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5p8bjx | - Why does oil turn unto a beautiful rainbow | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Small quantities of oil are almost always present on roads (usually lubricating oil from cars, bikes and trucks), yet you only see those colorful patterns on a rainy day, right? Why is that? This phenomenon occurs because when it rains, this oil comes (on the road) in contact with water. As you’ve surely heard in the past, oil and water do not mix, because the density of oil is less than that of water. The thickness of the oil layer also varies, from being as thin as a single molecule to extremely thick. Therefore, an oil layer of varying thickness floats atop the layer of water covering the road. When light rays strike the top surface of the oil film, some of them are reflected immediately, while others are refracted (i.e., they travel through the layer of oil and are subsequently reflected by the bottom surface of the oil film). In other words, some of the light rays traveled less of a distance than others to reach your (the observer’s eyes), so there is a difference in the length of the path. If the difference in the length of the paths traveled by the light is an integral multiple of the wavelength of light, then rays reflected from the two spots reinforce each other and cause constructive interference, whereas if the rays cancel each other out, then destructive interference takes place. In simple, non-technical words, due to the difference in the thickness of the oil film, light rays have to travel different distances, and they then mix together after reflecting to produce a spectrum of colors."
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5p8f61 | How do calculators work? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Well im pretty drunk, friday and all, so ill just cover addition. you'd have to understand a lot of computer architecture to understand the full... thinggg. we first have to cover XOR, it's pretty easy. XOR is a bit operation thats used for addition and it works like this, a 0 and 0 = 0, 1 and 1 = 0, and 1 and 0 = URL_0 1100 XOR 1110 = 0010 at a closer look: 0 XOR 0 = 0 (our furthest right bit result) 0 XOR 1 = 1 1 XOR 1 = 0 1 XOR 1 = 0 getting us 0010 so if we add 2 and 9 we have 2 = 0010, 9 = 1001, then 0010 XOR 1001 = 1011 = 11(eleven) and the calculator just added those numbers. take 1 + 1 though, we have 1 = 0001, then 0001 XOR 0001 = 0000, which isn't right. so when two 1's are XOR'd a carry flag would be set (or something similar) then that flag would be included in the XOR for the next bit. so heres an attempt at showing what it would look like 0001 XOR 0001 1 XOR 1 = 0 (but the carry flag is then set to 1) 0 XOR 0 = 0 but the carry flag is set so that result is XOR'd with the carry flag so 0 XOR 1(carry) = 1 0 XOR 0 = 0 0 XOR 0 = 0 so our end result is 0010 = 2",
"Binary logic is used to carry out simple arithmetic, such as addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. I cannot delve into the programmatic details. Transcendental functions like sine, cosine, inverse trig functions, integrals and so on are calculated using a series expansion called a Taylor Series. In short, every \"elementary function\" has an equivalent expression in the form of an infinite sum in polynomial form that's called a Taylor series. Using a known Taylor series, a calculator can carry out simple addition and multiplication operations, accurate to a number of decimal places that your calculator truncates at in order to calculate the value of an otherwise complex operation (trig functions, logarithms, etc.). For example, I believe a TI 83 truncates at 12-16 decimal places or so. MATLAB truncates at 16. An infinite number of terms isn't necessary on a calculator because it has finite memory to store decimal places. EDIT: Clarity"
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5p8is4 | How do paralyzed people not become overweight? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"I work at a facility home for people with cerebral palsy. Diet is key to keep my clients from becoming overweight.",
"1. There are plenty of exercises you can do that don't require the use of your legs. 2. You don't have to exercise to avoid becoming overweight. You just have to consume the same or fewer calories than you burn.",
"Weight is directly linked to calories in versus calories out. If you take more in than you burn, you will gain weight. If you burn more than you take in, you will lose weight. Exercise does not cause you to lose weight, it aids in increasing the number of calories you burn to further offset your caloric intake. There are of course added health benefits to exercise not directly related to weight, so I'm not saying it's not a good thing.",
"The same way other people don't become overweight. They don't consume more calories than they use."
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5p8kn1 | How does matte painting work? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"For everyone who doesn't know what matte painting is: it's the creation of (static) backgrounds in movies that would be too expensive to create or impossible to film. So when you watch a movie and see these great looking mountains? They're a matte painting. This beautiful, endless beach? That's only like 4 meters of sand and a palm tree, the rest is a matte painting. The grand city skyline you see while the characters and chilling on top of a skyscraper? Matte painting. The main goal of a matte painting is to enhance the scene you're shooting with a background you don't have easy access to and to look as realistic as possible. Back in the day the usage of actual matte paintings was relatively rare and mostly drawn on glass, nowadays they're everywhere. There is almost no movie without a matte painting in some form. To create a matte you can use a lot of tools. Do it the old fashioned way and draw them by hand, put them together piece by piece by using reference images and a lot of photoshop wizardry, use a 3D graphics programs like 3DS Max, Cinema 4D or Maya to build the whole scene there and then render it out or use a combination out of all the possibilities."
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5p8w4f | Why are only the tips of our fingernails white? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The fingernail looks white when it doesn't have a finger behind it. If you were to peel the nail back past the white bit, you'd find that everything that gets peeled off is also white. The tip isn't usually in direct contact with the finger, so the tip tends to be white looking despite actually being the same color as the rest of the nail."
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5p99vb | Does the gas station I fill up at really matter? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Nearly all gasoline comes from the same source for a given region. Some \"premium\" brands will add compounds to the gasoline at their filling stations that they claim improve performance or clean out the fuel lines. If you believe those claims then it could make a difference to buy gasoline with those additives.",
"I think you're better to fill up at the newer gas station with higher turnover. Newer means better underground tank that are less likely to have water seepage and other gunk in the tanks. Higher turnover means fresher, newer gas.",
"The octane reading that is displayed is actually an average of two types of octane measured. For the same octane number on the pump, the two different octanes could be very different. A car may run better on one fuel or another if it likes a certain type of octane measured better than the other, even though the number on the pump is the same. Additionally, the fuel is often a mixture of hydrocarbons that may vary from mixture to mixture, even if the octane number is the same. Octane simply is a measure of the resistance of an engine to auto ignite (something not wanted for any spark ignition engine). \"Gasoline\" is a mixture of isooctane, butane, 3-ethyltoluene, and the octane enhancer MTBE most commonly. As long as the octane ratings of this blend add up to an average r+m/2 octane of (for example) 87, then it is good to use. Yes most fuels are from the same locations, but some are treated for various \"performance enhancing\" reasons. In practical application, I've don't tests with the same car in same weather conditions of various fuels and found that some fuel from some stations provided a noticeable increase in fuel economy."
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5p99xn | I wanted to mix my OJ with some Cran-Pom juice and instead of them mixing together, the OJ stayed as a separate bar while the Cran-Pom, which was the majority of my drink, was on the top. How did this happen? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Orange juice has a higher mass density than cranberry pomegranate juice, which is why the oj stayed at the bottom. [Here's a picture]( URL_0 ) of many different liquids in a cylinder. As you can see the densities really do keep them apart. You can try this at home if you're interested. Leave a good 24 hours for really crisp edges."
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5p9f6v | Who is to blame, if anyone, for the constant rise of college tuition? | Economics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"There's a lot of \"blame\" to go around, but it's a lot of incentives: College(somewhat rightly) as something that is required in order to succeed. So there is a lot of encouragement for kids to go into college in order to get a foot in the door to start a successful career. Strictly speaking,you don't *have* to, but college still gives a return bigger than the amount of money borrowed, on average (although that gap is closing). The government (in the US), as way to help kids, loans them money.However, it doesn't do very much to regulate to make sure that the kids go to a school that is worth the money, will fit them as a student, or is efficient. In addition, a lot of state governments have been pulling back on public university funding, which puts more pressure on tuition to become a bigger portion of funding. You can also throw in high school kids who don't necessarily know exactly what they want to get out of college, and don't have a lot of ways to shop around (Which is super important to keep prices competitive). Trying to pick the \"right\" college is a very arcane process for a lot of people. They also don't have much real world experience-they don't know what a 20 year loan means in terms of commitments. However, it's not even only that they're niave,although that plays a part- who knows if you should settle for community college? You can't see 20 years into the future and say \"this is good enough\", so there is a lot of pressure to go to the \"best\" school possible to give yourself the best odds. There also aren't all that many new colleges. This is in part accreditation, but it's not the whole story. AFAIK, no one really knows why. Also for colleges, even non-profit colleges are under pressure. Not only because of the reduction of state aid as i mentioned, but in order to stay competitive (as well as swelling administrative budgets) by offering as many amenities/services as they can. So in short: Very high demand, a relatively stable supply, and consumers who don't have a lot of information, and don't have a lot of control on how money gets spent. There's a lot of incentive (for basically everyone) to get people into and through college. There isn't as much direct incentive to try to make it super efficient, and a lot of the tools you would have in a normal market (being able to shop around, very good knowledge of prices, etc) don't apply very well. But it's mostly not intentional, with the exception of bloated administration"
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5p9gpz | Why do we remember things happening differently as a child than they actually happened? | (If we were to think back on it now) | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Memory isn't like a video recorder. When you try to recall something, your essentially recreating the situation in your head, and there are ALOT of stimuli that the brain doesn't bother remembering. So what ends up happening is your brain just fills in a lot of the blanks which ultimately causes errors in memory.",
"When you recall an event you're actually remembering the last time you recalled it, so each subsequent time that memory is subject to distortion. You can eventually recall a memory that is totally false if it's distorted enough. And of course memory fades with time. There was a Northwestern Medicine study on this subject."
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5p9iit | Why is our vision somewhat 'washed out' when we first open our eyes after a nap? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It's because the colour receptor cones in your eyes wear out relatively quickly when they're looking at the same colour for prolonged periods, causing you to see less of that colour when you look to see something else. In the case of a nap, the light will shine through your eyelids and expose your cones to a prolonged red colour, so when you open your eyes, what you'll see is the world with the reds largely drained out of it, leading to the washed-out look you're referring to."
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5p9tey | Calculating pi | How did they find the infinite series of pi like pi=4-4/3+4/5-4/7+4/9...? Because, we can't just divide circumference by diameter since we never know the proper value of pi. And how did they find the "proper", true value of pi, i.e. the infinite series? | Mathematics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Picture a circle of diameter 1 Now draw a square around the outside of the circle. This will result in a sq with side length = 1 and a perimeter of 4. Now draw a sq inside the circle that touches the circle at 4 points. Now calculate the perimeter of this square (2.8). You now know that the perimeter of your circle with diameter 1 lies somewhere between 2.8 and 4. Repeat the above steps with an octagon and your potential range becomes smaller...keep doing this with shapes as n number of sides approaches infinite and you converge on pi as the perimeter of the circle"
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5p9vlt | Why do we never have any mist in the eyes during a sudden temperature change? | Excuse me for my english, this is not my first language. | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Are you asking why eyes don't fog up like glasses do when you go from cold to warm and humid? That's because our eyes are already warmed by our body so they aren't really at condensing temperatures, also there are wet so any condensation that formed would just become part of the film of water that covers our eyes anyway."
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5pa58x | If Joe Biden was to run for presidency in 2020 could he have Barack Obama as his VP? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"**No.** The [Twenty-second Amendment]( URL_0 ) states: > Section 1. No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of the President more than once. But this article shall not apply to any person holding the office of President when this article was proposed by the Congress, and shall not prevent any person who may be holding the office of President, or acting as President, during the term within which this article becomes operative from holding the office of President or acting as President during the remainder of such term. Because the Vice-President has to be able to take over if the President can no longer hold office (for example, they die), Barack Obama would have to be eligible for the presidency. Because he has already served two terms, he is not eligible, and can not serve as Biden's VP."
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5pacmg | Why do men with extreme baldness grow really full beards? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Because baldness is often related to an excess of testosterone, which is in turn related to a full beard.",
"High testosterone is related to baldness, but not the direct cause. Your body will process testosterone for removal, as it does with all chemicals because it's constantly regenerating and updating itself. One possible byproduct of this is dihydro-testosterone, which is toxic to hair follicles *if* it collects around them. For reasons not fully understood, this chemical collects in a specific pattern on male heads (hence the expression, male-pattern baldness). On women, if it happens, the chemical is evenly distributed over their entire head causing even thinning of the hair. So there are three factors: 1. how much testosterone does a man produce 2. how much of it is processed into DH-T 3. how much of this DH-T collects around the hair follicles on a man's head, instead of being expelled as waste Source: I'm going bald and have researched this into the ground. The effort it takes to retain a hairline isn't worth it unless you have a few hundred grand to spend on a transplant. I don't.",
"A high level of testosterone leads to much body hair, but speeds up the balding process. Can't have it both ways, sadly.",
"It looks good. I love bald guys with a beard..... I suspect it makes the lack of hair on the top less of a big deal. Lack of hair on the head is unusual, and with a beard, they have hair on the head."
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5palf2 | How do we know that the world's population is likely to level out and stop increasing so rapidly? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Because we've observed such trends in developed countries in the past, and expect other countries to share them. Demographic stage 1: high birthrate, low survivability. Ten-fifteen kids per family, around seven of them die before reaching adolescence, they join the workforce at around 12 with zero education. Demographic stage 2: improvements in medicine and level of life trigger a demographic explosion. Survivability increases, birthrate is retained. This taxes the environmental resources as fewer people die from famine and disease. It's where many of the developed countries still are. Demographic stage 3: requirements of worker education increase to underpin improved productivity of labour. People join the workforce at 23-25, following significant investment by their parents. Kids are no longer a quick and easy way to get more working hands into the family, stimulating family planning; two-four kids is all the family can manage. This causes population to level out. Demographic stage 4: further social and economic developments cause family to have two to zero kids, resulting in a population decline. That's where a portion of the West is. So, the end of a demographic explosion as the economic standing of developing countries improves, or we start running out of resources, at which point famine and global warfare will start culling the population down to a manageable level."
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5palju | is gravity relative to size? | If you are shrunk down to the size of an ant would gravity weigh down on you more, less or the same? | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Gravity is relative to *mass*. If you are shrunk down to the size of an ant, that depends on how exactly you were shrunk. Did your atoms somehow become smaller? Did you lose atoms from your body? Did the gaps between your atoms somehow become smaller? Since it's all science fiction and there's no way to shrink people, there's no way to answer this question."
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5pamqa | Why people don't get sick from using the same toothbrush everyday without disinfecting it? | If I spit on something every day and then kept putting it in my mouth shouldn't I get sick? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The bacteria that are inside of you will still be the same bacteria that left you (toothbrush) and go back inside you (brushing teeth) again. It stands to reason that if they don't make you sick while they were inside you before, they shouldn't make you sick when they go back inside of you again. Obviously, the same isn't true if you're using someone else's toothbrush.",
"The bacteria you scrub off your teeth don't make you sick, they just ruin your teeth. Ingesting them won't do you a whole lot of harm, but like /u/Dirt_E_Harry said, this may well not be the case if you use someone else's brush.",
"We are not sterile people. You have many living communities of fungus and bacteria all over and inside of your body. We don't get sick because our immune systems prevent them from spreading out of control and forming an infection. Trust me, there are many bacteria and fungal spores growing in your mouth. As long as you are healthy this isn't usually a problem. lets say you took antibiotics for a week though. It kills off the bacteria in your mouth, which kept the fungus in check, and you wake up one morning with a thick carpet of thrush growing on your tongue. It's yucky, but in that case the combination of killing the only competition the fungus had, and usually taking steroids like methylprednisone (which suppress your bodies immune response) results in the fungus being able to gain a foot hold in your mouth that's not normally present. So the simple answer to your question is the bacteria on your tooth brush usually pale in comparison to the active colonies already in your mouth. The different bacteria and fungus in and around your mouth are in constant battle with each other, and with your immune system, and it's a stalemate with none of them gaining a foot hold. So long as you don't get weak, or upset the balance with drugs."
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5papna | Why do fuzzy blankets feel warmer on my skin than smooth blankets? | Same thickness (both impenetrable by drafts). Same temperature (both in a cold room). Different surface texture. | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Generally you'll be warmer than what you touch so heat transfers from you to the blanket, the lower the rate of heat transfer from you to the blanket, the warmer it'll be perceived. Furry things like furry blankets or carpets have a slow rate of heat transfer from us to them because they are good insulators/poor conductors. Smooth things are good at conducting, so touching them leads to faster heat transfer from you to it and so they don't feel as warm as you're losing heat faster. In a nutshell, heat goes from you to the blanket. The furrier the blanket, the slower it happens and so the blanket feels warmer.",
"I'll take a somewhat educated guess at this one. Air is a thermal insulator. The more number of pockets of air you can build up around you, the warmer you'll feel. In a fuzzy blanket, there are more pockets of air because of the fuzzy fibers sticking out than a smooth one. Because of all those extra air pockets, you feel much warmer. This is also why two thin blankets work better than a single thick one. The extra air pocket between the two blankets provides an additional layer of insulation. Also, insulation : the property by which a substance stops heat from flowing through it."
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5patvx | the math that debunks the claim that women are paid ~75% of what men are paid. | Mathematics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It's not the math itself, it's the statistical methods. The 77% claim simply takes total wages of all women and divide them by total wages of all men. There is absolutely no adjustment for any factors that influence the wages of an individual person. This number is typically used to imply, if not directly state, that the average individual woman earns 77% of what a man earns *doing the same job*. However, it fails to account for difference in jobs or amount of hours worked. Basically, it's like claiming that a plumber should be paid as much as a neurosurgeon. Or, [in short]( URL_0 ).",
"This is pretty complex and can't be explained simply. However, the first thing to understand is that the claim that women are paid X% of what men are paid is rarely what's really being argued. There is a discrepancy, subject to change, but there's definitely a discrepancy. Depending on where you are, of course. Generally, what is argued is the *reasons* this difference exists, not *whether* it exists. Usually, this includes concepts along the lines of women entering lower-paying professions on average (so women in total may receive less money, but individual jobs might still be equal pay for equal work), or factors like maternity affecting careers and employ-ability. The fact is, this isn't really mathematical issue so much as a complex socio-cultural issue. Less people are debating what the numbers *are*, and more people are debating what the numbers *mean* and what we can do about any issues that those numbers might represent.",
"There is a Joe Rogan interview on YouTube with psycologist Jordan Peterson where they explain that there where long term studies done in Scandinavia that found men and women instinctively persuing particular fields that caused the difference in income. Women had a tendency to lean towards fields of care like teaching and nursing. Men had a tendency to go for higher paying or more hazardous jobs such as engineering, law enforcement, construction, tech, etc;"
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5pau4l | is it really true that 10 strategic atomic bombs could wipe out the human life on earth? | it's something someone told me when I was younger. But when I've used the nuke map to compare sizes of nukes compared to cities I can't seriously believe that 10 nukes, even really big would be able to take out whole human lifef on earth. How many nukes would really be needed? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Well, I know this is going to get buried but I'll answer as best I am able. One of the side effects is actually forest fires. I read a paper a while back that if Pakistan launched all their nukes and India launched just an equal number than the resulting forest fires would create enough Ash to create winter for four years. This is equal to the time period of what wiped out the dinosaurs. It's way more than 10, but hopefully helps you to understand some of the side effects of such a catastrophe.",
"Well, for one thing, we've detonated more than ten strategic-class (megaton-range) bombs, and that 58 Mt monster, and we're still around. The concept of a nuclear exchange between two superpowers somehow killing *everyone on the planet* is a product of supposed climate change as a result of mass nuclear detonations - usually a \"nuclear winter\" due to all the dust and ash being thrown up, obscuring sunlight, causing a global cold thaw and wrecking agriculture worldwide. Problem is, the concept is largely propagandistic, and there is no consensus that it would even happen, let alone how many nukes it would take. There are circa 400-500 targets for a *countervalue* strike in the US (i.e. if you're not trying to take out US nukes - counterforce - but try to just kill Americans); roughly the same for Russia or China. Current nuclear arsenals are in the thousands; 95% of the nukes or more would reach their targets, because pretty much the only place that has a decent defense capable of repelling a massed nuclear attack is Moscow. Once you take out the major cities, people in the countryside are likely to die off in a few years. Any of the three nuclear superpowers getting blown off the map would wreck the global economy, but it would hardly lead to the extinction of humanity.",
"What type of nukes were you comparing? I know the ICBM's of today pack a much delivery than what was dropped on Japan.",
"Well, the Soviets detonated a 57 MT bomb and as far as I know, it didn't cause any significant effects outside its blast radius. It would take more than 10. The whole idea of nuclear winter is controversial in and of itself.",
"The thing with nukes, is that the devastation continues long after the initial blast. Those who aren't killed in the blast wave would be subjected to radiation poisoning. I'm still not sure 10 would be enough, but with modern day yields in the megaton, who knows?",
"Hi — I made the NUKEMAP. I'm glad it was useful to you in thinking about this question. One can, I think, categorically say that it would take more than 10 bombs of any size actually ever built to wipe out all of human life. Ten \"Tsar Bomba\" bombs at 100 Mt apiece, while very large, still could only produce only so much destruction, even taking into account the possibilities of nuclear fallout, and nuclear winter. (The latter would be the only possible way — I think 1,000 Mt in only ten locations would probably not generate enough to generate significant climate change, but it might be, depending on how much burning one is estimating you'd have. 1,000 Mt distributed over a much more diffuse area — e.g., in 100 kt intervals — would definitely get you around the area to have significant global consequences, under some of the models. Would it \"wipe out life on Earth\"? I don't know.) Now, if you don't limit yourself to bombs that were actually built, you can make them pretty much as large as you want. Let's just limit ourselves to bombs that were actually _contemplated_ when considering the high-end of the megaton scale. There were plans during the 1950s for bombs as large as 10,000 Megatons. Ten 10,000 Mt bombs might get you into \"wild disruptions of climate\" (each could set fire to [an area the size of Texas or France]( URL_0 )), and impressive amounts of fission product dispersals if they were detonated on the ground (which would not be ideal if you were trying to set fire to large areas). Would that wipe out human life on Earth? Maybe, maybe not — there are a lot of people and we're a pretty tough species to kill out. But it would be pretty terrible; the world would not be the same one as existed before the detonations in question."
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5pavxf | Why does the string part of a candle move in a circular motion when lit? | URL_0 I was watching this just now and wondered why is it that the string would move in a circular motion instead of just going straight down. I mean when you light a match it would just burn straight down if you hold it up, what makes the string different? | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Looks to me like the wick (the \"string part\") is made by smaller strands of material wound around each other. As the wick burns, it loses mass (the combustion products burn away into the flame and then into the air), and hence volume, meaning it shrinks. In the process of shrinking, the winding becomes tighter, causing the wick to rotate. That would be my guess anyway."
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5pb0w8 | Can the FBI continue to investigate the President even if the President does not want that investigation? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The Saturday night massacre is an example of how this plays out. Nixon was being investigated for Watergate by a special prosecuter. The special prosecuter was demanding nixon release audio taps recorded in the Oval Office so nixon ordered the attorney general to fire the special prosecuter. The attorney general refused to fire him and instead resigned. Then nixon order the deputy attorney general to fire the prosecutor and he also refused. Nixon fired the deputy attorney general and ordered the selicitor general who was now in charge to fire the prosecutor and he did. This was later ruled to be illegal and nixon eventually resigned. I may have some details wrong as I'm working off the memory of a documentary I saw on this but that's the gist of it.",
"Sure. Look at what happened during Watergate. Of course, the FBI Director (or Special Prosecutor or AG) has to have the balls to go up against their boss. And the President has the nuclear option...he can fire the AG. Nixon even fired Special Prosecutors. A few of them. (He didn't have to worry about the AG; Mitchell was chin deep in Watergate himself.) IIRC, the President no longer has the authority to fire the FBI director; he is appointed to a 10 year term. He can do pretty much whatever he wants so long as Congress doesn't turn on him. (**CORRECTION**: I was wrong...see response below.)",
"Technically? No. All Executive power in the U.S. is given to the President, who simply delegates away most of it to the various Federal agencies. This is the concept of the Unitary Executive which became kind of controversial under Bush Jr. However, everyone agrees that the U.S. Constitutionally has a Unitary Executive, there is just some disagreement on what exactly that means. For instance, does Congress actually have Constitutional authority to appoint things like special prosecutors to investigate executive action? My view on the matter is that they actually don't. Congress's power for dealing with possible illegal activity by the President is impeachment. Now, what would happen if the President tried to use that Constitutional power to stop an FBI investigation? Well, I am guessing it would blow up in his face. It would almost certainly lead to impeachment itself. In addition, Congress has long claimed the ability to appoint special prosecutors, even if it probably isn't Constitutional, and the Supreme Court might be leery of messing with that balance if the President ever objected.",
"Whether they can is irrelevant. You can be certain the NSA targets the President for total surveillance to the best of their capabilities. If they get anything, it will be forwarded to the appropriate agencies and departments. In secret, obviously."
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5pb234 | Why do some workouts feel much harder? How much of it is physical vs. mental? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The way you'll feel during your workouts is almost entirely determined on things that happen before it. Whether you slept 7 hours or 8, ate 200 calories more or 200 less, stressed out over your work or had a nice day at the office, all of these are variables that will change and wffect your workout.",
"A former army ranger talked about this. There are better and more thorough answers here to your question so I won't echo them, but he was talking about the \"how much is mental\" aspect. He talked about being exhausted after [x] amount of repetitions. The drill sergeants weren't satisfied. The exercises involved doing basic things like pushups, burpies, etc. until reaching almost 100% muscle fatigue. Then they had to crawl so many yards with so much weight on their backs. They were maxing out around 70 to 75 yards, and that was the absolute best in the group. So the sergeant started to blindfold people before the last part of the routine and found out they were getting to about 300 - 350 yards before failure. The soldiers had no idea that they were going farther than they were before but every single one of them did exponentially better. In summary, he said, don't listen to your mind because your body is capable of much, much more. Just thought I'd share that for anyone interested.",
"There's also the notion of accumulated fatigue over time. This is why there's different blocks on good programs with different volume and intensity schemes."
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5pb2y9 | Do open wounds on sea life hurt just as much as our open wounds due to salt water? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"No. Salt water stings in human wounds because the salt content of your cells is lower than that of sea water, so the difference in concentration causes water to flow out of the unprotected tissue (usually your skin prevents this for the most part) which can dehydrate the tissue and your body likes to stay at a specific salt/water balance so it hurts when the cells start to lose water. Sea creatures have a higher salt content in their cells, which is why if you take a salt water fish and put it in a freshwater tank it will swell up and die. Putting a fresh water fish in sea water would probably hurt and be the most similar case to the one in your question."
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5pb8p0 | Why is heart cancer so rare? | The heart's an organ just like the brain, right? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"This is because muscle cells (also called muscle fibers) don't divide, and cancer is most common in cells that divide a lot. Dividing cells are primed for cancer because: 1) a lot of the machinery needed to divide rapidly is already present in the cell so not a lot extra is needed to make it grow uncontrollably into a tumor/cancer 2) the more a cell divides the more chances it has to make errors. DNA replication isn't perfect, and over time these errors can accumulate into dangerous mutations (this is also why cancer is more common in the elderly) This is why we see a lot of cancer in tissues with a high \"cellular turnover\" rate - skin, liver, colon, etc. Cells that never divide (muscle fibers, neurons) almost never get cancer. Brain cancer is usually caused by a special type of brain cell that can divide (but not signal) call neuroglia, which forms the cancerous \"glioma.\" Bonus biology fact - because muscle cells fibers don't divide, you have the same number your whole life. Arnold Schwarzenegger has the same number of muscle fibers now as he did as a baby, they're just more packed with the good stuff. Source - biochemistry major, medical researcher.",
"Cancer is the abnormal and unstoppable cell growing. Some types of cancer are very common (like prostate cancer) because the cells of that organ are growing continuously. The heart stop growing at a very young age compared to other organs, and the rarer the cells are regenerate, the rarer the type of cancer is. That's because heart cancer is such a rare type of cancer.",
"Cancer is dependent upon cells that actually reproduce. The more cells reproduce and replicate the more chances that antigen and genetic changes take place that actually produce cancer. Cancer isn't really a disease but a spectrum of diseases and changes that we call cancer. The heart cells do not reproduce so cancer is rare.",
"There is a very rare endocrine tumor predisposition syndrome called the Carney Complex which is characterized by the development of cardiac tumors called cardiac myxomas. Patients can also develop tumors in the various endocrine glands (thyroid, testis, pituitary, etc.). Heart tumors are rare for the reasons others have mentioned, but they are not entirely non-existent. Source: I got my PhD studying aspects of the Carney Complex.",
"1. Cancer is a set of diseases where cell division goes wrong and the cells divide uncontrollably. 2. Your body is made up of many different cell types which have different rates of division. 3. Skin cells are replaced every 2 weeks, red blood cells every 4 weeks, muscle cells every 16 years. 4. The heart is made of muscle. 5. Heart cells therefore divide *very* slowly, making division errors uncommon and heart cancer rare.",
"> Right? Wrong, the heart is a muscle. (Technically a \"muscular organ\") That isn't why there's no heart cancer though. It's because cancer is the unregulated and out of control division of cells that turns into a tumor. But heart cells don't divide, so there's no process to go haywire.",
"The heart doesnt change its number of cells much (no hyerplasia) or change cells much (metaplasia). Places like your lungs amd GI change a lot because of their environment and purpose making them susceptible. Like skeletal muscles though, the heart can become larger by the cells becoming larger (hypertrophy) from working harder such as in people with hypertension. The grinch's heart didnt grow because of xmas, it grew because of severe hypertension.",
"From what I remember, In order for a person to get cancer, a cell has to reproduce with a mutation that is considered cancerous. Such mutation would cause that particular cell to keep producing without dying and creating more cancerous cells. However, tissues like our muscles don't reproduce, die and repeat, they continue to maintain, grow and shrink as they are needed. The Heart is an organ made mostly of muscle tissue, so it doesn't regenerate any of it's cells. In the event that it does, the new cell may or may not carry a mutation to make it cancerous. I would like to point out that not all cancerous cells are harmful, some are benign. Meaning the cancer cell exists but it's not gonna do any arm. Some are internal, some are external and people are covered in these (think of moles on the skin). However, some can turn malignant, the opposite of benign, that's the type you should worry about and your doctor will tell you more about that.",
"A lot of people with super long answers. But here is my short answer. Heart cells don't undergo mitosis as much as other cells in the body. The more your cells divide the more chances there are of mutations that occur which eventually can lead to cancer cells.",
"Others have given you the answer. I just wanted to mention that there was a Reddit member with heart cancer that did a great AMA about a year or so ago.",
"People's answers here have been good, but I just came to say that the lack of heart cell proliferation has a flip side in that damage to the heart is not easily repaired. This is why heart attacks can be so detrimental, any cells that die are not likely to be replaced.",
"Hear cancer is rare partly because heart cells rarely divide. Because of that the chance for a cancer to develop is [very small]( URL_0 )."
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5pbcnj | How exactly does Morse Code work and how was it developed? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It was developed at a time where we could not transmit speech yet. A simple \"current on or off\" is easier to transmit. But how do you convert messages into \"on/off\" patterns? You invent a pattern for every letter. The sender sends them via pressing a key, and the receiver has a speaker making a sound when the key is pressed by the sender. Examples: * \"e\" is a single short signal. * \"t\" is a single long signal * \"a\" is a short signal, followed by a long signal * \"s\" is short-short-short * \"o\" is long-long-long Between each letter you have to leave some break to make clear that a letter is done (otherwise \"a\" looks like \"et\"). \"SOS\" is \"short-short-short----long-long-long-----short-short-short\", for example. The translation between letters and sequences is arbitrary. Samuel Morse used short sequences for frequent letters (like e and t) and longer sequences for less common letters (like Q: long-long-short-long), that makes transmissions faster."
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5pbdex | Why can't/won't we use SVG's for textures in PC games? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"When a graphics card is trying to determine what color a screen pixel should be, it finds out what shader is represented there. To find a base color (barring the extra processing), it can quickly figure out a grid location associated to the relative location on the polygon it hit. The fastest way to figure out the reference color for any texture at that point is to look it up in a table. A bitmap or raster image is just that: a table of colors or values the card needs. An SVG (or any vector-based image format) is a mathematical representation of how to generate that grid of data. It requires processing to determine the desired colour at a specific point, based off of the geometric data used to generate that point. Every time a vector image is displayed, it's rasterized to be shown at the desired resolution. A graphics card could be made to use a vector image, but it would still have to rasterize the data before displaying on your screen. If it had to do it for every pixel, it would push computations very high, dropping your framerate dramatically. To make it faster, the card could remember that computed image as a bitmap and keep it for just the single frame or remember it for the time it's being used. In either case, there is still the overhead of making that rasterized image, x 3 or more for every image type (diffuse, specular, normal, metallic, emission, etc) and for each element on the screen (barrel's texture set, gun's texture set, vehicle's texture set, terrain, etc). That requires a lot of memory and puts computation time up as well (every single SVG has to be converted first, remember). Your 60+ fps game will drop dramatically when this has to happen, such as every time a new unit comes on screen or a new special effect triggers, or you have to have enough memory to store all of that generated data on top of the initial SVG. Game design strives to use as few clock cycles per frame as possible and use a graphics card's memory as efficiently as possible. An SVG requires more clock cycles than a bitmap or more memory than conventional bitmaps, so we just cut out the middle man and generate a bitmap instead. Anecdotally, the \"game loading\" process also optimizes the existing bitmaps into a more efficient format and laid out in the graphics card's memory as tightly as possible and could use SVGs to source that data for that process, but at the expense of longer load times."
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5pbf9g | Why are some percussion instruments (steel drums) blatantly pitched and played melodically while others (drum kit in a rock band) are played only rhythmically but still make sense in context? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Drums in a normal drum kit are actually tuned to certain notes depending on the key of the song. It's not as noticeable as say a guitar or piano but each Tom is tuned to a key bass drum and snare as well.",
"When a note has a definite pitch, that pitch may clash with other pitches by producing dissonant intervals. But if there is no definite pitch, there aren't definite intervals that can be consonant or dissonant. It's worth noting that while there are definitely-pitched and definitely-unpitched percussion instruments, there are also in-between cases, like tom-toms (as /u/maschine points out) that are aren't necessarily clearly pitched to a listener, but may be sufficiently-pitched that they could clash with the music if they are chosen poorly."
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5pblm4 | Why do so many people stress protecting yourself on public wifi but no one says anything about mobile data towers shared by everyone? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Your phone is not designed to pick up other phone's traffic normally. While you could hack a device to do this it os not that easy by any means. On the other hand, wi-fi devices listen to all packets transmitted over their wi-fi connection but only process packets sent to them. It is a small matter, in a lot of cases, to put a device in a mode where you look at all packets. In truth, your data is safe nowhere. There are levels of security, however, and we try to not make it easy. As the saying goes, locks are made to keep honest people honest.",
"Its very easy for me to sit down in a Starbucks with my laptop, and set up a network called \"public wifi\". If you jump on it, now I can capture all your traffic. Its not nearly so easy to do the same with with a cell tower."
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5pbw7c | Why is it that one can listen to a song (auditory stimulus) many number of times but a visual stimulus like a photograph or a scene from a film bores us sooner? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"You can stare at a photo for as long as you want. Hearing doesn't work the same way. You can't hear a sound for as long as you want, it's much more here and now.",
"Sounds, and especially structured sounds, like a song, influence you way more than only on a \"conscious\" thought level: They directly can be felt through your whole body, because of their spectrum, light waves don't."
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5pc5wt | The difference between morals and ethics. | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Generally, ethics are outside, morals are inside. As a society, we have decided that things are not good. Stealing, harm to others, intake of certain substances. Ethically, it is wrong to hit other people and we have punishments as a society that we give out for that behaviour. Morally, I personally feel it's fine to hit people in the bedroom when they ask nicely."
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5pcivp | Why is "I don't like sand" line from Attack of the Clones considered so bad? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It's supposed to be Anakin's smooth line to use on Padme and it's just so derpy and cringeworthy. Lucas has such a tin ear for dialogue that Harrison Ford said to him, \"You can type this shit, George, but you can't say it.\""
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5pcj3o | Why is English considered a Germanic language but a large percentage of the vocabulary is from Latin and Greek? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Old English (think over 1,000 years ago, not Shakespearean Middle English) was a Germanic Language. On the continuous spectrum of those languages, Old German, Old Dutch, Danish and so on; people would all be able to more-or-less understand each other with some effort. Kind of like a modern Spanish speaker trying to talk to a modern Portuguese speaker. Or like someone from an English speaking country trying to understand someone from Glasgow, Scotland. There's enough different for some comical misunderstandings, but generally you can get across your point if you both try. In 1066, the Normans invaded and conquered Britain. The Normans spoke an Old French language, which falls into the Romantic/Latin language family. Suddenly, the rich and educated people of Britain were expected to speak a Romantic language, while the lower classes could get away with whatever in the fuck they wanted to speak inside their own homes. So you ended up with a situation where the common language was still a Germanic, but the more educated/wealthy/cultured you were, the more you were expected to communicate using the Latin root words. And, in a lot of cases, both names stuck around, but the usage varies based on context. So if you have a peasant raising an animal, it's a bird. But once it's plated onto fine china, it's poultry. Or if a couple is having a bit of the ole in-n-out behind the barn, they're fucking. But if it's two recently engaged socialites in a carriage, they're fornicating. Thus, English is a Germanic language, but a lot of the words come from the Romance language family. Also, later on, English picked up a bad habit of just stealing words from every other damned language out there, but that all came after it developed a schizophrenic foundation.",
"Ah, now... because English *is* Germanic. The usual explanation is that when the Norman French invaded in 1066, they radically changed the originally Germanic language, and that English is now some crazy mishmash of different languages -- an explanation given in this thread by /u/open_door_policy and /u/snbrd512. That's *nearly* true, but... not so much as you think. First of all, we should deal with the myth that English is somehow unusual in borrowing words from lots of other languages. It isn't: it's actually a perfectly normal thing. For example, the French language borrowed anything up to 15% of its vocabulary from the Frankish languages, even including its name -- and the Franks were Germanic. This is by no means unusual, so let's please put this idea to rest. Secondly, if you just take all the words from the English language and count all the Germanic ones and all the French, Greek and Latin words, the latter group is *huge*. But most of those words are words we wouldn't normally use outside of very specific contexts. You only say \"cranium\", for example, if you're studying anatomy. **If, instead, you look at the everyday** language **as spoken and understood by most** people **most of the time, it's overwhelmingly** Germanic. **All the words in bold in this** paragraph **are** Germanic.\\* If you factor in the frequency of usage of the words, English is clearly Germanic. Virtually all of the grammar is Germanic as well. It's not even exactly true that the Norman lords spoke French while the peasants spoke Anglo-Saxon, and that therefore the more \"cultured\" words are French or Latin-based. The Normans actually soon started speaking English -- their ancestors had likewise switched from speaking Norse languages to French when they settled in France -- and although we can trace to the Norman period the odd fact that we sometimes have a Germanic word for an animal but the corresponding French word for its meat, this is unusual. There are a few other examples of this -- \"stool\"/\"chair\", \"room\"/\"chamber\" -- but they're exceptions rather than rules. The words the Normans introduced to English were mostly words relating to things the Normans were in charge of: government, royalty (with the notable exceptions of the words \"king\" and \"queen\"), the judiciary, the military and so on. When it comes to the more educated classes preferring Latin-based terms, that's a much more modern phenomenon: a couple hundred years at most. So, contrary to what open_door_policy appears to assert, the Norman overlords didn't fornicate while the Saxon peasants fucked, for two reasons: first, \"fornicate\" didn't enter the English language until the mid-16th century, 500 years after the Norman conquest; and second, because \"fornicate\" means having sex with somebody you're not married to (from Latin \"fornicari\" = \"to go to a brothel\", \"to consort with prostitutes\"). The Latin-based word would be \"copulate\", which again entered English in the 16th century and meant \"join together\" and didn't mean \"have sex\" until about 1630. Why did this happen? Well, this was a period of time when the Age of Enlightenment was about to dawn. Among other things, it was the time when science and medicine started getting serious and really making progress. At the time, educated people learned Latin and Greek, originally because the only educated people were religious people who needed to study religious texts. All over Europe, educated people would routinely learn these languages, and Latin in particular could be used to swap ideas between people from different countries. And so names for inventions and new discoveries were in these languages -- sometimes in weird forms, like \"television\", which combines the Greek for \"far\" with the Latin for \"see\". And if you wanted to show how educated you were? You'd sprinkle your speech with Latin and Greek words. And *that* is where the habit among the educated classes for using these words instead of their plain Anglo-Saxon equivalents really comes from. (And, for the record, as this fashion grew, some educated people complained about it.) ----- \\* \"Instead\" is a slight fudge here. It's made up of the Germanic words \"in\" and \"stead\", but was introduced relatively late as a translation of the Latin \"in loco\"."
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5pcl7e | Why do fever thermometers not return to room temperature after use? | I have an old school manual thermometer. Whenever I'm sick and get it out, it's at the exact temperature I measured last time, even if that was many months before. Shouldn't it gradually return to room temperature? | Chemistry | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The thermometers you are referring are known as 'clinical' thermometers. They are usually of a specified range(Human body temp range). They also have another neat feature which is called a [constriction]( URL_0 ). This constriction is a bend about the bottom of the thermometer and is small in diameter. When the temperature is measured, the mercury in the thermometer expands and is forced past this constriction. So now, when the doctor pulls the thermometer out of the patient's mouth the mercury wouldn't just contract and fall back down. You have often seen doctors or nurses, before and after taking your temperature they will shake the thermometer. This, sort of, resets the thermometer by giving the mercury within to push through the constriction and return to normal state. In case you want to research further, look up: * Constriction in thermometers * Difference between lab and clinical thermometers"
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5pcmzd | When a child learns to walk, is that process innate or learned? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Both. Human evolution has adapted to the environment to the extent that their bodies are equipped for walking. But it also takes learning. If you've ever seen a child learn how to walk, it takes them many attempts with lots of stumbling involved until they get it right."
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5pctix | Why is the national debt in Japan so high? | Economics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The Japanese have been fighting a deflation-driven recession since the early 90s. What that means is that people spend less money, the economy shrinks, and people get laid off. This makes people fearful, so they spend even less money, and the economy shrinks more, and more people get laid off. It's a viscous circle. We know the best way to break out of that circle is for the government to step in and jump start the economy by: (1) spending lots and lots of money, and (2) loaning money out to anyone who wants it. The government keeps spending and spending until the economy gets health again. This takes some will power, because there's a strong temptation to take the foot off the gas too early. The problem is that the Japanese keep doing it wrong. They spend some money, not enough to jump start the economy. So they end up with the worst possible outcome - huge debts and an economy that won't get better. And then they try it again and fail for the same reason. And then again, and again, and again. To add to this, Japan has very stable debt as A. most of it is domestically owned by Japanese citizens and B. Japan, like the U.S has a good credit rating"
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5pcx8d | How are we so sure that all the wireless communication is not harmful to us? | Living next to a pretty massive TV-tower I am wondering if and why we know that all this radiation from cellphones, wifi networks, radio stations and tv-networks is not harmful to us. Obviously it would be very long term harm but that makes it even harder to prove, doesn't it? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"There are lots of different of kinds of radiation. There's alpha, beta, gamma, cosmic, all that, but the kind you're talking about is *electromagnetic* radiation - physically speaking, the same stuff as visible light, a particle/wave called a photon, but whose frequency is in another part of the spectrum. Broadly speaking, you can divide all the types of radiation into two groups: ionizing and non-ionizing. Ionizing radiation is any radiation energetic enough to knock the electrons off an atom, thus making it an *ion*. For electromagnetic radiation, gamma rays, x-rays, and the high end of the ultraviolet part of the spectrum are ionizing, and those rays are the dangerous ones. Exposure to enough ionizing radiation can cause cell damage, cancer, death by radiation poisoning, the condition known as \"hot dog fingers\", children born with the head of a golden retriever, all sorts. However, ultraviolet and nastier kinds of electromagnetic radiation are all \"high frequency\" or \"short wavelength\" radiation - whereas the radio signals used by phones, wifi, radio stations, tv, etc, are all in the microwave (yes, like the oven) area, which is *non-ionizing* radiation. While intense microwave radiation *can* cause water molecules to heat up, which is how a microwave oven works, it *doesn't* do the kind of damage ionizing radiation can do, and anyway, the *amounts* and *intensity* of the radiation put out by those devices is relatively tiny - your router puts out nowhere *near* what it takes to warm up a room temperature chimichanga, let alone cook your eyeballs like a hard boiled egg or give you cancer.",
"Because we've done massive amounts of research, studies and scientific testing on it, and we've never found any evidence of any harm.",
"ELi5 version: Wireless technology uses frequencies of light that are harmless to humans, and only output an incredibly small amount of it at that.",
"Three different ways: theory, experiment, and long-term studies. Theory tells us that the kind of radiation used in wireless communication has too little energy to cause cancer or other such problems. We know how much concentrated energy it takes to mutate DNA, for example, and radio waves have less than that. It requires a higher frequency (such as X rays). Experiments tell us that animals exposed to extensive amounts of wireless communication signals are about as healthy as those unexposed. Long-term studies tell us that people who live near sources of radio waves are about as healthy as those who do not.",
"On top of what's been said already just to be clear why there isn't really much worry about it, The light you see with your eyes, is the same as what we use for wireless communication, it's still light, just light where the waves are not the right length for the eye to see, in our everyday lives and as humans, we see these different wavelengths or frequencies (the two are related because the shorter the length of a single wave the more you'd imagine to go past a single point in a given time, i.e higher frequency of waves), anyway, we see these as colors. [Here is an image of the electromagnetic spectrum;]( URL_0 ) Now we know visible light obviously doesn't cause any damage to us. To the right of visible light on the spectrum you see Ultra Violet - UV, you might recognize that this is what's talked about as a cause of skin cancer, the sun produces a massive range of waves along with Ultra Violet, these cause skin cancer because waves of that frequency have enough energy to knock electrons off atoms, so if that happens to be an atom that belongs to you, i.e part of your DNA is damaged, next time a cell uses your DNA in any way, perhaps to replicate, it will replicate this damaged DNA. Now finally, to the left of the visible light in the image, you see infrared, later microwaves, radio waves - these are waves that have less, even less and even way less energy than even normal visible light we see everyday, and so nowhere near enough to break atoms, these are the waves you'll recognise we use for wireless communication. To feel safe you can try looking at TV-Towers, Wi-FI routers etc as giant (or small) light bulbs, always blinking away in a pattern that our computers / radios etc have been designed to understand, using light waves that have less energy than the light coming from your bedroom light"
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5pd1rf | So, what is actually net worth, and how is that different from actual money you have in your hands? | Economics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Money you have in your hand would be cash, or maybe it's in your bank to be used via debit card. This is what's known as cash assets. Basically just money you have available to spend that moment. Net worth accounts for almost *everything*. Your house, your car, your cash, your investments, etc. But it also accounts for your debts. So if you have $100,000 in cash, a $500,000 house, but a $300,000 debt to somebody, your net worth is only $300,000, not $600,000."
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5pd3pl | Why can't you push something that you're in? | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Newtons second law. You need something outside whatever you're in to push off of (like how cars use the friction of the tires and the road) or else at the same time you are pushing the same force in the opposite direction. You could however roll something from inside to make it move. If you were in a giant ball you could use inertia of your body to make it start to roll from withing.",
"Because of equal/opposite reactions. When you normally push an object, you also push into the floor with your feet with an equal (net) force in the opposite direction. If the floor is part of the same object, then you cancel out your forces and do nothing."
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5pd557 | how does salt enhance flavor on food? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Salt actually helps the food's aroma first and formost believe it or not. Smell is very important to your sense of taste. You know how if you have to drink some nasty tasting health smoothie or something similar, you're likely to hold your nose while you drink it? The reason for that is that without the smell factor in play, you don't taste as much as you normally would.",
"It is my understanding that taste buds only work in a media that has ions (salt) in the solution solution like saliva does. If you eat food with less salt by volume than saliva taste buds don't \"fire\" flavor signals to the brain as effectively and thus there is less perception of flavor regardless of whether that flavor is salty or not. Here is an interesting video on the subject: URL_0"
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5pd6zn | Does my body produce vitamin d if I sit in a shadow on a sunny day? (biology) | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"So upon doing some quick research it's UVB rays that catalyze the production of Vitamin D. UVB rays can also reach your skin indirectly, so it's going to depend on the source of the shade. I read that trees will scatter the UVB rays so you can get some indirect contact there. The amount is also going to depend on the tree and other factors."
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5pd7rt | Why do cringing memories from the distant past remain so persistent? Do we know what triggers them instead of other memories? | Was just reading in another sub about this, and it seems fairly common for memories of cringing moments of your past to float up to the forefront of your mind when you're trying to get to sleep. They can also trigger an avalanche of similar memories. Why is this? What could be triggering it? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Your sense of self, and who you perceive yourself to be are extremely important psychologically. You're probably familiar with cognitive dissonance - when you hold two conflicting ideas in your head. This is somewhat unpleasant. I'd suspect that it's your mind still trying to reconcile why you aren't a cringer, despite the fact that you have done a cringe-worthy thing."
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5pd7s7 | Why does a kiss feel so good? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The lips have a LOT of nerve endings, and when humans kiss other humans on the lips, the response by the brain is to produce large amounts of endorphins, along with dopamine and oxytocin. All of those are “feel good” chemicals, and oxytocin is known as a “bonding” hormone, in that it promotes social bonds among humans. Basically, the more we kiss someone, the more we want to kiss that person."
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5pdd95 | What rights do men have that women don't have here in the United States? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"A big reason for some of the marching is the fact that some government officials are trying to get rid of planned parenthood/birth control all together, and those people aren't even the ones that use it in the first place. There are many other gender equality related reasons as well such as workplace harassment, wage inequality, and gender discrimination that I can think of off the top of my head.",
"On paper (literally, as in the Constitution), women have the same rights as men. Of course, there is a big difference between what's on paper and what's done in practice. And, as noted, there are many cultural biases that often go against women. While not an equivalent, consider the post-Civil War, pre-Civil Rights America. On paper, there were amendments guaranteeing everyone was equal, yet it was nearly another century before there was serious social change to recognize that.",
"They are marching to voice their concerns to the incoming administration. They don't have to feel that their rights have been \"violated\" in order to have issues (that may [or not] be of special concern to women) that they want to be sure are being considered by our leaders. Further, there's ample reason to believe that the new President has fairly low regard for women in general."
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5pde7e | Why does your skin turn white for a few seconds when you put pressure on it? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It turns white because under the skin there are small little veins called capillaries and when pressed all the blood is pushed out of them but then returns when you let go. That's the same reason why your finger turns red when you push on it from the knuckle, all the blood get trapped in the finger tip until you let go."
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5pdecr | Why we get shocked when we lick the top of a 9v Battery | Growing up, my mom told me to lick the top of a 9v to check and see if it had any charge left. Whilst that does work, it's a cruel joke to play on a 7 year old lol, but how does it work? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It works because you're completing the circuit, allowing electrons to pass from the positive terminal, through your tongue, to the negative terminal. As far as it being cruel, I've stuck my tongue to a fair share of 9v batts in my time and never felt anything more than a tickle or vibration feeling.",
"/u/MikeHunturtze has it mostly correct. Most of the electrical current is actually passing through your saliva, which is slightly conductive. If your tongue was dry, it would presumably be about as conductive as your skin. Which is not very. Also, electrons don't go from the positive terminal to the negative one...it's the other way around. Electrons are negatively charged, and go from the negative terminal to the positive one. We say that current flows from + to -, but electrons flow from - to +. It is a funky result of calling electrons negative charge carriers. A negative charge flowing backwards results in a positive current. And he either has very few nerve endings in his tongue, or he's never licked a fresh 9V. Try it with a brand new one, and really press it onto the middle of your tongue. It's a lot more than mild, although it does pale in comparison to grabbing mains voltage."
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5pdhhm | Why is it that when men ejaculate they do so in "pumps", but when they urinate, its in a constant stream? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Generally different mechanisms and muscles. Urine is stored in the bladder, which is basically a big muscular bag, and more or less just needs to be released. Ejaculation is a more complex process that includes using the muscles of the pelvic floor to drive the semen out. Basically, the semen is stored in tubes that connect to the urinary duct, and then these muscles propel it out (see a textbook for details). Interestingly, you can also use these same muscles to propel out remaining urine in the urinary duct. As for *why* this is the case, it simply makes reproduction easier by \"firing\" semen toward the womb. This is done most efficiently in waves of muscle contraction. This is not really a requirement for urination.",
"Ejaculation is controlled by Mr. Prostate. He's a bitter guy that's forced to live in Rectumtown. You can't blame him for being lackadaisical about his job.",
"Ejaculating is the result of an self induced ( through sex of masturbation) muscle spasm. Urination is the result of you building up a pressure through muscle tension thus squeezing the bladder free of urine.",
"Different storage vesicles require different mechanisms. Urine is stored in the bladder which is like a big balloon of muscle. It contracts down until empty in one continuous squeeze like a water balloon when you let go of the neck. Semen is stored in the vas deferens which is essentially a tube, not a \"balloon\". Think about how to empty a tube. If you use one big squeeze you'll just squeeze the tube shut before most of the contents come out. The easiest way is probably to rhythmically squeeze it... preferably starting away from the opening and milking the contents toward the opening (ya know, like toothpaste... Unless you're one of those animals who only squeezes the middle of the toothpaste and leaves a crumpled tube wasting half the toothpaste... Then you'd be a bad vas deferens)"
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5pdl9b | Why does a cut stop bleeding so quickly after the incident? | Does the blood go dry and create a barrier on the cut? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"So let's say you cut yourself. A few things will happen to stop the bleeding. 1) First, the blood vessel constricts to allow less blood through. This won't stop the bleeding, but it reduces it. 2) Second, your platelets will be activated and form a *platelet plug*. This is a soft, squishy plug that gets in the way of blood trying to leave the broken blood vessel. It can be formed very quickly, but it can be easily disrupted. 3) Third, you will form a *fibrin clot*. There are a lot of *clotting factors* that interact with each other in complicated ways, but the bottom line is that you form a hard, proteinaceous meshwork over the damaged area--this is a scab. It will stay in place until the wound is healed and the clot is no longer needed."
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5pdlh4 | What is the difference between regular and synthetic oil? | Why do some cars use one and not the other? Why does Synthetic oil last so much longer? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Crude oil is a blend of very long, long, medium, short, and very short carbon chains. Distillation is careful heating and cooling of crude oil to purify a group of carbon chains that are useful for the desired purpose, but it's never perfect (you always have some longer chains and shorter chains mixed in with the chains you want to isolate). This is bad because the longer chains are much harder to move in cold temperatures, and the shorter chains are too volatile (they don't remain liquid oil) at higher engine operating temperature). Synthetic oil is made of carbon chain chemicals that are linked together from natural gas or another feedstock chemical, so the resulting oil purity is higher than the distilled product. That means more of your oil remains available to lubricate throughout the engine temperature ranges."
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5pdva0 | How come the US spends a higher percentage (25%) of its budget on healthcare than the UK (18%) even though it doesn't provide free healthcare like the UK does? | Where is all the money going in the US? I was under the impression that healthcare in the US was mainly private, so how come the UK provides much more comprehensive care for a smaller proportion of its expenditure? URL_1 URL_0 | Economics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Because in the US, a large amount of the healthcare money passes through insurance companies between the payer and the provider. Insurance companies exist to make a profit. The profit they extract from the exchange does not provide healthcare for anybody. This way, a large amount of the money spent on healthcare is actually diverted to shareholders of insurance companies rather than providing healthcare to anyone.",
"Because many people use the ER as primary care physician and you get charged a lot of money just being there. Also the doctors charge you as much as they want while giving you any test they can find no matter if it will tell them anything or not. In the USA they try to find out what's not wrong with you while in the rest of the world they try to find out what's wrong with you.",
"Politics. By law, negotiation for lower drug prices is forbidden, and also the private health insurance industry formed in response to US involvement in WWII. Employers here were having difficulty attracting good workers, so they started offering health insurance as a benefit of employment. Also, after WWII the US was involved in the Cold War with the USSR, with the side effect that a large number of Americans would grow up with the belief that socialism is wrong and dangerous. Those Americans are now the generation in power, so they write the rules. That's why we don't have as big a social welfare program as y'all have over there. Besides that our newly-inagurated President is a member of our conservative party, and that party controls both houses of our Congress, so they prefer laws that keep things as they are, or that reduce or eliminate previous laws that give Americans access to things they might not otherwise have. Medicare and Medicaid are federal programs that give seniors and others free or reduced-cost medical care at no extra expense, paid through taxes. I see this conservative agenda as a problem, but then again I didn't vote for any of those people.",
"It's worth noting that you made a small mistake. The U.S. government does not spend 25% of it's budget on healthcare. The wiki link says it's 25% of *mandatory spending*. That is only part of our budget. > Major categories of FY 2014 mandatory spending included: > ... **Healthcare such as Medicare and Medicaid ($831B or 24%)**, ...As a share of federal budget, mandatory spending has increased over time.[11] **Mandatory spending accounted for 53% of total federal outlays in FY2008** We do spend more as a country per capita, but as you noted, that's if you look at total spending (ie, public and private) > According to this the US spends $9451 per capita and the UK spends just $4003 per capita which is massively less. Be very careful, if you're asking about per capita, or government spending. I'm going to assume you meant total spending: We do tend to spend more per capita (~1.5-2x as much), but much of that is private spending. There's a couple reasons for that. A big one is that we do not have a single payer system. Your government has the power to negotiate lower prices as a group (and they can say no to treatments). Individual insurance companies do something similar, but scale is huge in how much negotiating power you have. Having most of the healthcare system as your bargaining chip allows you to achieve scale we simply don't have here. On top of that, the government has a lot better knowledge of what procedures cost (it's hard to price compare as a consumer). A smaller reason is patents. U.S. patent law is fairly strict and long, which allows blockbuster drugs to maintain amazing profit margins. The vast majority of healthcare spending tends to happen with a few sick people. I don't remember the exact quote, but it's something like half of all spending comes from the sickest 10%, and half of that is the sickest 1%. So patents on specialized drugs cause ballooning costs. It's not uncommon for say, certain cancer drugs that extend life for a few months to cost thousands of dollars. People in the below comments mentioned health insurance, but by far the biggest cost come from healthcare providers (hospitals, drug makers etc)",
"America DOES have a free healthcare system. It's not 100% coverage for everyone but programs do exist that the US Government runs and pays for. One being Medicaid. Medicaid is for pregnant women, some elderly, children and disabled. There's 72 Million American Citizens on Medicaid. The other System is Medicare. That's completely available to those over 65 years of age as well as disabled citizens. There's about 60 Million Citizens on Medicare. That's about 120 Million citizens on Government paid Healthcare. There's only 320 Million citizens total in America. So over 1/3rd of America has free government insurance. Now, why does America pay more? Well, that 120 is already double the UK's population and medical services in America are much higher. The average Physicians pay in the UK is about £50,000/$62,000 while the average pay in America is $167,000/£135,000 for the same Family Doctor.",
"You're comparing a bunch of incomparable numbers. The 25% number is 25% of the Mandatory spending, which is only 56% of Total spending. The 18% number is 18% of total spending, in the UK. But total spending in the UK and the US are not the same either, so that comparison doesn't work as well. Here are some more comparable numbers, for public spending : US : 8.3% of GDP UK : 7.6% of GDP URL_0",
"In addition to all of the other answers given, free health care means that you are far more likely to go to the doctor for a minor niggle, which then gets treated promptly. If it costs you money then you are far more likely to wait and see if it clears up on its own. The cost of a 100 minor treatments are still cheaper than dealing with a chronic condition that could have been avoided. This is also why life expectin the US is lower than you would expect from the world's richest country.",
"These figures are total spending by both the state, companies and individuals on health care (ie % of GDP). Some of the main drivers of the difference (in no particular order): - a very fractured system of providers in the US, leading to administrative inefficiencies, overcapacity that needs to be paid for and affects units costs - US medical system is a for-profit business pretty much across the board, profit is a net cost, the UK NHS is not for profit - US litigation and damages culture leads to direct (claims) and indirect (insurance) costs, this is a massive factor given the amount of practitioners fees that go to these - \"over-medication/over-testing/over-treatment\" in the US versus UK partially driven by the litigation risk and partly by the desire to up-sell the \"absolute best\" treatment, while the NHS doesnt ration healthcare, you certainly tend to get the minimum necessary treatment to sort out issues"
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5pdxte | What makes primary colors "primary" (unable to be created by other colors), and why are we able to create secondary colors from primary colors? | Regarding primary colors, why is it that red, yellow, and blue specifically are the colors that are our base primary colors? Also, I understand which primary colors create secondary colors, but how does that work? Why do those specific color mixes create new colors? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Because our eyes actually cheat. They can't detect colors other than blue, red and green. What they do however is, using those three colors, your brain then can form very good guesses about what the color you see actually is. It's a very complicated process, but because your eye literally only has those 3 colors to form its guess from, you can cheat it with just the right combination of blue, red and yellow to make it arrive at erroneous conclusions about what it's actually seeing. Since real yellow activates both red and green sensors in our eyes, you can make brain conclude its seeing yellow simply by throwing both green and red light at the eye. The brain can't tell the difference between these cases since either way, eye is telling it that both red and green light sensitive sensors have activated. It's important to notice there are actually two types of primary colors, based on how colors combine. Computer screen is additive. If you have red region, you can add green light to make the segment appear yellow. Paint on the other hand works by **substracting** light from what it receives. So if you mix yellow paint, which substracts blue and only lets out green and red, with magenta paint which substracts green and only lets out red and blue, resulting paint only lets out red color. So with substractive colors, primary colors are cyan, magenta and yellow. This is how printing works, for example.",
"Yes, it's because our eyes have cones that can pick up the 3 primary colors, red, green, and blue. The reason yellow is a primary color (and not green) because when mixing colors in paint, you're dealing with a subtractive color process."
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5pe3v5 | if nerve cells don't undergo cellular respiration, why does the SAT (and other mentally vigorous tasks) make us so tired afterwards? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"mental processes still require energy! not sure how to answer this without two bio/psych/cognitive sci lectures",
"The human brain uses more energy than any other organ. Your anatomy teacher kinda should know that, and definitely should know that using energy requires cellular respiration."
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5pe5nv | What is Cancer? | Obviously I know it's a deadly disease, but people only describe it as "shutting down an organ" or things similar. What does it do to the cells that kills them? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"A simple way to see it is cancer cells look like normal cells to the body, and they take the place of them, and replicate slowly replacing more and more of the surrounding cells with cancer. The issue is these cancer cells do not perform the function of the normal cells, so what ever they are on slowly lose the ability to perform the function and the organ basically dies, unable to keep working. There are differant forms of cancer that act a bit differantly, but that's the gist."
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5pe689 | Why are snowflakes always hexagonal? | Chemistry | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Because ice crystals are hexagonal. Ice can actually form in different shapes depending on the pressure it's under when it freezes; but the one it forms in the atmosphere has hexagonal crystals. So, then the question is, why are ice crystals hexagonal? Well, you know how a water molecule is H2O, meaning \"one oxygen atom with two hydrogen atoms bonded to it\"? Those atoms aren't in a straight line. There's a 106-degree angle from one hydrogen, to the oxygen, to the other hydrogen. Water molecules are *bent*, with their big fat oxygen butt sticking out. And that makes the molecules better at lining up in a hexagonal pattern than in a square one. What does the bentness of the molecule have to do with the hexagonal crystal pattern? Well, the oxygen atom is a lot bigger than the hydrogens, and so it holds on tighter to the molecule's shared electrons. That means the hydrogen atoms end up with a little bit of positive electrical charge, and the oxygen ends up a little bit negatively charged. And since opposite charges attract, each hydrogen wants to line up facing the sticking-out oxygen butt of the next molecule over. If you try doing this with shapes (in 3D, not in 2D!) you'll find that the best way to put them together is a hexagonal pattern. In contrast, CO2 is pretty much straight instead of bent, and frozen CO2, or \"dry ice\", doesn't do the hexagon thing."
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5pede9 | Are Brooklyn, Staten Island, Queens, Bronx and Manhattan considered different cities? And what considers them boroughs? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"They're all part of New York City, though they were once separate and individual cities. As for what considers them “boroughs,” that's the colloquial name for the counties which now bear those names. Queens and the Bronx are the same in both cases, but Manhattan is New York county, Staten Island is Richmond county, and Brooklyn is Kings county. I refer you to Wikipedia for more."
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5pedo1 | stomach growls | Why do our stomachs growl so loud when we are hungry? Like today it sounded like a thunderstorm in my belly. What is causing the growling and why is it so loud | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"when your guts are 'more empty' what they are filled with, instead of a semi-solid mass (food), is gas and liquid. This gurgles more noisily when your intestines engage in peristalsis, a coordinated movement of the muscles that line them, in order to stir up and progress their contents."
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5pehjd | Why is consensual incest considered illegal and is socially unacceptable? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Genetic arguments are stupid. They're why we instinctively short-circuit attraction to people we grow up too close to, but there aren't any laws against disabled people getting married, or those with genetic conditions. You are ***A LOT*** more likely to have a child with a debilitating genetic condition if your partner already has it than you are having sex with a close relative without, and as has been pointed out people don't always have sex to have children. The major problem is that it is very difficult to unravel consent and power dynamics in incestuous relationships, and escaping from an abusive one is even more difficult than a regular abusive relationship.",
"Because when people who are too closely related like a brother and sister or cousins have a child together that child can be very sick. We make it illegal so that we aren't producing sick children.",
"Simple explanation, the same reason homosexuality used to be considered illegal and socially unacceptable. People think it's icky. You can talk about birth defects all you want, but the fact is that people feel the same way even if they aren't aware of the health risks to potential children.",
"Incest is a taboo universally across cultures. While there are many popular instances of this taboo being broken those subsets are very small historically. It's been this way culturally going as far we have record, and we also see this in the animal kingdom. Searching and working towards genetic diversity appears to be inherent, but there are exceptions. Genetic defects are rare for first generation incestuous offspring, but the chances of issues grow exponentially every subsequent generation. It would be biologically instinctual to avoid this type of genetic negative consequence. I don't know that there is a legitimate reason beyond we know it can lead to genetic issues, and it's considered morally wrong by virtually all cultures throughout history. As another commenter posted, the dynamics of these relationships also make it very difficult to be truly consensual and healthy. I am sure someone can provide a much more research and scientific answer together.",
"It's a potential threat to the gene pool. No birth control method is 100% effective aside from abstinence, so we forbid people who are closely related from hooking up to minimize the number of accidents resulting in incest babies."
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5peivh | How was it that in the United States, most people were able to afford mortgages, car payments, health insurance, food, etc. without a college education before? | Now it seems like it is a lot tougher to be 100% independent than it was back in the 1950s-1980s. Now even if you do have a college education, chances are that you need to rely on roommates/subsidies to be able to pay for yourself. | Economics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"In the 50s and 60s the world was decimated by WWII and we were the domanant manufacturing superpower. Blue collar work was valued and unions were strong. Women didn't work as much. Fast forward to the present. Jobs require more sophistication. Manufacturing is done for cheap in a heavily comoditized fassion. The us has competition from all over the world. Single men compete against the power of two incomes. Don't be sad, the game is just different. You can still win. STEM fields, nursing, sales (if you're good), trades (if you're driven) will make bank. Play the game right, don't rack up a TON of debt and you can win. Not living in a super high COL city helps. Go a of good paying jobs in cheaper cities like ATL, tampa, Charlotte.",
"A lot of laws were passed in earlier years that are only now having that full effect. The middle class that did a lot of the work important to the country itself is shrinking because of such laws, as well as a stagnant minimum wage and rising costs of post-secondary education. There's a lot more to it, but that's what I know for sure.",
"In general, the price of big ticket items have increased faster than inflation. For example a 1956 Ford Thunderbird, for it's time a decent luxury car, was about $3000, in 2016, that's about $26000. Today $26k is closer to the price of a midrange car, and not a premium car. Today's cars have more features, bigger, more powerful and more safety features. Same for homes, a 1950 era home was about 950 square feet, today we'd call that a small townhouse or apartment. Larger homes, finer furnishings, etc. A skilled tradesman could easily afford a family in 2016 living the 1950s life. But most people would consider that to be humble Source URL_0 URL_1"
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5penrw | Why does our vision flash black when we get hit in the head? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"When the head gets hit hard, the brain goes into a lapse of shock and trauma. (It has been a while since I have studied this, so please forgive my mistakes) The brain cannot send signals properly at that moment in time and things sort of stop (not really, just that the brain is trying to maintain itself and cannot focus) The location of vision is in the back of the brain, but it has a \"straight\" connection to the eyes (the eyes actually criss cross and split through the brain). In order to send a signal, the eyes must send it down the long pathway, which only takes milliseconds. However, when we get hit, the brain stops the signals or gets confused as to where to send the signals that the occipital lobe (back of brain) does not get enough signals to understand what it is seeing. Thus the black we see are just lack of signal to the occipital lobe. Of course there are chemical changes too, but I am not familiar with them. There is probably a more exact that would better fit, but this is all that I can recall at the moment."
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5peo7n | We normally can't see wind, so exactly how do we end up seeing tornadoes if it's just wind moving fast? | Please don't drag me through hell for this. Science was not my strong subject in high school. | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"We see dust and debris picked up by the wind and swirling in the vortex. Tornadoes can have different colors depending on where they are/what they pick up.",
"The extreme conditions inside a tornado usually cause water vapor to condense in the funnel, turning it white or grey. Once they touch down they pick up dirt and can turn brown or black. This doesn't always happen though, some tornadoes do not have clearly visible funnels and may only be visible when they're carrying a lot of debris."
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5peqys | Why does swallowing our saliva not decrease thirst? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Thirst comes from a lack of water in your body. Saliva doesn't add to the water in your body, it's just recycling a small amount that was already there.",
"The saliva won't provide the amount of hydration the body is asking for. The body is telling you it needs hydration, taking from its own depleted resources won't give you higher amounts of fluid."
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5petwp | If the Earth's temperature is only increasing by a few degrees, why are massive chunks of ice breaking away in places that are always freezing cold? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"**Average** temperature is increasing. This can mean, for example, that an area that had a day or two of above-freezing temperatures now has a couple of weeks of above freezing temperatures."
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5pevfg | Why is nail biting a habit that most people can't break? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Guy here, chronic nail biter of > 10 years. I'm pretty much 99% broken. I'm a dentist now and even though I wear gloves, patients still see my hands before and after the procedure so I stopped when I started seeing patients regularly. What did it for me was going to get a manicure. Had to really man up and walk in, but couldn't be more satisfied. After they're done I don't want to bite them and screw them up, because I literally have never had nails that weren't chewed down to the nubs. I get them done about once a month and now I'm not self conscious anymore about holding up demonstration models and such right in front of patients."
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5pf4nv | - How are large crowds at rallies and events calculated? | Mathematics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Assuming there is no door they have to enter through or some other choke points you can count them at the only way to do it is with math. So you pick an area, say 100 sq ft, then you count the number of people in several of those sized areas, then you take your counts and average them together. Now that you have an average you can multiply by the area of the group and you have a rough count of the number of people in the group. It's not perfect, there is a large margin for error, but when you're talking about variances of even +/- 10,000 out of groups of 500,000 that's considered reasonably accurate. Alternatively you can check the amount of people using public transit on an average day against those on the day you're checking, and you can see the variance and calculate the difference. And if you use both methods you can arrive at a more likely number than using either independently."
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5pf7hv | Japanese vs American automobiles | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"American cars used to be the hallmark of reliability. I think a variety of reasons contributed to the decline of quality in American cars. From an econ/financial perspective it just became too expensive to build quality cars. Labor costs for automotive companies kept going up because unions kept wanting more benefits and higher pay for less work. The companies can't redistribute the extra costs to the consumers because that will just drive them to their competition even faster so they did the only thing they could and cut down on quality."
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5pf9zl | How does "liquid breathing" (with perfluorocarbon) work? | Chemistry | explainlikeimfive | {
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"I have an answer and a few questions myself. I still remember the image in my chemistry book of the mouse they had submerged in the clear perfluorocarbon solution. It seems oxygen can dissolve quite well in the perfluorocarbon. Not only can it dissolve but when in an environment of lower oxygen tension it can give up or allow the oxygen to diffuse out fast enough to actually supply enough to the living mouse. Two problems arise. 1. The perfluorocarbon has to not only allow the O² to diffuse out but more importantly has to allow CO² to diffuse in, otherwise we'd die very quickly of CO² toxicity. When holding your breath, it's not the decrease in oxygen tension that makes us writhe to breathe again. That burning feeling in your diaphragm is from the quickly rising CO² levels and dropping pH. 2. The perfluorocarbon has to have a low enough viscosity such that the mammal can move it in and out of its lungs. The initial intake of that first liquid breath must be incredibly uncomfortable. 3. I just thought of this as I wrote 2: Somehow the laryngeal reflex to spasm shut (which happens whenever basically anything other than a non irritating gas passes them) is averted. Sorry for the lack of true insight. Hopefully someone smarter can come by and explain it to us."
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5pfbcx | Why is mint flavor deemed to be connected with cleanliness? | Was it just the flavor, does it have to do with color? Is there a Scoville Unit equivalent of deeming which mint would be more 'mint-like'? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It's doesn't actually do much for cleanliness, per se. But it does taste/smell nice, and it's \"refreshing\" - menthol, which is part of mint, gives a cool, tingly sensation, which some might associate with cleansing. It basically tricks the cells in your mouth. There was also a lot of marketing/advertising when Listerine and brushing teeth became a thing. A lot of those products tasted awful, but mint goes fairly well with them. Over time, that reinforced people's association between the two, and now it's basically self reinforcing- most toothpastes/mouthwashes etc have mint in them."
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5pfhrg | why is a horse "without a leg, not a horse at all" if the leg would be required to have amputation, but animals like elephants are ok with prosthetics? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Because some people put value on a a horse based on that horse's ability to make them money (referring to racehorses), which gets harder once they're so significantly injured and using a prosthetic. I don't know if they even make prosthetics for horses, and if not, WHY not, but I know many horses who have been injured to the point of being unable to make a profit racing, who has gone on to be wonderful personal horses."
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5pfk9x | How can the living cells in our body be made up of molecules that in turn are made up of non-living atoms? | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The same way that my computer monitor is made up of little tiny dots of silicon and glass at one level, but at another level is showing a beautiful painting. It's all in the level of detail at which you wish to look, and the *organization* and *interaction* among the component pieces. If I just took a random 34982439823098298 pieces of silicon and glass and plopped them on a table, I'd never get anything resembling my computer monitor. If I put them in a very specific pattern, however, and let the system operate over time, and give it energy that it can consume, I get pictures or websites, or whatever. The definition of \"life\" is somewhat fluid, but generally requires that an entity react to its environment, consume resources, excrete waste, and be able to reproduce. No individual atoms can do that, but specific organizations of them (e.g. what we call \"living\" cells) can, via chemical reactions.",
"Because the definition of what is \"living\" is a philosophical term applied to things that meet a certain set of criteria. Those criteria are usually defined as having some form of: 1. Homeostasis 2. Organization 3. Metabolism 4. Growth 5. Adaptation 6. Response to stimuli 7. Reproduction Hence viruses are usually not defined as life, although arguably they meet more than 1 of these criteria, depending on how you define things. In some cases it could even be argued that a planetary system is a living organism.",
"Its easier to think of living cells as machines rather than something special. they react to stimuli almost as if a mathematical function you give them something and they return the same thing depending on what you give them. They gather materials to aid in material exchange and when they have enough they just split and divide the resources between them and then go on gathering materials so that they can grow, divide, and repeat."
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5pfld0 | What does chemo do to your body? | Someone I know recently finished his first round of chemo. From what I understand it was extremely rough on his body. What exactly does it do to you? What are all the possible side effects from chemo? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"There are many different categories of chemotherapeutic anti-cancer drugs, all of which have varied effects, but most of them are involved in disrupting the cell division and DNA / RNA synthesis of cells in the body. A cancer tumor is really just a large mass of cells that have stopped responding to the rest of the body. Normally your body regulates how many times a cell can divide, and can induce a cell to kill itself. Cancer cells have stopped responding to this, and are just reproducing uncontrollably Cancer tumors require a certain threshold size to be \"cancer\", and to withstand the body's immune system. A general rule of thumb is that the larger a cancerous mass is, the more powerful it is. That is why a large part of treating cancer is reducing its size. Enter chemotherapy drugs - drugs that hurt the ability for cells to divide. Now, it is important for *many* cells in your body to divide, but because your body regulates the process, most cells divide much slower than cancer cells. So chemotherapy harms cancer tumors *more* than most other cells in your body. It is an extremely delicate balance, and that is why oncologists have a very difficult job. They need to ensure that the drugs are strong enough to hinder the tumors ability to replicate, but *not* so powerful that they make it impossible for your own immune system to fight the tumor. Chemotherapy is often used with spot-radiation therapy, which is where doctors bombard cancer tumors with powerful radiation, which shreds the cells DNA and kills them. This is an extra attack on the tumor to ensure that your immune system is stronger than the tumor. In the end, it is the body's immune system that ultimately needs to destroy the cancer. Chemotherapy is a double-edged sword, but doctors try to make the side that's stabbing the cancer cells *longer and sharper* than the one stabbing your immune system. Since cancer cells divide more rapidly, they're more vulnerable to chemotherapy, so the goal is to give your body the edge."
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5pfr1j | Can bacteria ever become 100% resistant to antibiotics where nothing kills it? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Yes and no. The trick with antibiotics isn't that they kill bacteria, it's that they kill bacteria and *don't* kill us. It is possible, at least in theory, for bacteria to evolve in such a way that they are indistinguishable from human cells in any way useful to pharmacology. The \"good\" news is that we'd probably all be long dead long before that happened",
"Yes. In recent news a woman actually died from exposure to antibiotic resistant bacteria that was resistant to all 25 antibiotics available in the US. In one article I read they had a petri dish with bacteria at the center and rings of increasingly concentrated antibiotics (think gradient). At first the bacteria is almost initially killed off but through cell division/ reproduction and mutations they acquire advantages over the antibiotics. Over time it was shown that the more concentrated the more the cells would have to adapt and mutate to withstand those conditions. In the end the strain ,at the edge of the petri dish, where the concentration of antibiotics was 1000x of that near the center, was actually a derivative of the original. Equipped with genes to better protect it against antibiotics, this strain was in fact 100% antibiotic resistant. Now take into consideration that there are about 25 types of different antibiotics on the market. The strain that killed the woman I mentioned earlier must have been exposed to those antibiotics over time. This is due to several factors. The most common is poor practice. When doctors or physicians prescribe you antibiotics for a certain period you will probably notice that you feel better before the date you're required to stop. This is because antibiotics remain in your system for a period of time. The periodic doses are there to maintain its effective concentration above a certain limit. If you were to stop taking doses early this could give the few remaining bacteria in your system time to develop a resistance. In other words you wanna pretty much guarantee that all the bacteria exposed to antibiotics are killed off otherwise once that strain passes on to a new host and a new antibiotic is applied the same result can repeat. TL;DR bacteria can become (relatively) 100% resistant to antibiotics if it is exposed to mild dosages of said antibiotic over time. EDIT: to answer the second part of your question \"when nothing kills it\" that part is impossible. All cells have a weakness. Assuming no antibiotics have a significant effect on this hypothetical (or not in light of recent events) bacteria then alternative measures take place. First and foremost the initial, and most basic, way to weaken or kill bacteria is heat (like fevers do). Cells can withstand certain levels of heat before cell degeneration (the point where the DNA strands unzip like a prom dress) and ultimately cell death. After that there is genetic modification which can be applied directly (gene editing and switching genes/mutations off ) or indirectly (making changes to essential parts of the bacteria, e.g. altering genes in reproduction processes making it unable to reproduce). NOTE: I'm not a biology major but I do much enjoy reading scientific articles when I have time. I did in fact enjoy biology throughout school. Still, there may be flaws in my explanation or minor details so I apologize I'm advance."
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5pfrm1 | How can cause and effect exist in the nonlinear time theory? | Some theories have time considered as nonlinear, where you can see the past, present and future as if they are all happening at once but you can move between them like when you move forward and backward or side to side. In these theories time is like just a bunch of snapshots or pages in a book, and humans just put them in an order that makes sense to us. However, I don't fully understand where cause and effect events fall in this theory. Events like a buildup of potential energy that must then turn into kinetic energy. Or if I shoot you in the face, and then you die. Also so does this mean the future just constantly changing? Just a bit fuzzy on actually how this works. Thanks! | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Based on what you've said about the ability to manipulate which area of time you are placed, either in past, present or future. I believe that whilst in motion of tense (past or future) you wouldn't be able to visualize what was going to happen or what had happened. But once you remain in the present, and are in a non shifting state of time, you could see the versions of the past and future from you current state of presence. Yes, the cause and effect scenarios will still hold place. But they will alter depending on how far along a non linear timeline you are. Let's make a timeline as an example. There are 3 points, it's linear. Just like time is. But you as an entity on this timeline visualise the timeline at all 3 points simultaneously. You are on point 2 on this timeline. That is your state of presence. What you do in this presence will alter what happens on point 3 on this timeline. But will also alter what entity's on state 1 see in state 2 and 3. The affect of what you do in any state along the timeline will affect all those outwards either side of your state. As a kind of ripple effect from your current position. While you move between any points of the timeline, you will be unable to see any alterations that have been made in the timeline until you reach a state of non movement. Let's take this to a non linear timeline. Whilst you are able to see all the possible pasts and futures. You will be able to see which causes create which possible futures. Kind of like stringing together which causes create which effects. You can see them all and can shift between them all, but every one again, is dependant on your current state."
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5pfsol | How do doctors deal with deeply embedded objects? | I know if I was to help someone with an object embedded deeply somewhere in their body, that I'm not supposed to remove it as they could bleed out. The ideal process on my part would be to bandage around the embedded object, not moving it in anyway, and calling emergency services. I'm just curious about the process that medical professionals take in order to safely remove the object, without the patient bleeding out or experiencing extreme shock or whatever may happen. | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The risk with an embedded object is that it has damaged something like a blood vessel. The fact that the object is still embedded in the blood vessel stops the blood leaking out much. If you pull the object out, suddenly there's now a big hole in the blood vessel, and you get torrential bleeding and die. So, the first thing that doctors do these days is try to work out if the object has damaged anything important. So, they will do a scan, to see where the object is and where all the arteries/veins/organs are. If the object hasn't damaged anything, then the object can just be pulled out, or just left if it's a small object that's too deep to easily remove, and it's in a position where it is unlikely to move into a more dangerous position. If the object has damaged something, then it will usually need surgery to remove it. The surgeon makes controlled incisions to find the damaged organ or blood vessel. If it's a blood vessel, they will clamp both ends of the blood vessel to stop it bleeding. Then the object can be removed, and the damage repaired at the same time."
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3
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5pftpv | How come during some heavy situations can sober up drunk people? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dcqwueb"
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"text": [
"Survival instinct driven by adrenalin and other hormones can result in rapid sobering up so that the person has a greater chance of surviving a dangerous situation."
],
"score": [
6
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|
5pfupl | What is net neutrality? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dcr2jm5",
"dcqvqd9"
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"text": [
"***All data is equal, and no data on the internet shall be treated differently than other data regardless of content, origin or intended purpose.*** Basically your ISP cannot artificially cut off or slow down your connection to Youtube because they want you to rather use Hulu. They can't promise Facebook that their data gets priority over data from reddit, and they cannot refuse to serve you a connection to google even if they personally own Bing (unless forced by law, but that's a different story), they cannot make you pay for a \"Social pack\" that only allows you access to Instagram, facebook, Twitter and tumblr while locking you out of everything else. all data is equal, no company on the internet is different than the rest. no ISP can control what or how you consume the internet. Net neutrality ensures that all you are paying for is access to the internet, the entirety of the internet. An analog would be \"Electricity neutrality\". your power company sells you power and you have full control over what you do with that power once in your home. they cannot dictate how you use your power, what you use your power for and the rate you consume specific electric devices. your company cannot charge you extra for a \"brighter bulb\" package to ensure your light bulbs have sufficient power at all times.",
"That all information, regardless of what it is, is transmitted over the internet through the same servers and at the same speed. Basically, \"noone owns the internet\", so whether you're looking up a scientific research paper, or just your daily wank material, the servers don't care. It's all processed the same way. It's just information."
],
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13,
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5pg2ka | How does the impeachment process work? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dcqxwd3",
"dcratzp"
],
"text": [
"Someone (usually a member of the House of Representatives) files impeachment charges, those charges move to a committee for review. If the committee decides to move forward with it, a vote is held in the House. Impeachment is similar to an arraignment, where a judge decides if the charges against someone have merit. If the President is impeached by the House (a majority voting in favor of impeaching), it moves to the Senate for something that's akin to the actual trail in a court. If 2/3 of Senators vote in favor, only then will the President be removed from office. So in the 90s, Bill Clinton was impeached by the House, but not removed from office by the Senate. Andrew Johnson was also impeached, but no President has ever been removed from office this way. Richard Nixon probably would have, but he resigned before impeachment proceedings could take place.",
"The impeachment process actually takes some time to work out, and follows a series of specific steps. This was done to prevent a situation where a congress decides that they just \"don't like\" the president, and removing him from office. So as to the process. First off, let's explain what impeachment means. In simple terms, it means that charges of misconduct are filed against the president by the congress. Misconduct is a pretty broad term, but usually it applies to Abuse of power or failure to uphold the requirements of the office of President. Once charges are levied against the president, the Senate then investigate the claims. This is a two stage process. First an independent investigator reviews the charges and any evidence presented. That investigator then decides if the charge is valid. If the charge (or charges) is found to be valid, then the Senate holds a hearing where the president is brought before congress to testify. The President will be asked a number of questions, and is allowed his own lawyer to defend his actions. It's not unlike a court case, in all honesty. Once the testimony has been taken, which can take several days, the Senate will then retreat to a session and vote on whether or not they believe the president is guilty. For a guilty verdict to be found, the Senators must have two thirds of them vote guilty. If this happens, then the president is removed from office, and the next in line (typically the Vice President) takes the oath of office. Our 17th president, Andrew Johnson, was impeached while in office. Thirty-five senators found him guilty -- just one vote short of the two-thirds vote necessary to convict him."
],
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31,
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5pg92l | Why do soups and stews seem to taste better as Leftovers? | Why do some foods like soups and stews seem to taste even better 2 or 3 days after they were originally cooked? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dcqz0lt",
"dcqzyt1"
],
"text": [
"I am Ethiopian, most of our popular dishes are stews and I always prefer eating the leftover batch...I think it's because the flavors mix well when you heat it up for the second time. Also if you use a shitton of spices like us then the spices would have reacted more than when you have it for the first time... Am I making sense?",
"Cayenne is a spice I'm most familiar with in this context. If you add it to a stew or gumbo, you'll get spiciness on day one, but the true flavors don't really come out until the next day. Or after cooking for a really long time. Source: Am from Louisiana."
],
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8,
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5pgatw | Why is it that some people are such jerks to their parents/siblings/relatives, but are are described as (insert nice quality) from their friends? | (From a psychological standpoint) | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dcr2agx",
"dcr2902"
],
"text": [
"It's easier to be horrible to the people closest to you because subconsciously you know that they love you unconditionally and aren't going to hate you for it. Your friends will only take so much crap from you before they get sick of it and just cut ties with you and get a different friend so you know you can't push the boundaries as much as you can with your family.",
"People can act differently around other people a LOT. Some minor manipulation on their part in order to boost social standing. Narcissists tend to do this - appear nice to people they cannot control to some degree, but are antagonistic towards those who depend on them."
],
"score": [
7,
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5pgfaf | What is the difference between http and https? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dcr0cer",
"dcr0nkx"
],
"text": [
"The S in httpS stands for \"secure\". What this means is basically two things - encryption and authentication. Encryption simply means that the data send between your computer and the server is encrypted. Anyone intercepting this communication should be unable to decrypt it. Authentication means that the server sends a digitally signed certificate which proves the server is indeed the entity that it claim it is. This way, for example, you can know for sure that the banking website that you just entered your credentials in is indeed your bank, and not a phishing website that wants to steal your password.",
"https is a *secure* version of http. It's probably easier to explain the weaknesses of http, rather than explaining what https does to protect you. With http, any of the following may happen: - someone may eavesdrop on everything you send and receive - someone with access to one of the routers your data travels over may redirect your requests to a different site (we can see you're requesting http:// URL_0 . Let's redirect that so the site you actually see is my shady Chinese clone, which looks exactly like Paypal, and even lets you carry out transactions. But it also steals your password so I can use that to log in to your real Paypal account at my leisure. - someone may modify your request, or the response you get (injecting malware into the response, or perhaps just letting your ISP insert additional ads on the page) https prevents all this. It offers authentication, so you can be sure that the site you're visiting is the real deal. That if you go to https:// URL_0 , you will *get* URL_0 . If you get redirected to an impostor, your browser will be able to see it, and drop the connection and show you an error instead. And it offers encryption, so an eavesdropper can't see what you send, what you receive, or even who you're sending *to*. (They can still see which IP address your request is going to, but they can't see the corresponding hostname, and they can't see which page on the site you're requesting)"
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"paypal.com",
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"https://paypal.com"
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|
5pgfpl | Why is white a brighter color? | This question came to mind because sometimes at night I will put a white page on my second monitor to create a sort of 'lamp.' I understand that white is a lighter color than black or blue, but why is it brighter, especially when on a computer/phone/tv screen? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dcr0def"
],
"text": [
"White is a combination of all the colors of the visible spectrum. In screens, all colors are mixed using red, green and blue subpixels. So to get white, you have to turn on all three at the same intensity. Thus you get three times as much light as you would for a solid blue color."
],
"score": [
6
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5pgjkd | Ponzi schemes vs pensions | From my understanding pensions rely on new workers contributing to them to help pay the pensions of retired workers. Isn't that similar to a Ponzi scheme designed to last for decades? theres no guarantee that the plan will have younger workers available to pay into it over time or that the younger workers will be able to get the full benefits by retirement. | Economics | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dcr10l5"
],
"text": [
"Pensions do not rely on new workers. Pensions are a specific savings account made in a worker's name that is put into various investments to grow the money. It then has a set payout rate at retirement."
],
"score": [
3
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"text_urls": [
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5pgkzc | Why does a kettle boil water so much faster than a pan on the hob? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dcr1ew4"
],
"text": [
"A kettle is designed to pump as close to 100% of the heat energy as possible into the water. The heating element is submerged, often surrounded on all sides by water. Whereas on a stove, the gas is heating the bottom of a pan, but a lot of the heat flows up, around the pan and away, as opposed to going towards heating the water."
],
"score": [
6
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|
5pgn8f | What would happen if you are in a submarine 10.000m deep in the ocean and a window cracks and breaks? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dcr4lue",
"dcr1qre"
],
"text": [
"besides all of the destruction of the sub, you and especially compressible things there would be an effect present called sonoluminesce. As the bubble of air in your submarine gets smaller and smaller due to the water rushing in the air gets so hot that it will start to glow for a very short amount of time. like a twinkly star at the depths of the ocean while your skull is being crushed.",
"Assuming you mean 10 thousand meters. (Damn standardisation), and assuming that you could even break glass that was built to withstand that pressure in the first place. The water from outside would rush in, and possibly even widen the fracture made in the glass, crushing everyone and everything inside with just sheer force in the beginning, and then as it fills gradually equalize in pressure till everything gets squished tighter than a tin can. You'd be dead far before that though, crushed ribcages and/or skulls can't be good for the body"
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5pgpt4 | Why only children get lice? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dcr26vh",
"dcr2ros",
"dcr35kv"
],
"text": [
"It's not only children who get lice. Adults can, and do, get it too. Children are more susceptible because they often don't have the hygiene habits that adults have, and frequently share toys/clothes for games in which they dress up.",
"Adults get lice too. Its a lot easier to transfer lice as children, because of the school setting, and child behaviour. Head to head contact is easiest way to spread, and as adults, we don't do that much, we have our bubble of personal space. Kids however, not so much of the personal boundaries lol. They can also be spread by towels, hats, combs.... things that adults don't generally share and children often do.",
"Adults can get lice, especially when working with children for work. Take it from me, being 20 with lice was no fun when I got it from 3 year olds at work."
],
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16,
8,
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|
5pgug0 | How is getting rid of net neutrality a positive for consumers? What are the pros of having no net neutrality? | Economics | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dcr2u7z"
],
"text": [
"It is not positive for the consumers in any way. It means that those who provide your internet can block stuff from you, and work together with services like HBO and Netflix to create a monopoly."
],
"score": [
6
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|
5pgy5c | Why is it that placebos work better when the element of deception is not present? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dcr3sk2"
],
"text": [
"That's not what the article was saying at all. It was describing how to balance deception (necessary for placebos) with the ethical necessity of informing patients about procedures. It described several methods of limited information/deception."
],
"score": [
4
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|
5ph2ch | What prevents voter fraud in states with no ID requirement to vote? | For example, if I'm a California resident, what stops me from casting ballots for people who I know are not going to vote? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dcr84vc"
],
"text": [
"Depending on the state it could be fairly easy to impersonate a registered voter and vote in their place. But in actuality, voter fraud involving mistaken identity virtually never happens. I don't remember the exact number, but in my state the number of documented cases like this is in the single digits. The estimated cost of implementing measures to prevent it would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars per each instance. It is simply a solution for a problem that doesn't exist. We should be far more concerned with fraud in the area of tabulating and collecting the votes. If you're going to rig an election that's how you're going to do it, not by going to every precinct and recruiting armies of fake voters."
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5ph5jg | What exactly is seasonal depression? | It seems weird to me that by just looking outside and seeing overcast can cause a chemical imbalance in your brain. It would be awesome if someone could just set me straight and well....explain like I'm 5. | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dcrnhic"
],
"text": [
"Sunshine on your skin causes your body to manufacture vitamin d. Lack of sun shine lowers this production, making you sad/depressed. During winter months, the light from the sun is weaker since earth is farther away, and since its colder/rainy/snowying people tend to stay indoor more further limiting their intake of sunlight, lowering their production of vitamin d."
],
"score": [
3
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5ph7zm | When an ice cube melts in a glass of water, the water level stays the same. Therefore my question is how come water levels are rising because of the ice caps melting ? | I was put forward this mental predicament by a friend of mine. To put it simply, he said that the claims that water levels are rising cannot be true if their main cause is meant to be from melting ice caps. If he is incorrect, can someone please explain to me how? He did say that any ice that was resting on land (instead of floating in water) and has melted would have affected the water levels, but not by a significant enough amount. Thank you! | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dcr569d"
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"text": [
"The majority of the ice on the polar regions is **on land**. not so much for the North Pole itself, but Greenland's glaciers is a huge amount of ice, and Antarctica is a continental landmass. This is like melting an ice cube *in a separate glass* then pouring the melt into the first glass. That will raise the water level."
],
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14
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5ph93t | Why are electric cars seen as more environmentally friendly? Doesn't their electricity come from fossil fuels? | As per title. | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dcr79el",
"dcr5j0h"
],
"text": [
"even when it does come from fossil fuels, it's still a good alternative gasoline engines because power plants are more efficient than gasoline engines! compare west virginia, which is 95% coal powered. EV's and hybrid's still do much better than coal. then look at the best case scenario. Washington state where it's 67% hydro power. URL_0",
"Mainly because it reduces emissions. Rather than releasing greenhouse gases into the air like a standard car does, an electric car instead runs on battery power and does not need to release emissions. You are correct that it still needs to recharge it's battery, which involves hooking up to a power grid largely powered by big oil, but it still removes the emissions released by the vehicle significantly. It also is possible that the power grid the driver is plugging into could be charged by nuclear power (about 20% of power comes from nuclear). Analyzing the exact effect of electric cars in regards to power is tricky, but most see it as the first step on the way to becoming more green. As you switch the source of emissions from millions of vehicle tailpipes to the smoke stacks of factories, the number of sources are reduced and it becomes easier to target them and replace with green energy. Here's [an article that explains it]( URL_0 ) if you're curious to learn more."
],
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"http://www.afdc.energy.gov/vehicles/electric_emissions.php"
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"https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/electric-cars-are-not-necessarily-clean/"
]
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5phccp | How did Microsoft go from a software company to making the XBOX? | How did Microsoft go from a software company to making MS-DOS to making DOS based Windows to making Windows NT to also making the XBOX? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dcr644z"
],
"text": [
"They started development on it when it became clear that the PlayStation 2 was pulling game developers away from Windows. It shows how big the PS2 was; it was having a noticeable effect on the number of Windows developers before it even launched. Even without the threat of the PS2, though, I think Microsoft would have dipped its toe into the console pool eventually anyway. Around that point in time it became pretty clear that video games weren't just a fad that was going away, nor was it something only for kids. As a company with a lot of money in the bank, it makes sense that Microsoft would want to at least take a shot at an industry that had shown year-over-year growth consistently with no sign of slowing down."
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5phhhh | How is it possible to get sick with the common cold over and over again? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dcr728y"
],
"text": [
"There are a large variety of viruses that are responsible for the \"common cold\". Every time you catch a cold, it's a different virus that is responsible for the normal set of symptoms. You can catch a cold more than once, but it's never the _same_ cold."
],
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5phhm3 | What is double moral hazard? | I know what is [moral hazard]( URL_1 ). It is a situation (usually in economics) where there are two parties involved. One of the party bears the risks of an action. The other one does not. This leads to the situation where second party acts in a way, that could endanger the first party. Eg. insurance. Jack has his second house (which he rents) insured, so he does not care whether it has been reviewed to comply with fire regulations. However the people living there take the risk of being left without home. And I have heard about [double moral hazard]( URL_0 ) and [here]( URL_2 ). It involves an agent and principle, where agent is performing the actions but not the one taking the risk. But I still dont get what it actually means. Where is the "double" part in there? Thank you *Also this is my first ELI5, let me know if its allright* | Economics | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dcrjvvh"
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"text": [
"Let's say I own a business and hire you for a salary to work for me. You have an incentive to shirk, in ways I can't easily monitor or detect, because you get the same wage while the reduction in profits from your shirking only fall on me, the owner. Let's see say we then agree to implement a profit-sharing plan, rather than paying you purely on salary. Now you have a reduced (but not eliminated) incentive to shirk, because some of the lost profits come from your own pocket. However, now I have an incentive to shirk in my own duties, since now I get all the benefits of my own shirking (the pleasure of increased Reddit usage when I should be negotiating for better prices with our suppliers, or networking to reach more customers), while I no longer bear all of the cost of lost profits, some of that cost is shifted to you. Now both of us have an incentive to misbehave in a way that is partially paid for by the other. That is double moral hazard."
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5phlk2 | When kicking a ball, how are we able to judge the power, curve, and dip required to hit a target in a split second? | Mathematics | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dcr7qg6"
],
"text": [
"by muscle memory that comes from practicepracticepractice. if it's the first time you're kicking a ball with no reference, then you'll suck at hitting the target. after doing it over and over again, each time learning from the previous time, you get to start approximating how to kick it and how to hard to kick it."
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5phn3v | How are modern day wars fought? How is it different from the past? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dcr982q"
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"text": [
"Modern wars tend to be more mobile than wars in the past. Even when compared with recent wars such as World War Two (recent in a historical sense) modern wars move and develop more quickly. Consider if you will the war in Iraq. In the invasion of Iraq, it took the troops roughly three weeks to reach Baghdad. During this push, armored personnel carriers (APC's), Tanks, and wheeled vehicles (trucks) kept the troops on the move. Even though they faced stiff resistance, the mobility of the army meant that it was easier for them to divert around defending forces and take the enemy from the flanks, or behind. Comparing that with World War Two, it took many months, upwards of a year to travel the same distance. That lies chiefly in the fact that troops tended to move at a slower pace. While trucks WERE used, they were not as extensively used, and APC's were pretty much unheard of. So rather than having a very mobile force, you had a force that was limited in the speed and distance that a man could be expected to march in a day. This means that you might move between thirty and fifty miles a day. However since you couldn't easily expect that force to divert around enemy concentrations, it meant that each concentration had to be dealt with. (IE through battle.) That makes things move MUCH slower. The mobility issue becomes more apparent when you look at even older wars. Whether you're talking World War One, or even the US Civil War, when compared with a modern engagement you can see the severe limitations that mobility has on an army."
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5phrnx | how do we estimate the number of people in crowds? | I'm specifically wondering how we estimated the number of people marching yesterday. | Mathematics | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dcrg1sj"
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"text": [
"A very simple way in which you can do this yourself is visually, from pictures. You look for elements for which you know the area, for instance delimited square sections of available standing space. You estimate how much of it is occupied purely visually with people, and then you estimate the density of people per square meter. The last one is trickier because people can be standing with varying spacing between one another, but you can approximate visually if you have a zoomed in image. It's also possible to go for an \"upper approximate\" by assuming people are as packed together as possible, and then knowing that the number you got is the maximum possible number and the real number is lower than that. If you decompose the entire crowd into enough subsections of known area, and have available \"density\" estimates for each one, then with purely visual methods you can estimate the number of people within an error range of +- 10% easily. Mathematically, for each subsection you have nr_of_people = occupied_area(in m^2 ) * people_per_m^2 . Sum up all the subsections of the image that you used, and you get the total estimate. It's a little time consuming, but simple."
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5phy6d | Technicolor | How does it work and how does it affect the visuals of a product when compared to other types of effects? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dcrgb7f",
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"dcrba6i"
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"text": [
"Technicolor is a brand name, so it refers so the company, its photo lab processing services, and several different processing technologies over the years, some of which are obsolete. The most significant today is their positive print process. Color film involves three images, one each for red, green, and blue. To work for projection, the complementary colors, cyan, magenta, and yellow dyes are used. The main difference between Technicolor and other processes is how the dyes are put into the film during developing. Most processing uses chemicals called dye-couplers, which rely on chemical reactions to form the dye. Because this depends on specific chemical reactions, it limits the nature of the dye and the stability of the dye over time. Technicolor uses a dye-transfer process, where a substance such as gelatin can absorb the dye. This is more like using food coloring to color unflavored gelatin, whipped cream, etc. Because it's just a mixture without requiring a specific chemical reaction, there's much more flexibility in the choice of dyes. The result is that Technicolor prints are longer lasting than other processes, and thus still used for archival storage (where digital isn't wanted). In the 30s through 50s, Technicolor also referred to the film and camera system for making the negative. This used a combination of mirrors, prisms, and filters to expose three separate filmstrips. It was the best possible when introduced, but was very expensive, requiring special cameras, very bright lighting, and company specialists on the set to advise the cinematographer. This is one reason we still saw B & W movies being made in the 50s and 60s. Over time, systems involving just one filmstrip evolved, and they were much cheaper, so Technicolor process cameras are no longer used. TL;DR: Technicolor allows for the use of much more stable dyes, creating longer lasting prints.",
"I am a professional cinematographer and can answer this. Technicolor today is a digital color lab. When I shoot a movie digitally (almost all movies now a days) I end up with thousands of video clips that need to be organized and color corrected for the editor. Technicolor will do that for you. Many other companies will do that as well but Technicolor is considered the best and costs the most so they do the dailies and color work for big budget movies mostly. Once the movie is edited they will do another color correction pass to make sure all the shots match. This is very important because scenes don't always match color wise from shot to shot for a variety of reasons. Also some lighting problems (maybe the light on the actor is too dark or too bright) can be fixed with a good color pass. Since technicolor is big budget they tend to hire to best people to do that job.",
"Technicolor was a color film technology. Several different companies began experimenting with color processes and Technicolor became the most widely known because it produced highly saturated colors. Nowadays the Technicolor company acts as a post production house, processing digital raw files."
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5phzdg | How are dollar stores able to sell everything for a dollar and make a profit? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"1. Many things would cost a dollar (or less!) at the other stores you would see them at. No magic here, just selling cheap things for cheap prices. 2. Many things are lower-end models of what you'd find at another store. You might get a pen with less ink or a smaller can of soup, or you might get a pack of 8 crayons instead of 16 or 32. 3. Sometimes big stores have too much stock and they don't want to deal with keeping it on hand until it sells naturally, so they sell it at a discount to dollar stores. Someone screwed up and the product is getting sold at a loss (or a smaller than usual profit at least) and you benefit.",
"Also keep in mind even if there is a brand name of something, like dog food for example, dollar stores get the cheaper version of it.",
"Efficiency of scale ... when you make LOTS of something, you can make it cheaply, and when you make it where labor is cheap, you make lots of it EXTREMELY cheaply, then fill a shipping container for about $600 and float it to the US to be sold in stores. Shampoo, for example. Even when I was making my own shampoo and buying bulk ingredients (but hardly the scale of the large corporations), I could make 8 ounces of liquid for under $1. If I bought the quantities to make the amounts the large guys make, I'd cut the cost down to about 10-15 cents. The container costs way more than the liquid: in small bulk, about 50 cents a bottle. (So you buy the containers in HUGE quantities for the economies of scale.) They shoot for getting items for about 50 cents that they will sell for $1. Some items have a smaller margin, other items have larger margins.",
"Sometimes it is obviously Chinese stuff like I see on eBay for pennies. But Dollar Tree has some unbelievable bargains. They have 15oz. cans of mackerel for $1. They tried some downsized 10oz. cans that rarely sold. They have USB cables and phone chargers. The stuff works. What can I say except I have saved money. Another bargain, a huge bag of kitty litter. I use it for oil dry.",
"Mostly because the things they sell cost less than a dollar to buy wholesale and you usually get discounts when you buy in bulk making it even cheaper.",
"First off, they focus on a limited number of products, and purchase those in large quantities. Dollar stores have a number of ways to acquire inventory at below the cost to sell it. For one, they use \"private branded\" goods-- Dollartree's is \"Greenbrier\"-- which is merchandise manufactured to the store's specifications and labeled with their brand. Because they are buying these directly from factory/suppliers, they can get them for significantly less than if they were buying branded goods. (\"Cutting out the middle man.\") Second, they purchase odd/small sizes of branded goods which are cheaper to manufacture and ship. Generally, the smaller an item is, the more profitable it is to sell. Third, purchasing managers locate buyouts on other company's overstocked goods that are being liquidated due to poor sales or other logistical problems -- for example, merchandise in a warehouse that needs to be removed. They can often buy these goods at below the cost to manufacture them. For instance, books are returned from traditional booksellers to the publisher when they aren't sold. Publishers are then stuck with them, sitting in distribution centers, which they end up liquidating for pennies."
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5pi0kj | Why do our ears get oily? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"There are modified sweat glands in your ear canal that secrete a substance called cerumen (also known as ear wax). Its purpose is to keep your ear drum healthy, lubricate and clean the ear canal, trap foreign particles, and kill bacteria."
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5pi62v | How come astronauts can do space walks even though the temperature in space is -445C? | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"So, first, the temperature in space isn't -445 C. I believe absolute zero as defined by Kelvin is -273 C. Space has the background cosmic microwave radiation and that's at about 2.5 Kelvin or -270 C. Space is the closest thing we have to an actual vacuum. So there are no particles to carry away the heat. The only way to lose heat in space is by radiation (radiating it away, mainly in the form of infrared radiation) and evaporation/sublimation (a tiny part of heat loss in space). If you insulate a human that is generating enough energy to keep their entire BMI at 37 C or 310 K they will have more than enough heat to keep themselves warm. In fact, if you add to your spacewalk the sun's energy, i.e. you are walking in a sunlit section of the ISS, and depending on the incident angle of the radiation, you will likely need a way to actually whisk away the heat that builds up in your suit! I'm not an astronaut or a physicist. Hopefully this helped though :)",
"Heat is transferred by radiation, conduction and convection. The last two mechanisms require the hot material to be in contact with something else... Whether that is air, water, or another object. Since there is nothing in space, there is no medium through which heat could travel. You are left with radiation as the only remaining transfer mechanism. Therefore, in space most heat will be trapped pretty well, so you are more likely to overheat than freeze to death."
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