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How do coffee machines (like a Keurig) super heat water in 10 seconds? | a thin layer of water heats up very quickly. Take a wet sponge, put it in the microwave for 10 seconds, it will be extremely hot. A cup of water wouldn't be warm in 10 seconds. |
When you boil water, where does the air that fills the bubbles come from? | "Boiling" is the process of water becoming steam. The "air" in those bubbles is water turning into its gaseous form from its liquid formWhen you heat water, the first bubbles that appear are the air that was dissolved in it. This is because gasses are more soluble in cold water than hot. Once the air is driven off, the... |
... If yogurt is made with a starter of a small bit of yogurt, how was the first yogurt ever created? | They were not created, they were captured and bred from wild strains of bacteria. You could start the same sort of thing today, but your quality would be hit or miss . |
What causes something to have a smell? | Molecules from it break off and float around in the air. Your nose picks them up, and your olfactory center "reads" them. Yes this means exactly what you think it means, when you smell pooWe can smell things because particles are released from the substance. These particles diffuse into the air, and then we breath them... |
I'm British. How could Greece defaulting on its loan repayment and leaving the eurozone affect me, the rest of the EU and the global economy? | For one thing, some of that debt is owed to UK banks and institutions. They will have to take a loss, which could mean everything to high interest rates to outright bank failures. It will heard the economies of the EU in general, and those are some of the UK biggest trading partners. One the other hand, the weakened eu... |
S.A.D (Seasonal Affective Disorder) | Basically, not getting enough sun makes you depressed. That's why one of the ways to alleviate it is to use a light box. |
Why is it so difficult to fall asleep without a blanket even when you aren't cold? | People develop patterns for going to sleep. When you lie down, put your head on a pillow and cover yourself with a blanket your body thinks "ok, it's time to go to sleep" because you 've trained it to react that way. You could just as easily train your body with a different set of criteria for sleepNot sure, but I thin... |
Why are some major media outlets speculating a Ted Cruz presidential run, ignoring that he was born in Canada? | His father was a Cuban who moved to the US in the 1950s , his mother was born in US. You don't have to be born in the US to be eligible.The term the Constitution uses for presidential eligibility is "natural born citizen". That term is not defined in the Constitution, nor has it ever been clarified by a court. Some peo... |
At what point do under the table bank deposits become suspicious? | The reporting limit is $10,000 but if you arrange multiple transactions that look like you should have done a single over $10,000 transaction you'll trip anti-money laundering law wires. For taxes, you should report *all* income earned in a period, regardless of source.Why are depositing tax free income? Stop it.Think ... |
Why in ancient times anything but a pure wife was rejected, but some men married widows? | Men didn't prefer virgins because they got to be the first. It was about legacy. Everything they had and were would be passed on to a son, and they wanted to make sure that boy really was his son. Marrying a virgin helped ensure this. Not only could the husband be sure she was not pregnant with another man's child, but... |
Why do people say county jail is worse than prison? | County is nothing but laying and sitting, in a lot of places. Small town? You're just in a cell in a courthouse with a few other guys, beds, and a tv. Prison has other shit to do. Library, classes, exercise and what have you. |
why do large amounts of prize money, (e.g. $100,000 from a game show or a lottery prize) get taxed so much? | Lottery winnings are taxed as ordinary income at the Federal level, and by most states. The highest U.S. tax rate is 39.6%, and it's applied to any income over $418,401 for an individual. So on a big jackpot, that's almost 40% right off the top. Then of course your state gets to tax the income as well. |
That baby smell. Like on baby items in Toys R Us, what is it and why does it all smell the same? | It's made to smell like baby powder, which is rarely actually used on babies these days. But lots of diapers have that as their default scent, so babies still smell like it. The day my daughter was born, it blew my mind that she smelled just like the Cabbage Patch Kid I had when I was little. Then I realized it wasn't ... |
What is on the papers that news anchors are continuously shuffling? | Newsreaders usually have a small screen under the camera. On that screen, the text they read out is shown. This screen is called a "teleprompter". But in case the prompter breaks, they have the same text with them on paper, so they can continue reading the newsIIRC it comes from the days when newsreaders actually used ... |
What happens inside of your body when you overheat? | The heat messes with the functionality of your cells. Different mechanisms within the body require that very specific heat range or they fail to function properly. As your core temp increases the biological functions are no longer I their optimal zone so they start malfunctioning or stop malfunctioning. Additional, esp... |
How is headbutting someone effective? How do you hurt your opponent without hurting yourself? | You take the harder part of your head and aim for a softer part of theirsIt is often not, especially as it is often depicted on television with two people essentially mashing foreheads together. A misplaced strike can easily wound the "headbutter" as significantly as the "headbuttee." Optimally, one would strike the so... |
Most fracking happens at over 1 to 2 miles under ground. What is the theory that explains how that water gets through 2 miles of bedrock to pollute my 150 foot well? | There is definitely the potential for fracking to pollute groundwater. The truth is, we don't really know for sure exactly how much the underground geology is altered when they use fracking. They inject an extraordinary amount of fluid into the ground under an extraordinary amount of pressure, fracturing the rock forma... |
How do planes "break" the sound barrier? | The speed of sound is only about 780 miles per hour, and all you need to do to break the sound barrier is go faster than that. Most normal planes already go about 500~ mph, so boosting that up to 800~ isnt too hard |
How can we sometimes see the moon during the day and at night within a 24 hour period? | When the sun, moon, and earth form a 90 degree angle the moon will be visible for part of the day and part of the night since it's only 6 hours ahead or behind the sun but still fairly well illuminated. In that case the moon will rise around noon and set around midnight , making it visible during a portion of the day. ... |
How can "The Interview" have an all persons fictitious disclaimer at the end, when it is clearly based on a real living person? | So the TL:NR is going to be "That line doesn't really do jack" here's why: Like someone using music or audio without consent saying "Blahbity blah belongs to such and such, no claim to copyright is made" or some such gives you no legal protection in court should that person decide to sue you the same is going to be tru... |
Is a human virgin birth scientifically possible? | If a woman is a virgin until a penis enters her vagina, then yes, virgin births are possible. If a man were to ejaculate on her, it's possible that sperm cells could swim up the vaginal canal and make her pregnant. |
How does Piratebay still manage to be a live website? | This bully, Pirate von Bayinstein, goes to a school connected to yours. Every day at the joint lunchtime your two schools have together he steals the cookies your mom packed for you. This pisses you off, so you go to your teacher and tell on him. Unfortunately, while he may be breaking your school's rules, he is not br... |
Theoretically, shouldn't a pyramid scheme work? | Pyramid schemes are 100% effective so long as the number of people joining exceeds the number of people who are already involved. This works because you can use the joiners money to pay off the oldest members. The problem is that the number of fools is a finite number. Eventually the scheme cannot maintain cash flowBas... |
How reaction wheels (gyroscopes) in spacecraft work? How do they produce force? | The simple answer is because of Newton's laws. They actually aren't using any of the special properties of gyroscopes. If you apply a force with an electric motor to a heavy disk, you are also applying an opposite force to the object the motor is mounted to. Same thing if you apply a force using a set of brakes. That o... |
Why is a baby not nine months old when its born? | Because it's called a "birth"day - we define your age as being measured by your date of birth. We do that because it's easier to know for sure the day that the baby came out of the mom than the day that the sperm hit the egg. Even with all our technology, there's no real 100% way to know "Oh yeah, this was fertilized o... |
What does the CDC in America do? | As some examples: CDC tracks the spread of diseases, looking for the source, transmission vector, and that sort of thing. CDC also maintains the ‘strategic national stockpile’ of medicine, which is basically something from an action move. They can get tons of medical products to basically anywhere in the US in 12 hours... |
what in our brain makes the auto alarm clock go off? | This is an extremely complex part of biology. The processes your body uses for internal time keeping is called the circadian rhythm. Your circadian rhythm is affected by many different things such as hormone levels and balances within your brain, which in turn can be affected by external stimuli such as temperature and... |
What is actually going on with the oil companies, and why do the prices keep dropping? | all of these answers contain somewhat true points, but something to point out -- no one 'sets' oil prices, not the oil exploration and production companies, not OPEC, not anyone except the market. The two types of oil quoted when people talk about 'oil prices' are WTI and Brent Crude and these prices are set by futures... |
what antibodies and reagents are | An antibody is a protein produced by the body to combat disease. The antibodies will attach to the outside of a virus, coating it and making it inactive. A virus coated in antibodies can't infect other cells. A reagent is chemical added to a mixture that allows a reaction to occur but is not consumed in the process. |
How does the extra printed money from quantitative easing get into circulation? | It's created electronically, and then used to buy bonds. Because those bonds are now owned, they can't be bought by the private investors anymore, so they have to go put their money other places instead. |
Why do most promotions say "Purchase Not Necessary"? | If a purchase is necessary to enter the game of chance the promotion is classified as a lottery. Some governments, such as the US and the UK, deem as illegal. You should be able to get a piece for free by going to your local McDonalds and stating you'd like to enroll without a purchase. Your request must then legally b... |
Why do people call Fifty Shades of Gray porn? | It's an erotic novel, which is about as close to porn as you can get while still being a novel. From what I understand, it goes into great detail about the intimacy involved.A better question is why we have the word "Porn" The word is a pejorative for anything of a sexual nature that you may disagree with. "I can descr... |
How does hollywood accounting make a successful movie like Forrest Gump to be categorize as net loss, is it not true that box office - production office = profit? | Let's imagine that I'm making a film. It costs me $100million to make the film. And the film takes $300million at the box office. But of that $300million, the cinemas themselves keep $100million, so I get $200million. This sounds like $100million profit, right? I'm going to pay the screenwriter 10% of the profit. So he... |
Why is it that Reddit only displays some of my subreddits in the drop down at one time? | The maximum number of subreddits for the drop down list is 50Is there a maximum number it can display? |
How and why did cannabis come to be illegal? | because of systemic political racism. back in the 1930's, mexicans and blacks smoke weed. white people didn't. so weed was make illegal to have a reason to put mexicans and blacks in jail. |
How are aluminum tent poles so much stronger/springier today? | It might be the same as how it's done with aircraft wings. In a normal alloy the elements are evenly mixed throughout the structure. In some more modern high strength alloys you have certain regions that have a greater ration of one metal to another than other regions do. This can allow things such as increased flexibi... |
Why does sperm and bleach smell basically the same? | If I remember my awkward Catholic school sex ed, the female reproductive canal is acidic. Therefore, the male ejaculate has to be slightly basic to counteract it. Bleach is a strong alkaline, hence a somewhat similar smell. Also, I think semen may contain an element of chlorine, we didn't get that far in class ;) |
How does the 'Stingray' work? Wouldn't you be able to hear interference on calls etc? | Your phone treats the Stingray as a local cell tower. And the Stingray passes through all cell phone traffic. It happens quick enough that any delay is not noticed. No interference is generated. If you are concerned about Stingrays in your neighborhood see: _URL_0_', "IMSI catchers work by pretending to be a normal cel... |
What stops a journalist from printing anything 'off the record'? | If you print something that was said to you in the course of performing your journalistic duties, you are basically betraying the trust of your source and burning that source. You do it once, you'd need some luck to be able to talk to anyone on the inside ever again. |
Why do I become even more angrier at the person who really hurt me when they try to be nice to me or offer something nice when I'm upset? | Human instinct is to not repeat a task that hurts you. You have in some way opened up and allowed yourself to be hurt by this person. They hurt you and your natural reaction is to want to not be hurt again so when they try to be nice your brain doesn't want to open back up to them and give them another opportunity to h... |
Why were ancient cities buried or abandoned if they continued to grow into modern cities? | Some cities have been around for thousands of years, and still are inhabited today. Rome or example or Istanbul. Many cities were abandoned because of things like: 1. Natural Disasters2. Lack of/exhaustion of local resources3. Economic/Trade shifts', "Well, look at your example, Corinth. It was sacked and burned by Rom... |
Why do we perceive our vision as a single frame when we have two eyes? | We have binocular vision, by using two eyes our brain receives to separate images with everything shifted slightly left or right. Your brain then takes the images and process them together into a single image, using the differences to give you depth perception and three dimensional vision. For example I am sitting at m... |
Why does semen turn hard when exposed to hot water? | The same reason eggs get more solid when they cook, I believe. The heat causes some of the proteins to denature. Proteins are kind of like balled-up organic strings. Since they are round, they easily bump past each other in a liquid. When they denature, they partially or completely unravel, and the loose ends get all t... |
LI5: Why wont the US government legalize marijuana? | Legalizing marijuana is not a politically wise proposal to make. There are lots of reasons why this is so, but the core thing is that a politician would lose more votes from the minority that opposes marijuana than from the majority that supports it. As long as that is true, marijuana will not be legalized, no matter h... |
How is a SSN (Social Security Number) generated? | Area numbers - The first three numbers originally represented the state in which a person first applied for a social security card. Numbers started in the northeast and moved westward. This meant that people on the east coast had the lowest numbers and those on the west coast had the highest. Since 1972, the Social Sec... |
How do trees survive winter? | They can store nutrients below ground mostly. Think of syrup, which all decidious trees in northern climates produce. The flow of syrup is the tree moving sugars from its lower storage organs to its leaf buds yo support the new growth. Also woody tissue with secondary cell walls are dead so they aren't really supportin... |
Why in construction, when they lay rebar, is it in a grid pattern? | Because grids are easy and the structural integrity gained from triangles would not outway the massive extra time investment.With rebar being placed in concrete it is used to add tensile strength . The strength of rebar isn't utilized from the grid pattern itself but by the pieces parallel to each other resisting stret... |
Why does diarrhea make your anus burn. | Several factors contribute to the feeling of burning, ranging from the following depending on your particular situation: * diarrhea poop is more acidic than normal poop. * reduced time in transit through your gut may also leave more digestive enzymes in diarrhea than regular poop* increased water content in your poop m... |
What is the purpose of hanging highly irradiated patient's limbs up in the air? | Not a scientifically backed explanation as such but it might be to do with minimizing contact with surfaces to reduce the pain the subject is in. Any sort of second degree burn or worse hurts when it has pressure appliedIs that a real photo? When is it from if so? |
How is the melody encoded on a vinyl and how is it reproduced by a record player ? | Such is the genius of Thomas Edison. It turns out sound waves are really pressure waves that exert force on your eardrums 'creating' sound. Vinyl is a soft material which is sensitive to subtle changes in force. Therefore to make a recording, an etching needle is placed on the vinyl and when sounds are made it moves th... |
How did child rearing work before diapers? | As far as infants, cloth and linen were often used as diapers, this is shown in native tribes. Disposable diapers are relatively new. Many people still use cloth diapers as they tend to be better for an infants skin. Thorough cleaning was just very importantPeople just used cloth which they had to wrap around the baby ... |
When naming a new royal, are there only certain names they are allowed to use or is it just assumed they'll use a previous royal name? | It comes down to custom and tradition. For instance, with British royalty, they need to pick a British name. Custom dictates they can't go with something like Barbara or Fleur. Custom shows that typically they choose names to honor other family members or royalty. That's how they chose Charlotte, Elizabeth, and Diana a... |
According to the BBC: pilots used the aircrafts' sensors to confirm "no civilians were in the proximity of the targets" In the Syrian Bombings. How? | It basically means "We hit the designated target. The target was defined as hostile, therefore everybody there were enemies. If there were any civilians, we define them as enemies as well.". In other words, they only know that the bombs hit as intended, they don't know who was there or if the intelligence that selected... |
Why do dogs throw up when they're hungry? | I guess you have never been really hungry. Not an insult I just mean humans do the same thing its just we can just feed our selves or drink water or something to stop the hunger before it gets to that point. As a former homeless dude I have been that hungry you start to drool and it burns in your belly till you just go... |
What does it mean as Paul Halmos says in his Naive Set Theory that "nothing contains everything" | It simply means that there's no set that contains every possible element, and that we can't arbitrarily define any set we want. Set theory defines objects called "sets", which are simply collections of elements. For a given set, every possible element either is or isn't in this set. So given a set and an element, we ca... |
Why can't you "uncook" something? | Most of what your asking is covering the difference between a physical change and a chemical change. : _URL_2URL_1_ In short a physical change would be melting ice or cutting up a stick of butter. It's different in form but essentially the same. Chemical changes alter the chemical composition of something so it's no lo... |
Why do Americans always cheer when they hear their hometown/state? | Psychological tribalism. You associate with a group, so attention paid to that group can be seen as attention paid to you. You may not have strong association with your city/state, but what about your local/favorite sports team? If a comedian did a set on the same day a local team was playing, wouldn't he immediately g... |
Why does building a robot like the mars rover cost so much money? | Are you talking about the Curiosity rover that is said to have cost $2.5 billion? If so, some clarification might be warranted. NASA spread the $2.5 billion figure over eight years. The money spent went into salaries of engineers, programmers, managers, and independent contractors in over twenty states across the count... |
How does ticket scalping work? | You buy the tickets when they're available, and then you sell them to desperate people for a higher price than you bought them. It's a generally scummy thing to do because you're just jacking up the price for no reason.person A buys tickets. Person B goes to buy tickets but they are sold out. person A sells person B ti... |
What's the difference between Meth and Adderall? | [Aderall] is a mix of different types of amphetamine salts and methamphetamine is another type of amphetamine . There is a difference in their chemical structure and how fast they work. What's in Aderall works a *lot* slower than methamphetamine which has a way of fastly working its way past the blood-brain barrier Amp... |
Why can't we use physical tests to detect mental illness? | We don't understand the brain nearly as well as we understand the circulatory system, though for some mental illnesses we are starting to be able to detect them with brain imaging technology. For instance, Schizophrenia. _URL_0_ |
What makes the japanese market so different from the western one? Why japan has all these special edition albums, games, mangas, electronics, gadgets that are never released elsewhere? | High import taxes force them to produce their own version for domestic market only. Plus, despite their efforts, they're fairly English illiterate so internationalized marketing doesn't work quite well there and needs to be localized heavily. Being a cultural galapagos also means they have unique tastes and demands unl... |
What makes debts you owe be removed / halved in what you originally owe from Debt Collectors? | Often times the original company you owe the money to, sells the debt for less than the original and writes it off as a business loss. For some businesses this is a better choice then spending money trying to collect the debt from you. The company that buys it will try and get you to pay them more than what they paid f... |
What are trust funds and how do they work? | Basically money that someone invests for some specific purpose or persons. A rich dude will create a trust for his 3 kids, or a scholarship fund, or charity or something the trust will then have rules on how it may be invested, and how much will be paid out, when and to who. Many trust funds are set up to avoid taxes, ... |
Why do certain "noises" (i.e., a fingernail scratching a chalkboard) irritate us so much? | Certain sounds at particular frequencies are very unpleasant to the human ear, the sound of that falls into that range. However it isn't something that effects all humans the same, some tolerate the sound more so than others or are not bothered by it at all. I fall into the category of not being bothered by it at all, ... |
What would happen if the US Government payed off all its debt? | We would accrue new debt as we continue to borrow money to fund large scale efforts, unless the magical source of money that allowed us to pay off all our debt also funded that. Nations aren't in debt because they can't pay their bills , they're in debt because it is useful to get a large sum of money now and be able t... |
What does it mean to verify permissions in a UNIX system and, if you are a grandma on a Mac, do you need to repair them? | Each file and folder in a UNIX system has a list of permissions, which are a list of rules describing "who is allowed to do what to this file". For example, Bobby can read, modify, or delete a particular file but Charlie can only read it and Danny can't even read the file. Repairing permissions on a Mac tells the compu... |
What is the purpose of electric motion detecting hand towel dispensers in public restrooms when we have cheap, mechanical, spring loaded dispensers which have no circuitry and always work? | It's a hygiene thing too, I think. It means you don't have to touch the handle on the towel dispenser, which might conceivably be contaminated with someone else's fecal matter.you can control the usage by setting delays on how fast the sensor one will spit out the next piece limiting usage, saving trees/costs. |
Why are programs allowed to use 100% CPU ? | We bought the CPU to be used, not to sit idle. If one program wants all of the CPU and no other programs want any, why would the program that wants it not be given it? The CPU doesn't have inertia. If someone else comes along and asks for CPU, it can be taken away from the first process in a tiny fraction of a second.O... |
Is there an "absolute hot", the hottest temperature possible, or can temperature be infinitely hotter? | This is just conjecture, but as I understand, heat is a measure of the speed at which electrons are orbiting the nucleus of a given atom. 0 kelvin and this orbit stops entirely. I hypothesize that, since as you dump more and more energy into these electrons they move faster, they'd eventually begin to approach the spee... |
Besides cannabis, are there any objects that naturally contain THC? | Almost all living multicellular organisms produce THC as a part of the regulation of the metabolism. THC receptors are also present in all of these organisms. Species as different as the simple nematode and the mighty redwood tree all have THC receptors, and produce THC as part of their normal metabolic cycle. This is ... |
Why do people puke when they over-exert themselves? | It's a derivative of the flight-or-fight response. When you are exercising your sympathetic nervous system starts to take over the same if you were really scared. This makes sense from an evolutionary stand point, any time you would have been running you would have been in danger. The sympathetic system diverts energy ... |
The Russian military's current capabilities | In terms of what? They are the second most powerful nation on earth. WAY behind the US of course but still significantly powerful. The real trouble is that they are fully geared up to fight wars of 40 years ago.. They have lots of tanks, aircraft and ships but not much by way of stealth abilities . If you want a more d... |
How do G force suits work? | The compress the body in an attempt to keep the blood from leaving your head, which is what causes blackouts at high GsAs dancingwithcats said the suit helps constrict certain parts of your body to hinder the blood flow so the pressure is higher in the upper body. Higher G forces will literally draw the blood away from... |
The different "grades" of gas, and how much it really matters. | In one part of how a car engine works, a piston squeezes a mixture of gasoline and air, then a spark plug sets it on fire at a precise time. But squeezing that mixture makes it hot, and sometimes it can make it *so* hot that it catches fire before the right time. This can push the engine backward, hurts your gas mileag... |
Why did they need to close the airspace over Sydney because of the current hostage situation? | It happens all the time during critical incidents. Usually the goal is to keep media aircraft back so they do not interfere with law enforcement operations. |
What are the potential health risks to humans of pervasive plastic contamination? | Plastic filaments and particles can interact with receptors on the outside of cells, and can freely enter cells by moving through the fatty cell membrane to disrupt processes inside the cell. The downstream effects are poorly understood, and could be anything from nothing, to interfering with hormone cycles and metabol... |
Why is stock only traded 6hrs/day, 30hrs/week? | In general, limited hours help the market remain stable.There's all sorts of ways to trade stuff 24/7, it's just that the major stock markets officially close down during the night/holidays/etc. But there's a bunch of stock markets across the globe, there's stock futures , and all sorts of other markets where you can g... |
do workout supplements (such as pre-workout that claims to increase the ability of your blood to deliver oxygen to muscles) actually work, and if so what actually happens to your body? | Somewhat. They work by increasing levels of nitric oxide in the body, which regulates blood pressure by relaxing the blood vessels. You can't supplement nitric oxide directly, but two amino acids, L-arginine and L-citrulline, cause the body to produce it. While L-arginine is a popular product, it is poorly absorbed by ... |
What causes stains to become permanent? | Color compounds are usually fairly large molecules, and the fabrics in your clothes are made of even larger polymer chains. Big molecules like this can interact [non-covalently] . Non-covalent interactions can add up to be pretty strong, but also are reversible. Detergent in particular is very good and inserting itself... |
If sound is typically vibration travelling through air, how can I hear someone through a wall. | Wall vibrates too, but less than air, then transers the vibrations to air around you Edit: grammar |
Why does the Violin (or any of it's kind) sounds so compressed when played inside a car, and sounds normal when played in any room? | Most instruments, really anything that makes sound will be like that, even clapping your hands. It's all about acoustics, basically how the sound bounces off the walls and back to you. An orchestra sounds gorgeous in a large and well-designed room because the sound bounces off the walls again and again, surrounding you... |
What was building 7? Why do conspiracy theorists use it as an example? what is the "real explanation" behind its collapse? What do the theorists think happened? | The World Trade Center was a complex of seven buildings. The twin towers were 1 WTC and 2 WTC. Four other buildings were on the same block, and 7 WTC was across the street. While only the twin towers were struck by planes, their collapse caused substantial, irreperable damage to all the other buildings part of the WTC,... |
Why do we pronounce "colonel" as "curnel/kernal?" | The same reason we in Britain pronounce "Lieutenant" as "Leftenant". That's the way the word was said when we stole it off the French. |
Why am I "Innocent until proven guilty in a court of law", but only found "not guilty" and not "innocent"? | You are under no obligation to prove your innocence, nor your "not-guilty mess." The onus is on the prosecution to prove that you are guilty, and your job is to refute their accusations and show, if possible, that they can't be true. That's what presumption of innocence means. If nobody shows that you're guilty, then t... |
Why is reading good for the brain? | I can think of two important reasons. First reading and comprehension increases vocabulary and your understanding of language. Second is what you learn from the material. Even fiction can train your brain to make connections or think in ways that you hadn't before. |
What is revisionist history and why is it bad? | Revisionist history is when somebody has an idea he or she wants to support and then goes back and reinterprets historical events to create that support, sometimes interpreting events to mean the opposite of what an objective analysis would conclude.Something is 'revisionist history' if it's teaching something as thoug... |
Why do we call Earths moon "The Moon", when every other moon in the solar system have their own separate name? | We started calling it the moon before we had discovered what a moon really was, or that other planets had their own moons.Some people brought up the point about languages, which could change the Moon’s “real name” in a culture. but there is a catch. The Moon is the name that’s been approved by the International Astrono... |
Why do countries have different voltage for appliances ? | First, I believe you mistyped and meant 120/240v in the US. There is a trade-off between voltage and power lost due to resistance. Very few things in your house use even 120v, so why so much voltage? First you need to know some simple concepts about electricity. For a certain amount of power running through a wire, you... |
How are people identified by their dental records? | Everyone's teeth and jaws are different, like everyone has a different fingerprint. And dental work like fillings, caps, etc, and their placement make dental structures even more unique. I have taken college courses in basic forensic techniques, but I'm not a forensic scientist, so I can't tell you *exactly* how someon... |
Why are the republican/democrat debates called debates? There's hardly any debating going on. | They're mostly called debates to lend some gravitas to the situation. What they are these days, however, is joint press conferences. It would be nice to have actual debates, but that would require politicians who are willing and able to think on their feet, and argue in defense of a position, rather than requiring an a... |
How come I'm not related to people that have the same last name as me? | Last names didn't always exist. So when they did start existing, sometimes unrelated people chose the same last name. ", 'one reason, in spanish countries at least, orphans used to get the last name "iglesias" . Since this was embarrasing for them later in life, churches decided to give them random spanish last names. |
If you melt a penny or rip up a dollar, are you combating inflation, since that cash is no longer in circulation? or is inflation less straightforward? | Yes, you are combatting inflation, but the amount of new currency that is added to the economy everyday is so massive that unless you were to orchestrate a huge money burn, you couldn’t make any sort of difference |
Why is it called the "Democratic People's Republic of Korea" when it's not a democracy or a republic? | Your mum wants to get you to eat some food you don't like, so instead of just calling it cabbage, she calls it delicious super tasty munchy fun time. But the cabbage is severe famine and human rights violations. |
How does a computer screen work? | Your monitor has a grid of tiny little boxes called pixels . Each one of these can be controlled independently to display a certain color and brightness. Your computer figures out how to draw your screen by filling in each pixel and sending that information to the monitor. It does this usually around 60 times each seco... |
Why is the Euro more valuable than the American Dollar? | It doesn't really matter if one number is bigger than the other number. What matters is how many Euros you get and how much stuff you can buy with a Euro. So if I have 3 Euros, but it costs me 3 Euros to buy some candy, then I have no more Euros left! But if I have $2 and it only costs $1 to buy some candy then I have ... |
How come the suit (pants, shirt, jacket, tie) became the norm for formal dressing everywhere and not something else? | After the French Revolution western men rapidly abandoned the frilly flamboyant fashion characteristic of the Rococo era and adapted a much more conservative fashion of England. The modern suit was developed in the 19th century by an Englishman named [Beau Brummell]. He wore well tailored jacket, white shirt with neckc... |
Why do many companies nowadays see tattoos as being "unprofessional"? | Because in much of modern history the people with tattoos have been people very often associated with unsavory organizations, crime, and violence. I think you can understand why companies wishing to present a professional and safe environment would shy away from hiring those with tattoos. That general attitude has been... |
Gabriel's horn, having trouble visualizing it. | Well, you could just consider it being made of lego blocks instead. Each block with length of 1 along x-axis, first one that covers the entire horn from x=1 to x=2 would have side length of 2 * 1. Basically, you're approximating upwards, so that lego is bigger than it needs to be near x=2 but that's fine. So lego block... |
instead of fighting green energy, why don't coal and gas companies invest in it? | The current energy companies have every motivation to get in on "green energy ". There are just a few problems: It is more expensive to produce than traditional fossil fuels, or only effective in a few areas or times, or doesn't have the necessary capacity. Often the only reason we see green energy is because of govern... |
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