason for this is simply money. News-sites base their content on what "news" gets the most clicks on their website. The more clicks equal more advertisement money since each click on a article opens... |
Why are carbon and oxygen so ubiquitous in living organisms | To be useful for life atoms need two somewhat opposite characteristics; they need to be reactive enough to be readily changed when needed, but not so reactive they degrade by themselves e.g with moisture. Carbon fills that role perfectly. Carbon based molecules will on average hang about a long time, but when called up... |
If most money is just numbers in a database, how come we don't hear of hackers who break in and just increase their account balance? | Accounting and balance sheets. Every debit has to have a credit, and every credit a debit or it will show up as out of balance. If there were to be a balancing entry in the respective offset account, then maybe it would go undetected but nonetheless it would still show up as an entry that someone is eventually responsi... |
How does a lightning strike crumble buildings even when they are made of meters and meters of non-conductive materials? | The amperage and voltage difference between the ground and clouds are so large that it doesn't really matter what the thing is made of. If the path is connected, the electricity flows. Resistance causes a big chunk of that energy to turn into heat, which spells out a thin cord-like volume that briefly reaches temperatu... |
Why does faraway smoke look like it's staying still? | The same reason airplanes look very slow. A plane flying 400 mph looks like its crawling along because its so far away. Smoke rising a mile away is only going, I dunno, ten miles per hour, so it looks completely still because of the same principle.It's a phenomena named parallax, u might google it to find visual exampl... |
What shape is the Big Red Spot? | It's storm-shaped :) It's more of a fat oval, but vertically, it's quite thin. It's a storm about 15,000 by 35,000 kilometers in size, and about 100 kilometers or so in thickness. [This wiki entry] has some great info on it. So yeah, it's more or less a circle . |
How does a headbutt work? Wouldn't it hurt you just as much? Is there any practical reason to utilize it? | You use your relatively strong forehead to strike in a less strong part of the head, ideally the bridge of the nose. Also, even if it does hurt you, you are expecting it, and can use that surprise to your advantage.Generally you want to hit the nose or chest to back them up and give yourself some space. If lucky you'll... |
Is intermittent fasting healthy? | There is some evidence that intermittent fasting is beneficial in humans , but the bulk of the work has been done in animals. The idea is that the longer your body is in a "starvation" state, the better. Valter Longo at USC has done a lot of work in this area, using what he calls the fasting-mimicking diet, which is a ... |
How do federal housing programs like FHA/USDA loans work and why do they exist? | A typical non-FHA/USDA loan usually requires 20% downpayment because the lender doesn't want to be too exposed in the event of a foreclosure. The government loans tend to be more forgiving in regards to credit. The two houses we've bought over the years have been FHA because we didn't have 800+ credit scores and 20% do... |
Why is it the vast majority of rainbow flags do not have violet in them? | Newton was the one to popularize the division of colors in the rainbow thanks to his work with prisms. And Newton was very religious and superstitious, and saw a great significance in the number 7. So he decided that there should be 7 colors in the rainbow, which led to him breaking the blue end of the rainbow into ext... |
How do people who are shown using drugs in documentaries / TV shows not get arrested? | Two answers: One of legality, and one of practicality. **Legal answer:** To convict a defendant in a criminal trial, the standard of evidence used is "beyond a reasonable doubt." This means that if the jury is **98%** sure that the defendant committed the offense, the defendant gets to go home. 98% isn't good enough. I... |
How are street address numbers decided upon, if they apparently don't refer to an agreed upon distance unit? | In US cities, some central intersection is designated as 0. The first east-west cross street north of that is 100N. The first block south is 100S. So if your address is 6407 N State Street, you're on State street 64 major cross streets North from the 0-0 intersection, and the seventh house north from the 6400 cross str... |
What does "HTTP 2.0 to be HTTPS only" mean and what are the implications of this? | HTTPS means that the web page and the requests for the web page are encrypted in transit, meaning that people listening in on your computer traffic can't analyze them and steal personal information. Standard traffic is done over HTTP which isn't encrypted and people can intercept these communications, HTTP 2.0 won't ha... |
How does taste and flavour work? | There are five basic tastes: * Sweet, usually caused by the presence of sugars, though there are other types of compounds that will active the receptors for sweetness. * Saltiness, caused by sodium ions. Potassium and lithium ions have very similar tastes, rubidium and cesium ions do have a salty taste, but also have a... |
Why do deep burps sometimes sting the nostrils? | Because you've been drinking something carbonated. The CO2 gas from the carbonation continues to be released in your stomach, and actually speeds up its release since there are a lot of nucleation sites, which the glass/plastic didn't have. When the pressure from the CO2 gas gets up there, your stomach releases the pre... |
Why is Atomic Bomb testing in the ocean allowed? | At the time it was done, it was not prohibited by any treaty. Today it is prohibited by the Limited Test Ban Treaty. As a result the USA, USSR/Russia, and UK have not tested underwater weapons since the 1960s. India, Pakistan, and North Korea have only tested their weapons underground. As for the radiation, much of it ... |
Why do we have the electoral college? | When the Constitution was written, nobody *wanted* an easy and clear reflection of voter's opinions. The common attitude was that the average voter was just too poor and uninformed; they would never be able to make a good decision about who should run the country. So the average voter would send an Electoral College re... |
How do air bubbles in a needle kill you if you don't get them all out before injecting? | I think that's mostly a Hollywood invention. A large amount of air injected into a vein can kill you, but a little bit won't. Imagine my surprise when I was in the hospital and saw a few air bubbles go into my vein. I freaked out and thought I was going to die, but absolutely nothing happened. |
From 1954 to Blu ray | It's kinda a strange concept, but since old movies were taken on real film, the film itself is basically HD As long as you have the old film, it'll be convertible into HD into at least the near future . However, it's worth noting that, even if this wasn't the case, you can still convert a very low-res movie into HD, th... |
Why do I see a sudden flash of light when I sneeze with my eyes closed? | Everyone sneezes with their eyes closed. Some people have a nerve that causes your pupils to widen or shrink connected to the same nerve that causes the sneezing reflex so it may be possible it acts as a stimulus when you sneeze. I may be wrong though but if you have ACHOO syndrome this may be the answer |
People who understand NSA stuff: why don't they have a better lead on Jim Dimaggio? (California Amber Alert) | IF he was trying to flee, he would have taken a different car, or disabled his GPS Nav system, and from that point he would stay off the grid.|They do use it for the domestic good, remember the Boston Marathon manhunt?The NSA is not concerned with domestic crimes. There is a massive legal hurdle for a domestic law enfo... |
How do you prove the title of this post is the same as always? | ELI5: We can't prove anything we know is true, we can only decide for ourselves based on what we see and experience. For many facts, we simply must either trust that whoever told it to us is telling the truth, or seek the truth ourselves by checking other sources or through experimentation. Slightly less ELI5: If you w... |
After time in the sun, why does my hair get lighter but my skin gets darker? | Your skin can react to a stimulus. It adds more pigments to protect you. Your hair is mostly dead cells and thus cannot react, so it gets bleached in the sun just like paint or plastic.TL:DR Your skin is alive, but your hair is not. Long answer: Your hair gets lighter in color because it is being damaged by the UV rays... |
If i deposit 1 dollar into a bank, what are all the options of where that 1 dollar could end up? | Do you mean the idea of the dollar or the physical currency? The dollar becomes two entities on the banks balance sheet: one dollar on deposit that they owe you and one dollar in cash. They can then use their cash to buy securities , as funding for a loan, to pay a depositors withdrawl, pay an expense , or it can be de... |
How come it feels infinitely more perilous walking down an icy incline than it does walking up one? | My guess, going downhill if you slip you will fall backwards and won't be able to catch yourself and possibly hit your head, going up hill you will fall foreward and be able to use your hands to catch yourself |
Why can't we artificially inseminate endangered species like pandas and rhinos in order to raise their numbers? | Increasing their numbers doesn't solve any problems. They're being wiped out in the wild, through habitat destruction, poaching, etc. Having 'more to die' doesn't fix the 'to die' part. Additionally, artificial insemination isn't a surefire mechanism, and once your population is low enough you run into problems with a ... |
Can anyone explain why when you sit for an extended period of time your knee will start to bounce up and down? | This actually doesn't happen to everyone. If it happens all the time and feels like it's out of your conscious control, and really severe, it might be Restless Legs Syndrome , a neurological disorder which causes a strong urge to move your legs. It might also simply be a symptom of impatience or boredom or, in the extr... |
what is going on with Adrian Peterson | He hit his kid with a "switch" as a way of discipline, but apparently it left some pretty bad marks which makes it look like he went too far with corporal punishment and possibly crossed into abuse. Hard to say exactly what could happen with his career, but this coming the same week as the Ray Rice domestic abuse issue... |
What's the deal with the O.J. Simpson trial? | OJ Simpson was put on trial for the murder of two individuals, Nicole Simpson and Ronald Goldman. He was acquitted of those murders. The response to the verdict was very polarized along racial lines, with blacks generally favorable and whites generally unfavorable. |
How can services like Google Drive offer so much storage for no charge? | Google offer 'free' services to lock people into using Google, this in turns makes people use other services such as search and gmail, where they do make money for people clicking on advertisements. It's also another way of gathering as much information about people to enable them to target specific types of advertisem... |
why do lightbulbs seem to go bad only when being turned on? | The filaments in the bulb get thinner and thinner with more use. At some point they are thin enough that the surge of electricity when turning on the bulb is more than the filament can take.The majority of the wear on filaments is due to contraction and expansion when they heat up or cool. This heating and cooling occu... |
Why are most SQL error messages useless? | They're not useless. They give you the exact line the problem has occured on and the nature of the error. It is assumed that you know what you're doing and are competent enough to be aware of which keywords exist. Why did you cut off the rest of the error message you quoted: ERROR 1064 : You have an error in your SQL s... |
Why do large semis shake your car when you drive past them? | [Vortex shedding] Because semi's are not very streamlined the air rushing past them ends up in a series of vortices. As these vortices pass you, your car is alternately sucked toward and blown away from--hence the shaking motion. |
How much repulsive force can two or more magnets produce? | It comes down to their strength, size, shape, and distance between them. Here is a calculator from a site that sells neodymium magnets, some of the strongest you can find _URL_0_ The strongest I found was around 3000N between two magnets |
How are cranes on the side if buildings built during construction? How is the last crane disassembled? | A crane can build and disassemble itself. They build what they can on the ground and then let the crane take over. There is no way I'd be able to explain it better than this video._URL_0_", 'Smaller cranes at first, they lift the base sections into place. Then some cranes can start to lift their own sections in to plac... |
Why does everything you mix together turn brown? | Pigments absorb some colors and reflect others. Mix a bunch of different ones together and it ends up absorbing most of the color and then reflecting some of the light so you get a dark mass of brown |
Why do we still have court reporters? | Transcripts. Every legal action is based on a transcript, the written word of what happened in court, and also at depositions . So anytime a hearing is at issue or deposition testimony is needed, the court or court of appeals needs a transcript to review what was said. And the easiest way to do that is by reading it. T... |
What is the difference between a voxel and a pixel? | A pixel is part of a 2-D image - like all the dots that make up your screen. A voxel is a 3-D element, like the cubes that make up MinecraftPixel: Picture Element. A 2D square with a very small size and a single color, to represent a portion of a 2D picture on a screen. Voxel: ~~Volumetric Element~~ Volumetric Pixel. A... |
How can a person break cement blocks with a fist? Surely there is no training that makes bones as tough a concrete? | The dirty secret of concrete is that it's weak in *some* ways. Like natural rock, it's great at withstanding compression. However, it is very poor at withstanding tension . Which means that it's also poor at handing bending, which imposes compression and tension in different regions at the same time. To make concrete h... |
. If I watched 15 minutes from a 90 minute YouTube video, do I get charged data for the entire 90 minute file ? What about the ads . | you don't stream the entire file at once. Youtube doesn't stream the entire thing to you anymore, just sightly ahead of what you watch. They want to save data too, after all.yes, ads do use data too. they are not magical. |
Why do people have different skins tones, face shapes, body shapes etc from different continents? | Indications are that a lot of those features, the key reason Europeans and Asians are different is because of interbreeding with neanderthals and denisovans. The neanderthals and denisovans had lived in those regions for a long time and had gradually adapted to the environment of the climates, and the interbreeding ena... |
Why do muslims grow long beards? | This is still a debated topic in Islam. Many scholars say it is Fard while many also say it is only Sunnah. There is no one clear answer to this question. Fard= mandatorySunnah= highly recommendedIt was commanded by the prophet. I believe it was originally meant to make Muslims more distinguishable from other people, t... |
Why does my nose run when it's excessively cold outside? | My guess : Cold air is warmed by your nose and upper respiratory tract in order to maintain core temperature. When air is excessively cold it requires more blood flow to your sinuses and nasal passageway to warm the air. In order to increase blood flow a local vasodilator is released in the form of histamine and this a... |
If America has the best colleges in the world and some of the hardest working people in the world, how are foreigners able to take our jobs? | They will work for less money. It's primarily jobs for low skill workers that are leaving the US. A factory worker in China will cost about the equivalent of $1.36 hour. Even if they are slightly less productive, it's still more cost effective, even after shipping the goods to the US. It's about $2000 per shipping cont... |
Every picture we take is a rectangle, so is the sensor inside our digital cameras. So why are the lenses of our cameras round? | It is not the case that every pixel have a single point on the lens collecting its light. Every pixel gets light from all parts of the lens. You can try this yourself by covering up parts of a lens and observe that the light in the other end of the optics only gets darker but not obscured. You can even try this on your... |
How does my penis know I’m looking at something sexual? | Your brain finds whatever you’re looking at arousing and as a result releases endorphins and sends blood to the penis to make it erect |
Why did the communist structure of the USSR fail while China still continues to grow under the banner of the CCP? | The USSR tried to liberalize their politics without liberalizing their economy. China is allowing the economy to liberalize into a more capitalist system, but maintaining strict control of the politics. Freedom of politics tends towards freedom of economy, but freedom of economy doesn't always lead to freedom of politi... |
Do dogs have bonds within their families? | Yes. Most social organisms do. There is something called the Hamilton rule which was the first quantitative description of a phenomenon called kin selection; meaning that an organisms will risk its life to save the life of those who are closely related. The more closely related the organism that needs saving is, the le... |
Was Bill Clinton impeached? | Yes he was impeached for perjury and obstruction of justice. Impeachment refers to any official being accused of illegal activity. So while impeached he was not removed from office. Richard Nixon was also impeached though he resigned before the trialYes. He was impeached for perjury and obstruction of justice but was a... |
How do we sense that something is cold? Can we sense particle speed of objects? | Temperature difference between two objects causes a bit of a flux between the two. So if object A is cold and object B is warm, the particles in object B are at a relatively higher energy state than A, and this energy gets transferred to A. And two things happen once this occurs: object A gains energy, that is gets hot... |
How is NASA able to download data from from satellite like Hubble telescope and Juno? | There are antennas on Juno that send out the information and giant dishes in different parts of the world that can pick it up no matter what side of Earth is facing Juno. It takes about 48 minutes for the signal to make if from Juno to Earth at the speed of light. |
Why does digital data have to be stored on a physical medium? | There is no such thing as "the digital space". Everything persistent is physical. Everything. The only non-physical things are signals such as radio or microwaves, but they too require amplification and boosting which again would require more hardware.If it's measurable, it's physical. The digital 'space' isn't some al... |
Why aren't escalators activated by touch/motion to save on energy costs? | Because keeping the steps moving at a given speed for most of the day is cheaper and has less wear on the inner workings than constantly starting and stopping. |
Why is the first episode of a series always called "Pilot"? Why not giving it a real title even though it serves as a pilot? | Most pilots do have a title, or at least a working title. But the word pilot is used as an adjective meaning "done as an experiment or test before introducing something more widely." It's importance to the series is in getting its foot in the door so to speak. |
why big tech companies aren't using their lobbyists to stop SOPA. | I remember hearing on a podcast the idea that since many of these companies are quite new, they haven't had the time to lobby and make the connections the more established companies those in the RIAA/MPAA have formed.Fairly simple: a) They think that the public effort should be sufficient to stop it b) The entertainmen... |
why laptop charging cords have two parts. | The specifics of mains power differ greatly depending on where you are, so power bricks are usually made to handle a wide range of input voltages and frequencies . This is because economies of scale make it less costly to make a whole lot of one slightly more expensive part that's much more flexible vs. a bunch of slig... |
How can we be certain that there isn't another 'Earth' on the opposite side of the sun, always out of view of our telescopes? | Its gravity would have an effect on our planet, the other planets in the system, and even the sun, as well as all the comets and asteroids constantly cutting through our solar system. As we have not observed any such gravitic effects, we conclude there is no such body. |
What is the log likelihood function and how is it different from probability? | Probability is chance some random or hard to predict event will occur. Usually, we can't compute probabilities exactly, so we create a model. We say getting heads on a coin flip is a 50-50 probability, even though when we analyze the actual physics, the chances aren't exactly 50%. Probabilities can be distributed linea... |
How do natural fields exist? (More specifically, ones found in the middle of forests.) | It's part of ecological succession. Environments are constantly changing. It's a system that is complicated by an almost infinite amount of factors and conditions. Usually a glade represents an area that recently changed so that it could no longer support the other surrounding plants. This could be because of poor soil... |
why do drills spin? | There are really two things that are going on with a drill bit. Firstly, if you look at the tip of the bit, you'll feel that at the end are two sharp cutting faces. It's the constant movement of these cutting faces that removes the material in the first place - each revolution results in those cutting faces taking a li... |
Explain "syntax and implementation" in regards to learning programming languages. | Syntax is the rules of the language. If I understood the vocabulary of English, but not the syntax, I might say something like "explaining syntax, I am trying: to". Even though I 've put the words in the wrong order, and used the wrong punctuation, you can work out what I mean - but if you put the words in the wrong or... |
The Trayvon Martin shooting. Was out of the loop for a day or two. | Trayvon Martin was a 17 year-old black male who lived with his mother in Miami, but was visiting his father in Sanford, Florida. On the way back to his father's girlfriend's house in a gated community on 2/26/12, a white, neighborhood watch captain named George Zimmerman saw Martin and was suspicious of him. He called ... |
Why does someone stricken with Alzheimer's forget names and memories, but retain math skills and advanced vocabulary? | They don't actually necessarily keep all of those. Vocabulary is *very* frequently affected by Alzheimer's, to the point that it can be part of the testing or a warning sign. |
If you have to have yogurt to make yogurt from "scratch", how does it form originally? | leave milk out and let it naturally grow bacteria. Hope you have the right kind of non toxic bacteria. |
What is this gray liquid coming out of my blender and how does it get there? | The seal around the drive shaft which powers the blades inside the blender is not completely water proof. Liquid from inside the blender gets into the bearings and seals area where there is also lubricant and this liquid then slowly leaks out through the bottom onto the base. |
Since a compass is a magnet, why do compasses always point towards magnetic north, but not a typical household ceramic magnet? | The needle is long and floats on a bearing. Put your ceramic magnet so the North and South poles are parallel to the ground. Float it on water somehow and wait. It will orient itself with the magnetic field in your vicinity. Compasses orient with the magnetic field. One end points to the North magnetic pole, the other ... |
Why do publishers have to pay royalties to voice actors when re releasing a game those VAs performed in? | Because it's in their contract. A voice actor does voice acting in return for money. The terms of this are specified in the specific contract they sign. Contracts may be set up so that the voice actor forfeits all rights to their performance, or retains some rights, and they may be paid all at once, or per sale, or a c... |
why do we sometimes wake up accidentally when our bodies are still obviously tired? | It's more important to be able to respond to threats than to get a good night's sleep, and while modern life may be safe, this was not always the case. |
Is dust able to stack up, let's say, 1 cm (0.39 inches) and how long would it take? | Yes it can, and it depends entirely on the speed of dust production. Cotton flocking factory? Probably minutes. Intel clean room? Most likely never. |
What happens behind the scenes when a person is clubbed and blacks out? | Movies and TV show this pretty unrealistically. It's a lot easier to kill a person with a head blow than to just knock them out. This is especially true of hitting the back of their head, where the section of brain matter that controls a lot of autonomic systems happens to sit. Unconsciousness is usually caused when yo... |
What do modern spies do? | OK, first, take whatever picture is in your mind, and make it about 50x more boring.If they told you, they'd have to kill you. |
Why do dogs suck at hide-and-seek when they have a super sensitive olfactory sense? | Remember that their noses are so sensitive that to them, the whole house is saturated with the smell of everything. Imagine trying to find one hidden bottle of perfume in the perfume department at macy's - it's just too much sensory input to be accurate in all those "smells" - |
If I renounce my U.S citizenship where would i be deported to? | You cannot revoke your citizenship while inside the country. The first step would be to leave. Assuming you were just visiting somewhere and then renounced your citizenship, that country may still be able to deport you back to the USA, just as a noncitizen. This would make some things like travel and work very difficul... |
U.S internet costs a lot due to lack of competition. Why aren't many competitors in the U.S opposed to places like Korea? | You have the cause and effect backwards here. It is expensive to be an internet provider because you have to physically run the lines and run the servers. In countries like South Korea the distance that you have to run things is short because the country is small. They also have a large percentage of the infrastructure... |
Why do some Internet Service packages come with data caps? | Because they can get away with it. The cost for the Internet infrastructure that the company needs to provide are for peak loads, not total load. It is much cheaper for them to provide several TB of data a month for a customer that only uses it between 3 and 5 AM local time than it cost to get a few GB to someone who u... |
why are almost all the animals afraid of rain ? | SOME animals can stand extreme heat, SOME animals can stand extreme cold, MOST are in the middle. Being out in the rain means their fur will get soaked, and if it gets soaked it doesn't work to keep them warm any more. This is why we humans do not wear fur coats in the rain, we wore oilskins and now we wear smooth synt... |
Why does crickets chirp at night? | They try to hide from their most common predators by staying quiet during daytime. And then come out during the night to attract a mate when it's too dark for birds to hunt. |
If we re-built voyager today, but with the advancement of technology we posses. How much more could we learn, if anything? | You'll need to be more specific. Best guess is you're refering to Voyager the space probe, or the Rutan Voyager aircraft, [but it could be a few things]. |
Why would a British Candy bar have different nutrition facts when sold in the USA on the exact same bar? | 1: they aren't the same bar, just because they're called the same thing. 2: different regulatory requirements for what needs to be listed and how accurate it needs to be. Maybe the US doesn't require decimal places but the UK does and so they round for the US?", 'Almost everything sold in America with sugar in it actua... |
Why can Red Bull still advertise that it "gives you wings" and not get sued for false advertising? | The legal doctrine is called "Puffery". If a claim is so absurd or un-verifiable that a reasonable person would not consider it to be an objective statement of fact, then it's not false advertising. _URL_0_The legal doctrine around false advertising is that a statement is illegal if a "reasonable person" would believe ... |
Why do people experience déjà vu? | If I remember correctly, it's a cognitive short circuit - so to speak. The brain working diligently, transferring visual and auditory stimulus to the subconscious for processing, when a few bits of data slated for 'real time' end up getting tagged as 'past memories'. When the data comes full circle and is processed by ... |
What is Net Neutrality and why does it matter to me? | As it stands, now, you 've paid for internet access and you're able to connect to anyone you want. Would you like that to continue? The companies trying to end net neutrality want a setup where they're able to limit connections to those that they 've approved . Suppose Comcast wants you to buy their movie streaming ser... |
What is that loud vibration noise I hear when I open my car window on the freeway? | Have you ever blown across the top of an empty beer bottle? Enclosed space, air blowing across the opening. Notice how the bigger it is, the lower the note? Now, imagine a beer bottle shaped like the inside of a car. That open window is like the spout of the bottle, and the wind like a giant mouth blowing across. The v... |
You're not suppose to use Band-aids/coverings for a scarless and well healed tattoo. So why are they used for every other cut, scrape, or puncture for extended periods of time? | For tattoos, the needle only goes a certain distance into your skin so it's not a full puncture. On top of this, the idea of a tattoo is to have the ink stay in your skin; if you cover it or use medicated ointment, you'll pull up the ink and ruin the tattoo in general. Since cuts, scrapes and punctures are wounds that ... |
Why when it is sunny out do you close one eye instead of closing both eyes equal amounts? | This might be poor etiquette, but I'm going to direct you to [this *extremely informative* response to this exact question] from AskScience. The tl;dr version : > Your brain is processing just fine. It's more that a certain level of stimulation for the trigeminal nerve triggers the sensation of pain. Opening your other... |
Why do Jewish people make up just 2% of the US population, yet they are very dominant in many industries (i.e. banking, Hollywood, corporate, etc.)? | Connections, hard work and a cultural importance of a good education.A big part of it is that all of these things were at one point considered fairly disreputable and not something that good WASP type people would be involved in. As people who faced quite a lot of discrimination historically but who are also generally ... |
Why does nearly every frozen food require the oven to be preheated at 400 Fahrenheit? What is it about 400 degrees that's such a sweet spot? | The hotter the oven, the faster it transfers heat into the food. Water requires a large amount of energy to melt, and a huge amount of energy to change its temperature regardless of what state it's in. A cool oven won't melt the food fast enough to avoid drying out or overcooking the outside. A hotter oven will dump mo... |
When my house phone calls or answers a call, I get huge lag spikes on my computer? | Do you have a cordless phone? Is your computer using a wifi connection? Some cordless phones operate on the 2.4 gHz band, which is also what wifi b/g and some wifi n networks operate on. Therefore, any communication through the phone will interfere with the wifi signal. If you are using a cordless home phone, check the... |
suggestion for the mods: Please add a current events section to the sidebar. | Interesting idea. But also remember: the first answer to a question isn't always the right answer. But reddit voting tends to push one answer to the top, and then it tends to stay, even if it's wrong. It's good to have a little turnover.I love this idea. Every 10 minutes there is a post about "EXPLAIN OWS" |
Why do flies always land on my monitor? | Confirmation bias. They may well land on your light bulb. But you're not staring at your light bulb for hours and hours on end, so you wouldn't notice it as much. |
Is it possible to have a solar panels system on a roof of a house and be fully energy self-sufficient? | Absolutely. In some states you can even sell power back to the electric company for tax credits.Very dependent on where you live, and whether your house has been optimised for it. In the right place, in the right house, yes. In Northern Europe in the winter, no. You might manage enough electricity but you'd never heat ... |
If sounds passing through an object cause it to vibrate is it possible to create sounds such as the chirping of birds just by vibrating an object at the right speed or frequency? | Yes. That is how speakers work. You induce them to vibrate in JUST the right way to produce the exact sound you want. You can turn any object into a speaker, but speakers are specially designed to not distort sound. If you try to turn a glass cup into a speaker, you will have distortions due to the natural frequencies ... |
How do Fast Food Restaurants like KFC keep their recipes a secret, if they're distributed worldwide? | They don't make everything from scratch in each restaurant. Things are made in a factory and shipped to the stores, similar to how you 'd buy a box of Mac and Cheese. Inside they have a packet of "cheese" powder. You make Mac and Cheese at home when you open the box and follow the instructions, but that doesn't mean th... |
Why do shoelaces lose their ability to stay tied up over time? | The same parts of the lace always are in the knot so they get worn smooth by the action of tying and movement while beinng worn. The smooth parts don't grip each other as well. |
Why is buying things in bulk cheaper? | From a purely economic stand point, there are two types of costs: Fixed and Variable. Fixed is say your rent, or start up costs, so for example to buy a teddy bear factory costs 100 dollars, while variable costs for example are a teddy bears costing 4 dollars per bear to produce. So in order to make one bear your total... |
Why do our bodies not feel sexually aroused anymore once we have an orgasm? | Because your body needs to worry about other things too, like eating and sleeping. If an organism was always feeling randy, he'd waste all his energy getting his groove on, and he'd be putting his health at risk. So instead, we've evolved so that once the prime directive of breeding is handled, that impulse is mitigate... |
Why do small dogs start to "swim" if you hold them above water? | He's warming up for the eventual possibility that you are going to drop him in water. Why else are you holding him over the water anyways. |
Why does the government permit lethal habits like alcoholism and sometimes drug addiction? | The government has no power to prevent alcoholism or drug addiction. They can make these things illegal, but anti-alcohol/drug laws have been shown to be ineffective. Prohibition didn't work and created a great deal of violent well-funded gangs and corruption. Today lots of drugs are illegal, but people still use illeg... |
If the human mouth has so much bacteria that a bite is almost guaranteed to get infected, why do we want to put a fresh cut in our mouths? | From what i'm aware of, the bacteria in our own bodies is safe for our body, so it wouldn't matter whether it got inside our own body. The reason we put the cut in our mouths is because it's an instinctual action because saliva has healing properties. Same reason why animals like dogs lick wounds. |
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