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ELI5: if 60% of our weight is water, and we are 65% hydrogen and 10% oxygen, then why are we called carbon (18%) based life forms? | 16 | In the same way that a house consisting of over 80% air and 15% concrete is still called a wooden house if all the beams are wooden. In our body the water is not the complex molecules that define who we are and make us work, nor is it the fat or sugar. The complex molecules that actually do the work is the protein, DNA, enzymes, etc. And while these may still be made out of a lot of hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen atoms it is the carbon atoms that is at the center of their structures and defines their shapes and therefore their functions. | 79 |
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Why do electrons orbit the nucleus? And why don't the molecules touch each other? | Why would electrons orbit around the atom's nucleus since they are oppositely charged, shouldn't the electrons move to nucleus?
Also, when the molecules attract each other (van der waal) why don't they touch each other? What is the force that prevents them from touching? I think its the kinetic energy they have, so is that kinetic energy converted to work done against the attraction? If so won't the temperature decrease?
Thanks for the help :) | 41 | Electrons behave quantum-mechanically. In quantum mechanics, a particle has lower kinetic energy if it's more spread out in space. (and it cannot have exactly zero kinetic energy. But as with classical physics, its potential energy will be lowest if it's as close as possible to the nucleus. So these two forces 'balance out' to give atoms the 'size' they have.
>Also, when the molecules attract each other (van der waal) why don't they touch each other?
How do you define 'touch'? The electron 'cloud' around the atoms is a diffuse thing, so there's no set boundaries. As two molecules get closer and closer, the electrical repulsion between the electrons (in combination with the 'rules' of how they behave) will eventually become larger than the attractive force.
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[MCU] Prior to Wakanda coming out as a technologically advanced powerhouse, if I were a foreign diplomat invited to visit their country what would my experience have been like and what would I have seen as a part of their charade policy at the time? | 642 | You would likely be entertained in the "Royal Palace," a small, traditional mansion with most modern amenities. You would be given a tour of the country, including "wealthy" areas that house the King's advisors and administrators, and the "poorer" areas where the farmers, herders, and artisans live. These people would appear to live in conditions not dissimilar to the tribes people of neighboring countries and their poverty is apparent, though they do not appear to be hungry or particularly discontent with their conditions. Your visit will be concluded with a dinner with the King, who will primarily discuss Wakanda's textile exports. Questions about Vibranium will not be fully answered, and no Vibranium mines will be shown on your visit. You will walk away with the implication that Wakanda does not have very much Vibranium at all, which is undoubtedly why they are so protective of it.
To the visiting dignitary, Wakanda presents a strange contradiction. Your visit will be a completely controlled tour, similar to that of North Korea, you will be shown poor villages where people live in impoverished conditions. Nevertheless, everyone seems content, even happy, and even the poorest person you see looks to be fed and content. You feel as if the country must be performing a big show for you, similar to what North Korea is known to do, but satellites and spy planes show no sign of labor or internment camps, nor villages you aren't allowed to visit. Where would they be putting the hungry or discontented?
You leave the country with little of your questions answered, but nevertheless thinking that the country is more-or-less harmless. Wakanda poses no threat to your nation, no threat to its neighbors, and no threat to its people. Furthermore, Wakanda has little to offer you, they may not be the poorest country in Africa, but they have a small population and little material wealth to speak of. The little Vibranium they have must have already been used up, or stolen by Klaue, or else you or the satellites would have seen the mines.
At any rate, based on what you saw, Wakanda is clearly not worth thinking about. | 634 |
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Have biologists identified "training" behavior in primates? Wouldn't chimps who develop a workout(bodybuilding) culture have great advantages? | 41 | A human bodybuilder can burn thousands of extra calories per day, and maintaining extra muscle mass requires the expenditure of lots of time.
Neither of these things are feasible for chimps, who move constantly to forage for food.
And it should be noted that chimps are much stronger than humans, proportionally. So increased strength would mostly be useful in internal confrontations. BUT: confrontation within a group is more efficiently handled through negotiation, display, and appeasement, not physical conflict. And confrontation between groups, for the vast majority of chimp evolutionary history, was most efficiently handled by group display which ended in one group moving on. | 33 |
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[Jojo's Bizzare Adventure] [Stone Ocean] So can Whitesnake only remove Stand abilities specifically, or can it remove any "Ability" | In the Heavy Weather arc Pucci used Whitsnake to remove his eyesight. Does this mean he can remove more mundane and non-stand related abilities and implant them into other people? | 16 | It is implied that his ability is more general, and can remove abilities and somewhat abstract concepts. We see whitesnake remove sight from Pucci, and we see him insert abstract commands into people. It does seem like the ability is limited to living creatures though. | 15 |
ELI5:Why does the air at night smell nicer/different? | 3,215 | During the day, the sun heats the air and it causes air to get mixed all over the place due to convection. This kicks up a lot of stuff and generally makes it smell worse. In the colder night, the air is stiller and thus cleaner. It also decreases the airs ability to hold water, so the moisture condenses in our noses and increases our sense of smell (same reason dogs have wet noses). | 2,714 |
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Why, on a molecular lever, are metals shiny while nonmetals are not? | My chem teacher is...not the top of her field, and she says, "They just are." But I don't understand why metals reflect light better than nonmetals. What properties of metals specifically cause this? | 16 | The defining property of metal is that it is a sea of free electrons. These electrons create a plasma. A property of a plasma is that it will reflect EM waves that are below it's "plasma frequency", which is a function of the electron density. Since metal has a lot of electrons, it's plasma frequency is in a ultra-violet, and thus it reflects visible and lower frequency light very well. This is also the same reason the ionosphere reflects radio waves. Since the density of electrons in the ionosphere is much lower than a metal, it only reflects radio waves and not visible light. | 24 |
[Terminator 2] How exactly does the T1000 see? Similar to the T800, all red and with numbers and calculations and such? | 31 | The red numbers and visible calculations aren't even how the T-800 sees. That's just a legacy diagnostic view meant for humans to use in debugging early units. Skynet just never bothered to write it out of the code.
What both the T-800 and T-1000 are doing internally is just feeding raw visual data from the cameras into their pattern recognition and parsing algorithms. If you want to call that seeing, then the cameras are capturing roughly the same spectrum as your eyes, so the Terminators see the same thing you would. | 32 |
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[General Fantasy] Why do Dwarves use Axes? | They are miners who live underground. Axes seem to be an odd choice for a weapon. Why not a mining tool? That way it can serve two purposes. | 21 | Dwarves are master armor smiths, and their armor and shields tend to be thick and heavy.
Historically, warhammer and War axes have been very effective weapons against heavy armor and shields. Where as a sword would just bounce off, or arrow easily blocked by a large shield, hammer and axes break bones with sheer force behind it. | 39 |
"Millennials earn 20% less than baby boomers did at the same stage of life" according to a recent report. Is this accurate, and if so, how did it happen? | From the [summary news article](https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/05/millennials-earn-20-percent-less-than-boomersdespite-being-better-educated.html):
> Overall, millennials earn 20% less than baby boomers did at the same stage of life, according to “[The Emerging Millennial Wealth Gap](https://www.newamerica.org/millennials/reports/emerging-millennial-wealth-gap/),” a recent report from the nonprofit, nonpartisan think tank New America. Specifically, median earnings for those 18 to 34 are lower than they were in the 1980s, a disparity that was first noted in a 2017 report from the non-profit Young Invincibles.
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> ... That’s in spite of overall higher education levels. Nearly 40% of millennials 25 to 37 have at least a bachelor’s degree, compared to just a quarter of baby boomers and 30% of Gen X when they were the same age, ... | 107 | > That’s in spite of overall higher education levels. Nearly 40% of millennials 25 to 37 have at least a bachelor’s degree, compared to just a quarter of baby boomers and 30% of Gen X when they were the same age
The article has it backwards; it's *because* millennials spend much more time in school that they earn less at the same age. The typical millennial entered the job market *at minimum* at age 22, if not older. He/she has much less experience than a baby boomer/Gen X at the same age, and thus a lower wage *initially*. But lifetime earnings will almost certainly be higher for millennials than for their parents. | 120 |
CMV: Being occasionally jealous or uncomfortable with scenarios involving your SO isn't unhealthy, nor does it deem you "irrational" nor "insecure" | I've read several posts recently about relationships, where readers were asked if they'd be ok if their SO did "such and such" with another woman, or if their partner was texting some unknown person at 3am all the time, or if they'd be jealous if their SO was always hanging out with someone of the opposite gender, etc.
Tbh I was surprised by the number of responses stating that they "wouldn't mind at all" or responding with, "why should I care?" The part that confused me the most was that they'd also follow up with something along the lines of "anyone who is worried /cares that much is just insecure."
Is it really that strange to feel wariness or jealousy even if you totally trust your partner? I love and trust my partner, but I can't always keep those thoughts out. Mind you, I don't confront or otherwise act on those concerned thoughts, but I guess I assumed these thoughts were just part of being human. Is this really a serious issue? Or do others regularly have these underlying thoughts, despite trusting their partners? I don't necessarily feel like being wary or skeptical about certain scenarios makes me "insecure".
EDIT: I feel the need to discern between "thinking" something and actually "acting" upon it. Let's try to keep these separate. | 587 | You are definitely allowed to feel whatever you feel no one is saying you shouldn't do that, its just about how you should respond to those feelings in a mature way. If you are ever jealous because of something your partner did you essentially have 3 options.
1.You can accept it
2.You can tell your partner you're not okay with it
3.You can break up
These all have consequences but a mature person will consider the pros and cons and live with the result without getting too upset, because they know this is how the world works.
edit: a word | 165 |
What caused the neutral rate of interest to fall since the '80s | Hello
The neutral rate of interest consistent with full employment seems to have fallen significantly over time since the 1980's. I was wondering what the main factors for this change were. | 42 | There is a lot of debate on this topic, and there is no one answer. The two (not mutually exclusive) big answers are "the global savings glut" and "secular stagnation."
The global savings glut theory - most associated with Ben Bernanke - says that there is a lot of money saved in the global economy, which is making that money less valuable to investors. East Asian economies who wanted to build up reserves after the Asian currency crisis in the 90s are the most commonly cited source of those new savings.
The secular stagnation theory - most associated with Larry Summers - says that wealthy countries are saving too much and have too few wortwhile investments, which makes money for those investments less valuable Productivity growth is low by historical standards, meaning there isn't as much worth investing in. Populations in the west are also growing older, and old people have a lot of savings that they try to keep in the safest possible place (like bonds). Income inequality could also play a role since well-off people save more of their income than working class people. | 20 |
What caused protons and neutrons to come together in the early universe? | In the early universe, when the temperature was hot enough, there was a sea of protons, neutrons, electrons, and radiation (photons). Eventually as the temperature dropped, it became possible for protons and neutrons to come together and form atomic nuclei, though it was still too hot for electrons to bind and form neutral atoms.
My question is - what caused the protons and neutrons to bind in the first place? If I understand correctly, the nuclear force keeps the nucleus together **once** it's already formed, but what caused the proton and neutron to bind? Why didn't all protons and neutrons continue as individual particles as the universe continued to cool? | 16 | You're talking about primordial nucleosynthesis. The first reaction in the chain is the production of deuterium:
p + n <-> d + γ
There's a photon so this is an EM process (electromagnetism mediates it). The subsequent processes to create helium and heavier elements contain both EM, weak and strong mediated reactions.
However, this first reaction cannot happen until the weak interactions are *decoupled*, i.e they've become weak, which happens when cooling below 1 MeV.
When they're active, there is this channel
p + e <-> n + ν_e
And permutations. At equilibrium you will find a certain ratio of protons and neutrons, given by the Boltzmann distribution and using the last reaction. At T=1 MeV the weak interaction decouples and this ratio is "frozen" at the value it had at 1 MeV.
Then a little time has to pass before we can start making deuterium. This is because we have a sea of photons messing with our stuff and decomposing our deuterium. We therefore need to wait for lower temperatures. In this small time neutrons decay. Remember that free neutrons are unstable with a 10 min or so half-life and they decay according to
n -> p + e + bar ν_e
So that when we get to making deuterium the neutron fraction is even lower.
All of this alongside a lot of boring calculations explains why not all of the hydrogen was fused into helium, which only forms a fraction of the total mass of baryonic matter today. | 10 |
CMV: People who take the bible literally are awful at critical thinking. I'll go as far to say that we would be better off without the bible too. | I love reading with a passion. And as an avid reader, I love looking for a plethora of interpretations and hidden messages and meanings. Shakespeare's works alone contain a litany of hidden messages that we cannot and will not be able to prove the truth/falsity of. What makes the bible any different?
Here is an undisputed fact: The bible contains metaphors. If this is completely true, which no one can deny, then taking anything literal in the bible (in terms of things that are transcendentalist - i.e. supernatural) is ridiculous. Yes, I know that Jesus was a real person. But to assume that he walked on water is laughable. To assume that a talking snake told Eve to eat a fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil is also laughable. That a flood ravaged the Earth yet there are animals that are native to specific places.
Why can't people see that this is all metaphorical? I genuinely feel like talking to Christians has me talking to a wall.
Example 1: Maybe when it says that Jesus walked on water, it is indicating that a human (Jesus), is LIKE that of water. Free-flowing, never getting angry about what's in the way and continues going downstream. Are people really going to believe that a human walked on water? I guess they do, but without any justification.
Example 2: The "trees" in Genesis are just notions of knowledge production. The good tree is the tree of life = gentleness, happiness, love, etc. The bad tree is the tree of knowledge of good and evil = human reasoning, envy, etc. My personal interpretation is that Adam and Eve is a story about human sexuality.
You can go on and on and on and on. Is our education just that bad in America? Am I missing something? | 659 | Hypothetical question;
Presume for a moment that Jesus did indeed do all of these miraculous things. He did walk on water, he did feed a large group of people with three loaves and a fish, he did return Lazarus to life, he did heal the sick and injured and he did return to life after 3 days.
Now with this assumption in mind let us presume you were there when this happened. How do you tell future generations exactly? Really the only way is to write a book and say what happened and then hope people believe you later.
So then sure the Bible contains metaphor but really how can you determine what is and is not a metaphor within the text? The impression one gets from your post is that the only reason you do not think Jesus did those things is because you do not accept the supernatural; 'taking anything literal in the bible (in terms of things that are transcendentalist - i.e. **supernatural**) is ridiculous.' If the only reason you reject that idea though is because you don't believe in the supernatural then wouldn't another person who did believe in it be perfectly sane and logical for thinking that the stuff Jesus did may have actually happened? | 139 |
If an obese person attempts to lose weight and starts eating healthy, would the plaque on their arteries decrease and/or disappear over time? | I'm not obese myself, I'm just wondering. | 90 | Point of clarification, just being obese doesn't mean that there are plaques in arteries (arteriosclerosis). Being obese only raises the risk for developing plaques.
That said, a healthier diet and weight loss in a person that does have plaques can slowly decrease the natural progression of the plaques. | 42 |
CMV: Using a chair as a footrest in a public place isn’t disrespectful. | Obviously, this can definitely be disrespectful in certain situations. If the room is crowded and you’re taking up an extra seat, if your foot is dirty, if the chair is an antique, if you’re in a formal setting, etc. But if you’re in, let’s say, a computer lounge that is nearly empty except for a few people, why is it disrespectful to use a chair as a footrest?
I’m typing this because I was just recently told to get my feet off of a chair in a library. This was at a university at around 2 am while I was studying for a test, and I was one of like five other people in the library at the time... Security guard still made the effort to get up and walk all the way over to me and tell me to get my foot off of the chair.
I don’t think I was being obtuse enough to warrant that kind of late night demand. Change my view, Reddit.
Edit: The abrasion argument wins it for me. Even though it’s small, it definitely builds up and causes the chair to wear away. | 28 | Shoes cause damage to chairs. Every time someone puts their shoes on a chair, they cause small abrasions, which over time contribute to *increased* wear and tear (in addition to normal wear and tear).
When you take the bus or train, you can often easily see the specific areas where people tend to put their feet, because that's where the seat covers wear thin, or the plastic gets discolored.
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[DC]How can the Atom(Ray Palmer) breathe when he shrinks to subatomic sizes. | I mean at that point he is smaller then what he is supposed to be breathing in. | 18 | I believe he has previously demonstrated the ability to shrink other matter around him to relative proportions as well, so it's probably some kind of shrinking field that around him that he can manipulate, including shrinking the air around him until it is small enough to breathe. | 17 |
ELI5: How do Seeds in videogames work? | More specifically, I'm wondering how they can be freshly generated in one game and yet can be transferred to any other copy of the game.
Surely games don't save the millions, billions or whatever amount of random generations it could produce, wouldn't that take lots of game space? Does every letter/number in the seed have more significance than it seems?
edit: spelling mistakes | 16 | No computer is capable of creating truly random numbers. There's always some value that is used as the starting point for number generation.
Some programming languages give the developer the ability to explicitly set that initial value. If the developer has control of the initial seed they are able to produce random numbers in a repeatable order.
When your procedural generation is then tied to this predictable pattern it should always produce the same outcome (because it recieved the same input of random numbers) given no other external influences. | 23 |
[Marvel] Why isn't She-Hulk ugly when she turns into a hulk like the He-Hulk? | 21 | There is a subconscious aspect to the hulking out. Everyone who has the effect changes in different ways, and almost all in ways that reflect there subconscious and repressed aspects of there personalities.
Jen was a very mousy, sexually repressed, physically weak woman who had a deep seeded desire to be liked. This desire was warped by the gamma radiated blood into an over sexual and extremely confident woman, as well as a great deal of physical power.
Looking over everyone who has been effected by the gamma blood the only one who is even close to healthy is Doc Samson, who was a accomplished psychiatrist to begin with. He only gained some green hair and a stronger body. | 42 |
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The evolution of the smile - it seems incredibly unlikely? | I have a modest understanding of biology, so please be patient.
How did a facial expression like a smile come into being? I would imagine the ability to manipulate the face would rely upon several genetic mutations. And once they happened, their ability to advantage an organism would depend upon another human in close proximity - at the same time - randomly developing the cognitive capability to interpret such a gesture.
Doesn't this all seem tremendously unlikely? | 28 | To answer the actual question: No, not really.
First, the question generally misunderstands evolution, in that evolutionary changes are not "random". The cognitive capacity to visually interpret the actions of others (such as a "smile") in the environment is not a randomly selected for mutation but, rather, a series of systematic changes in neural architecture (e.g., development of a complex visual system) combined with the most simple of associative learning (i.e., thing X leads to thing Y). Such changes would be critically important for surviving in any complex environment, and, so, can be observed in many organisms you'd think are relatively simple.
And, of course, the ability to manipulate the structure of the face is important for doing things like eating, breathing, and plenty of other behaviors other than smiling.
Regarding the smile specifically, plenty of animals make gestures like smiles that are very different (in human meaning) than smiles. For example, dogs and monkeys will curl their lips and bear their teeth, and neither are doing it because they are trying to express joy or friendship - both are warning to GTFO.
In any event, the evolution of facial gestures seems tremendously likely.
Interestingly, the perception and recognition of facial gestures is very different across different populations. For example, Asian cultures rely much more heavily on the eyes than Western cultures. There has been some interesting recent psychological work on this topic by Phillipe Schyns and his collaborators. | 30 |
[Beetlejuice] Why does Beetlejuice only appear when his name is called 3 times? Is calling someone's name 3 times in a row the spiritual equivalent of a phone call, or is there something else at work? | 32 | Betelgeuse is no ordinary ghost. He is the dirty little secret of the underworld. You see, if a demon possesses a human and that human dies while under their control, barring unusual circumstances, the demon returns to hell with a passive human soul as their property. Normally a hellbound soul is considered property of Lucifer, (basically they belong to hell and are slated for torment,) but a possessed soul is the servant or currency of the crafty demon. However, if the human host is *willing* to harbor a demon *and* able to maintain control of their soul and consciousness *and then dies* in this unlikely state there arises a unique situation...
A demon soul possessed by a human spirit.
Normally this cannot happen, and all sorts of bureaucratic problems arise for the custodians of the underworld because there are *very* different rules for humans and angels or demons... This is why he never seems to be where he's supposed to, why he seems to have an inordinate amount of power in the real world. As a combinate demonic entity, he may be summoned by name, however since his name is an earthly name rather than the arcane name the power of its connection is weaker, thus making repetition necessary to allow the heretic to cross over into physical reality. Once released from limbo he has all the soul powers and manifestations available that a minor demon would, however, unlike a demon he can be resurrected into a physical body since he was once human...
So in short, Betelgeuse is an extremely rare type of entity that combines human and demon in death which causes all kinds mischief but has a kind of underworld "diplomatic immunity" because he's still considered a lost human soul, presumably not yet damned because of the influence of the demon, but in this case he has basically *absorbed* the demon into his personality making him unfit for heaven or hell, and though most would be more than fine with hell, his exceptional condition requires that he remain in limbo until final judgement, or until he manages to resurrect himself.
TL:DR; You can't usually summon the dead by calling their name three times, but Betelgeuse is t | 48 |
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ELI5: Why do we grunt/scream when doing strenuous exercise? | 50 | Everybody uses their tummy muscles. But sometimes, when you squeeze really hard while you poop, you squeeze some air out! Same thing if you are lifting heavy ass weights. You're squeezing air out. Even though you are A. Trying to keep it in or B. Go for an extra bit of power by forcing all the air out and really *really* using your abdominals.
Edit: its the same reason that people doing martial arts either yell or do that hissing noise. they are tensing their midsection to help squeeze every bit of power out of their body.
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[Death Note] What could L have done to catch Kira? | As I understand it (and I guess I'm somebody on the Task Force looking back years later), L knew who Kira was all along and just had no way to prove it. Given the scenario Kira placed him in, the information he had at the time, and the situation they both faced, what could he have done differently for a winning scenario? | 20 | He could've not announced himself during the Lind L Taylor stunt until much later, after having bugged Light's house. And making sure it was done on laundry day so his mother would've left his clean clothing in his room, thereby eliminating any suspicion about someone being in his room.
Then, announcing who he was to Light at the school. He's basically got him on tape freaking out about L outplaying him (and realising he's talking to someone who is clearly not there). | 20 |
ELI5: How do compressed files work? | 277 | There are many different kind of compression, but the general idea is to look for ways to re-write the content of the file using less space. One very simple approach is called run-length encoding, and works something like this:
Original file:
ffffffqqquuuuuuu
Compressed file:
6f3q7u (read this as "6 f's, 3 q's, 7 u's")
The original file took up 16 characters, but the compressed one only 6. Of course that's an oversimplification.
There are many other kinds of compression, including many kinds of "lossy" compression that actually throw away some of the data (this is only useful if the original data does not need to be exact, such as video or audio). The various kinds of compression that do not throw away data are called "lossless". | 219 |
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On average, do you absorb all the calories in the alcohol when you go out drinking? | Say you are out drinking with friends and are purely consuming beer. You down a few pints and in no time have to go pee. With the frequency of the bathroom visits at being under 60 minutes, does your body really have time to absorb all the calories in the alcohol before it's out of your system?
Obviously there are many scenarios here, but for the most part I'm interested in occasions where you are drinking enough to warrant a trip to the bathroom every hour. | 54 | Nutrition biochemist here:
To make a long-story short...yes, your body is remarkably efficient at extracting calories from food.
Pure Alcohol has about 7kcal/gram (more than the equivalent amount of protein and carbs and only about 25% less than fat).Combine that with all the grains that are already in a beer and a pint can contain upwards of over 200kcal.
When you drink, alcohol inhibits the pituitary secretion of anti-diuretic hormone (ADH), which acts on the kidney to reabsorb water. Alcohol acts on the hypothalamus/pituitary to reduce the circulating levels of ADH. When ADH levels drop, the kidneys do not reabsorb as much water; consequently, the kidneys produce more urine (one of the main reasons you get a hangover)
However, keep in mind that alcohol-derived calories are produced at the expense of the metabolism of normal nutrients because alcohol is oxidized preferentially rather than other nutrients. Case in point, ever wonder why after a night of heavy drinking you start to get insanely hungry, it is because the detoxification of alcohol inhibits gluconeogensis (basically our internally food stores-to grossly over simplify). Basically, while your drinking, your body does a mini-fast.
Interestingly enough, chronic alcoholics are typically underweight and have many vitamin and mineral deficiencies
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ELI5: How intricate/detailed is sign language, especially where inflection and sarcasm are concerned? Do those exist? | 372 | Body language and facial expression play into it heavily. With sign language you can half-ass the sign to indicate dismissal, make it very emphatically or adjust the pacing, repeat for emphasis and so on but mostly you're watching the non-specific cues just like you are in a verbalized conversation. | 489 |
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How does an inert gas like argon prevent the evaporation of tungsten in a filament bulb? | 15 | A main challenge with tungsten bulbs is that they don't work in the presence of oxygen, as the extremely hot tungsten rapidly oxidizes, losing its electrical properties and crumbling away.
To avoid oxygen exposure, you can either make the bulb a vacuum or fill it with inert gas. Of these two, inert gas is the better solution since the hot tungsten tends to evaporate under a vacuum due to the low surrounding pressure.
So inert gas only prevents evaporation in comparison to evacuated bulbs, not because there is something inherently anti-evaporative about inert gas. But this is a very relevant comparison in the context of tungsten lightbulb technology. | 31 |
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Why are galactic centers always occupied by black holes? Are galaxies to black holes what accretion disks are to stars? | I recently heard from Dr Tyson that all galaxies (or at least the vast majority, he wasn't being super precise in this presentation) we have checked appear to have black holes in their centers. That got me wondering why that would be, and this galaxy-scale accretion disk is the best idea I've got. But I feel like I would have heard of that before if the answer was that simple, and that doesn't really fit with the way that black holes are formed themselves. So what's the deal? | 350 | Kind of, but it's a bit misleading.
In both cases, you have a rotating disc of gas, and matter from this disc does slowly drip onto the central object. But there's a couple of big differences here.
The biggest thing is that a supermassive black hole is really only a very tiny fraction of the mass of a galaxy. The central SMBH of the Milky Way is about 0.1% of the mass of the *stars* of the Milky Way. And these stars are only a fraction of the mass of the dark matter mass. This means that the galaxy rotates very differently to a stellar accretion disc. The galaxy has a "flat" rotation curve, because its gravity comes from mass that is spread out. The angular speed (degrees/million years) of a star's orbit drops fairly slowly with distance, and the linear speed (km/s) is actually flat over a lot of the galaxy's radius. For a stellar accretion disc, most of the mass is concentrated in the centre, so you get a sharper drop off of gravity with distance.
Because the SMBH is on such a small scale compared to the galaxy's gas disc, there's a lot going on between the galactic gas disc and the SMBH. The SMBH doesn't even need to spin the same way as the galaxy. The SMBH actually does have its own real accretion disc, that is small and thin and hot and bright. Around this is a thicker "torus" of warm dusty gas. Gas from the galaxy can flow into the "torus", which can then slowly flow onto the actual SMBH accretion disc, and then onto the SMBH itself.
But it is true that gas does tend to build up in the centre of a galaxy, and that's part of why you expect to find an SMBH there. You've got a lot of gas there in the early universe, and this either directly forms an SMBH seed (i.e. an intermediate mass black hole), or forms into massive stars that then turn into black holes and merge to form an SMBH seed (which route is correct is still fairly recent active research). The other thing is that massive compact objects tend to "sink" to the centre of a galaxy, because they lose kinetic energy by scattering nearby stars around. So even if a galaxy gets hassled up by a passing galaxy's gravity, or if two galaxies merge in a messy romance, the SMBH (or SMBHs!) will tend to settle down to the centre of the resulting galaxy in the end anyway. | 212 |
[Marvel] How many times have the Avengers actually beaten Thanos in a straight fight? | No cosmic macguffins, no self-defeating mentality, no higher being interference, just a straight up battle. | 136 | Right before Civil War II Thanos came to earth looking for the cosmic cube, the Avengers told him to leave, he did not.
Long story short, he put She-Hulk into a coma, and killed Rhodey. The Avengers went monkey-mode and beat his ass. | 131 |
ELI5: Why is it that if I'm hungry right before going to bed, I'm not longer hungry when I wake up in the morning? | The other night, I was going to bed and felt pretty hungry, but I just went to bed. I woke up, expecting to be somewhat hungry but the feeling of hunger was gone. Does anyone have a nice quick explanation? | 43 | Very concise answer: The loss of hunger when you wake up is due to excess glucose in your system caused by the breakdown of glycogen from your liver while you're asleep.
Explanation: Glucose is the main source of energy that your cells use to generate ATP, which powers many processes in the cell. When you eat, the glucose in your food, in the form of sugar and carbs, is absorbed into your system and spread to your tissues. Any excess glucose that you eat is stored in the cells in your liver in these giant chains called glycogen. These glycogen chains serve as a way to save the excess glucose for when your body needs it, much like how you store excess fats and lipids in your fat cells.
The prime example of when the body needs these stores is when you're asleep. Think about it. The average person sleeps for 7-8 hours. For that same amount of time during the day, you can easily fit in two full meals, so your body needs some way to keep all of your organs supplied with glucose when you have no ability to get it from food yourself. That's when these glycogen molecules come into play. As your body falls asleep, the liver starts breaking down these long chains of glucose and releasing the individual glucose molecules into your system. This makes sure that all of your organs (especially your brain) is supplied with glucose throughout the entire night. This breakdown occurs for the entire time you're asleep and stops when you wake up (and shifts back into storage mode). But right when you wake up, the glucose in your blood is still high from the overnight glycogen breakdown process, and there still may be some residual breaking down as your body shifts back into an awake state. The higher level of glucose in your system tells your brain that "you're full' even though you may have not eaten anything for 12 hours by that point.
You may have noticed that you got REALLY hungry within a couple hours after waking up. That's your body realizing that you haven't eaten anything in 12 hours AND you have the ability to do something about it. | 23 |
ELI5: Competitive eating. How can people eat so much in one sitting? What happens to their stomachs and bodies after eating so much? And why does it seem that so many competitive eaters are very skinny? | 347 | They are able to eat so much because they prepare. They stretch their stomachs, they practice techniques for speed, etc.
After a competition, it's not unlike how you feel after Thanksgiving. Full, sluggish, tired, maybe even a little nauseous. Just to a greater degree. Most of these people don't vomit after competition. Other than that, you recover pretty easily within a day.
It isn't necessarily that most competitive eaters are skinny so much that the successful ones tend to be. This is for several reasons. First, your stomach is (supposedly) better able to expand when you don't have shit tons of fat around it. Second, people who are fit burn more calories, so if you do a lot of competitions it benefits you to stay in shape for your health. Third, competitions are exhausting. It may seem like just aggressive eating, but it's tiring and if you aren't in shape it is hard to keep up aggressive activity for 10-12 minutes non-stop.
Source: Former low level competitive eater. | 299 |
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Why can’t babies eat honey? | I know the basic answers “Honey can contain spores of Chlortridium botulinum which babies can’t digest”. But I want a deeper answer, why can’t babies digest it but adults can? It also raises another question, some adults get botulinum toxin from improperly canned food because the spores activate in low oxygen environments, but why is it that why the spores are in the canned food adults can’t digest it but they can when it’s in honey? | 16 | It’s *Clostridium botulinum*. Infants have a higher stomach pH, so their stomachs are less acidic than that of children and adults. The spores can survive in their stomachs and then colonize the intestines and cause botulism. In children and adults the spores are destroyed so infection is not a worry (adults can get this type of infection, but it is very rare).
Adults get botulism when they eat a food that has had the bacteria growing in it and ingest the endotoxin botulinum. The bacteria die, but the large dose of botulinum causes rapid poisoning, versus a baby with a *Clostridium botulinum* infection, where the bacteria grow slowly and produce the toxin as they multiply, causing gradually increasing muscle weakness. | 55 |
ELI5:What makes a sore throat hurt? | I've heard its mucus but how does that hurt you/cause pain? | 34 | Your white blood cells are attacking everything in the location. This combined with the swelling due to increased number cells in the location, causes damage and irritation to the nervous system as it fights off foreign bodies. This is where the pain comes from and this whole process is known as inflammation. | 50 |
[Harry Potter] What happens when you break a magically binding contract? | Say Harry didn't compete in the Tri-wizards tournament after his name is called, what happens to him? | 23 | Nothing. He never entered a contract. Had he been lying about not entering and failed to compete, something bad would happen.
What exactly happens depends on the contract. Marietta Edgecomb broke one and ended up with SNEAK written on her face. Unbreakable vows kill people that break it. They really should have said what would happen if they broke that one, but they didn't, so we don't know. | 22 |
Would Mercury's close proximity to the Sun make it rich in heavy and precious metals? | 109 | I don't know why you use "would". It already is rich is heavy and precious metal.
Planets are formed when after the star (read: our sun) form, materials in the area start to condense and merge together. Close to the star, its hot, so only things that condense at high temperature can condense. Hence Mercury is mostly metal. As it goes further away, things with lower boiling point, like rocks, condense, giving us rocky planets like Earth. Beyond the frost line (between Mars and Jupiter), water and gas can start to condense, giving us all the gas giants and their icy cores.
Astronomy is awesome. | 40 |
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CMV: I don't think indigenous people have any more right to their land than anyone else. | I understand that there are tribes in remote regions that are living a lifestyle close to the bronze age and it's obviously important to let them continue to live as they wish.
However, as the worlds population continues to grow and demand for resources inevitably grows will we have the luxury to be able to ignore the resourses under vast swathes of land. Swathes of land populated by a very small number of people. I believe we all should have a right or at least an expectation to be able to live in the areas we are born, where our families live, but that doesn't extend to controlling all access to the land and it's resources.
I would agree that the people living in an area to be exploited should be compensatted handsomely although I'm not sure how you could compensate someone for largely bringing to an end their way of life.
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> *Hello, users of CMV! This is a footnote from your moderators. We'd just like to remind you of a couple of things. Firstly, please remember to* ***[read through our rules](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/rules)***. *If you see a comment that has broken one, it is more effective to report it than downvote it. Speaking of which,* ***[downvotes don't change views](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/guidelines#wiki_upvoting.2Fdownvoting)****! If you are thinking about submitting a CMV yourself, please have a look through our* ***[popular topics wiki](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/populartopics)*** *first. Any questions or concerns? Feel free to* ***[message us](http://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=/r/changemyview)***. *Happy CMVing!* | 188 | It sounds like you're arguing for eminent domain, or the ability of the government to use private land for a public purpose and then compensating the owners a "reasonable" price in return. A few things to consider on this topic:
1. It will almost definitely unfairly affect the poor. Those without access to legal representation are bound to be disproportionately affected by this type of action, right?
2. Do you think the government is likely to give "just" compensation in each of these cases?
3. Have you considered the propensity for the government to take private land for a dubious "public" use, i.e. giving the land from one private owner (Native Americans for instance) to a private owner that they might make much more tax dollars out of (such as a strip mall) while justifying the tax income as the "public use?"
4. It sounds like your argument fails to consider both (a) the large swathes of uninhabited territories and complexes, for instance, that *don't* require us to take land from Native Americans for people to inhabit, and (b) the untapped resources that *don't* require us to steal them from under the feet of Native Americans. To be more convincing, your argument should probably address the fact that we don't have lots of land and resources available elsewhere (we do). | 143 |
[Marvel] Given that Captain America is still considered to be human, albeit the absolute peak of human potential, does that mean a normal human could train themselves to the same level of physical fitness as him? | 28 | Sort of
There are "normal" humans who have his level of strength or some other physical faculty. But Cap is peak human in virtually all possible physical faculties, which no human being could ever achieve, because each of those faculties requires radically different training.
You need totally different training to be a swimmer compared to a powerlifter- just look at the body-types of both in most Olympic games. But Cap can be the best at both at the same time. | 33 |
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Got given a slightly weird question in my calc course | Hi all, I really appreciate getting pointed in the right direction, I'm a tad lost and confused, thank you all.
https://preview.redd.it/v75i1l8mehh91.png?width=1618&format=png&auto=webp&s=e14e15a00b1090d3cb89eb650898b2682d4f67d3 | 16 | If the sizes are x and y,
1. How do you calculate the perimeter?
2. How do you calculate the area?
3. Can you express the perimeter using only x (or only y) and A?
4. How do you find the minimum of this expression? | 10 |
[Lord of the Rings] What are the Silmarils and what can they do? | 168 | They are the most beautiful jewels ever crafted. Most beautiful crafted things ever, actually, created bt the greatest crafter of all times.
They capture the primordial light of the two trees that lighted the world before sun and moon existed and their beauty can be seen through them.
As for what they can do - not much, really. They are not practical things.
They could have been potentially used to restore the two trees after they were killed, but it was never attempted, and the silmarils would have been destroyed in the process even if it worked.
Oh, and the only surviving silmaril is the morning star, so there's that. | 175 |
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[The Fly; 1986] Even if the fly never got in, would Brundle have eventually mutated due to microorganism in the air or any food/water in his body? | 72 | It's possible but unlikely. More likely the pod would have simply degraded his biology no matter what even if the pods were sterile. Something as simple as a single protein chain misplaced could result in a whole number of mutations and abnormalities that would result in his death or disfigurement. | 65 |
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CMV: In software development; and in other fields involving extended thought-work that depends on focus and concentration; there is no value in having coworkers to interact with face to face - and in fact, distractions created that way are counter-productive | I believe this comic expresses the argument most cogently:
http://heeris.id.au/2013/this-is-why-you-shouldnt-interrupt-a-programmer/
Now, to my wall of text:
I run a small software company that's reasonably successful. I've been doing this for the past 15 years.
I've been employing people for years that I have never met — and quite possibly never will meet.
Last time I met any of my developers face to face was maybe 6 years ago.
I perceive no value whatsoever in meeting face to face. None.
Working together in an office is an impediment to getting work done, and is a source of constant interruption.
Email is generally better for productivity than face to face contact, or instant messaging.
Both face to face contact, and instant messaging, are distractions, and are useful primarily in the situation that you cannot progress on anything without immediate input. Such situations are extraordinary.
The people I meet face to face in my life are my wife, my son, and our nanny. I don't have a social need for more.
I believe people who think they need face to face contact for work in software development are either confusing social needs with work — or possibly, I would fear, aren't competent to work on their own. Or maybe they're involved in some kind of work that involves extraordinary synchronization — the kind of which I do not know.
If someone can't work independently, and must constantly interrupt other developers, I would consider them a burden, rather than an asset. To be an asset, one must be able to get work done on one's own, and coordinate as necessary.
In fact, I would go so far as to say that, if you're not going to physically touch the other person, there is nothing you can do in a face to face meeting that you cannot do online.
There's literally no reason to meet unless you're going to kiss, or have sex, or give a person a massage. | 15 | Steve Jobs was big on getting different types of employees (project managers, developers, marketing people, etc.) to have informal meetings throughout the day. A lot of Apple's better products came about because people just sat around at lunch and bounced ideas off of one another.
Eventually, yes, everyone had to go back and do their own work independently. But that doesn't mean there was *no* value in the face to face interactions. Online meetings are good when there is a specific task at hand, but in person meetings are better for long term planning and generating ideas. | 15 |
[LOTR] So did the Balrog accidentally cut the stone bridge with his fire whip or did Gandalf smote it? | I'm watching the movie and arguing this point with a friend. The book clearly says that Gandalf does it but the movie plays the scene totally differently. Gandalf looks surprised by the whole thing. Is the Balrog an idiot or what? | 92 | He does it in the movie as well. It was just delayed; the bridge only collapses when the Balrog stepped on it, having been weakened by Gandalf.
Gandalf shows no surprise at this until the Balrog's whip snags him 'round the ankle. | 82 |
ELI5: Why do our necks hurt all day after we sleep in an odd position, but the rest of our bodies can be in any position as we sleep and they do not get long lasting cramps? | 42 | Your neck is the most flexible part or your spinal column which is the boney part surrounding your spinal cord which is the nerves which report sensation and allow movement.
Wait till you get older and have shoulders which have been injured in the past and scream bloody murder if you fall asleep in the wrong position. It is part of the joy of getting old.
Until then it is possible to put your neck, containing the most vital part of your nervous system, in a bind while you sleep. Your neck muscles will complain the next day. | 15 |
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Is there a personality classification of artists? | In the film *The Lives of Others*, a Stasi officer describes a personality classification of artists into five "types." The only specific type mentioned is Type 4, "hysterical anthropocentric," which refers to artists who thrive on interaction with other people. According to the film, the Stasi have particular methods of punishment for each type of artist. For instance, Type 4 artists are never allowed a public trial, since they would (apparently) thrive on the attention. Is this an actual classification? (If so, did the Stasi really use it?) If not, is there something similar? | 19 | When it comes to real, data driven evidence, the answer is no. There might be pseudo-psychological studies trying to come up with a classification, but it doesn't mean it is to be trusted. People are very different and it is too simplistic to assume one career path will fall into one category of personalities. This doesn't mean there are no attributes that are more easily found in artist, like having huge student debts and working at Starbucks. Joke aside, while there might be personality traits that are more prevalent in artists, there are no "artist personality" in the oficial diagnostic manuals like DSM. | 15 |
Fake(?) competing offers for mid-career faculty. | I research/teach at a school about #30 in my field. I have a colleague who received a competing offer from a school that's about #10 in the field. He made a big deal about this offer, the Dean and Chair came together and gave him stuff he wanted to "match" his other offer. In grand fashion, he announced that he will stay here.
So, I have my suspicions. I know he has a close friend at the #10 school. I think his friend may have given him the "offer" without any institutional backing with the understanding that it was for negotiation purposes here only. Like, it wasn't a real offer.
Does this happen? Or should I go hang out at /r/conspiracy? | 24 | That is a big bluff to pull off. The dean and chair may not have had or wanted to find the extra money to keep him. That would have been bad for all future negotiations if he had stayed for nothing or even a token raise. Could it happen, though? Sure. | 15 |
ELI5: Why does head/facial hair grow indefinitely but body hair only grows to a centimetre or two? | 1,720 | Each hair root will grow for a certain length of time, and then stop, shed its hair, and start over. If the length of time it grows for is just a few weeks, then the hairs have time to grow very long, like the hairs on most people's body. If it's a couple of months, the hairs have time to get a bit longer, like your eyebrows. If the hair root will grow for several years, then the hair can become extremely long, like the hair on your head. But even though the hair on your head becomes very long, it doesn't grow "indefinitely" - if you stop cutting it completely, it will eventually reach its (quite long) natural length, just like the other hairs on your body. | 811 |
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What technologies actually use our understanding of general or special relativity? | I've got this friend who keep saying that all this new astrophysics research is totally useless, and that Einstein's theories don't actually help anyone. But I know that's not true. Can you guys help me out and give some examples of of technologies that wouldn't be possible without understanding relativity, and how?
Thank you so much! | 23 | Basically the only technology that does this is GPS, where the clocks on the satellites have to operate at sliiiightly different frequency than the ones on Earth to account for gravitational time dilation. | 22 |
ELI5: How do predators eat poisonous spiders and not die? I saw on the TV a big spider eating a poisonous black widow, isn't that suicide? | 16 | To be specific, these spiders are *venomous* which means the toxin is intended to be injected into the tissues of the unlucky victim.
In some cases, venom does not achieve the same impact if ingested. They may be diluted in the stomach, less able to penetrate to the tissues where they can do harm, and the hostile environment may even break down the critical substances that give the venom its potency. | 22 |
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ElI5 Why do impact drivers work better for installing and removing screws and bolts?what does the extra vibration do to help while rotating? | 16 | It does a couple of things. First, the vibration isn't just vibration. The impact driver exerts very high torque on each impact, but it is much easier to control because it is broken up. If you were to apply the same static force, like from a drill, you would need much better leverage and risk shearing the screw.
The second thing that happens is actually due to vibration. When a bolt is stuck, like a lug nut on a car, the vibration helps break corrosion or even cold welding on the nut/bolt.
Drill's were never really meant to install screws and bolts, they work best when drilling holes. Impact drivers work great for removing/installing nuts, bolts, screws, etc... Screw guns work better than impact drivers for screws in wood and drywall, but are pretty useless outside of that.
There are probably other principals at work, but those would be the main two. | 17 |
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ELI5: Why does it seem like all other languages speak so much faster than English? | 1,044 | When you don't speak a language, it always sounds as though it is being spoken very fast, with all those unfamiliar phonemes rushing by. Most English speakers sound quite fast if you don't speak English, by all accounts.
As it happens, studies have shown that various languages all seem to convey information at about the same rate. | 724 |
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Do photoreceptors of the eye respond to light wavelength or frequency? | I can strangely enough not find any info on this. The question seems important to me because a refractive medium would change the speed and wavelength of light, but not its frequency. Does the perceived color of an object change based on the refraction of the medium (photoreceptors sense wavelength) or not (photoreceptors sense frequency)? Intuitively I would assume frequency, but there might also be a physiological reason I am not aware of why people use the wavelengths as a reference measure. | 17 | Your question doesn't **exactly** make sense. The wavelength and frequency of a photon are two aspects of the same thing. So, this is like asking, "Is the speed of a car determined by how many times the wheels turn in a given time or the distance the car travels in a certain time?"
Since the speed of light is constant, the frequency and wavelength will be inversely proportional to one another. The higher the frequency the shorter the wavelength. The lower the frequency the longer the wavelength. You can't change one item without changing the other. Therefore, it's best to say that photoreceptors respond to a specific portion of the spectrum of electromagnetic radiation. Whether you choose to use frequency or wavelength to describe that spectrum is up to you because they're basically different aspects of the same thing. | 15 |
ELI5: Why does a box of chocolate mints make everything else that's near it minty? | 22 | Menthol, the (natural or synthetic) essential oil that gives mint its minty flavor is volatile (it evaporates easily).
So in a closed box where some of the contents has Menthol, the Menthol scent will end up bathing everything in the box, specially if closed for some time, and exposed to temperature variations.
It's sort of like if you stay close to a person with a strong perfume (which also has volatile essential oils). Even if you do not touch the person, you'll end up catching the scent and have some explaining to do. | 13 |
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[Superman] If Kal-El's pod had landed in rural Germany in 1936 to a couple of grumpy conservatives, instead of his friendly foster parents in 50's America, would we all have been f*cked? | ...Or does he possess some sort of principle of justice or morality that transcends the contingent circumstances of the environment of his upbringing? | 59 | I can see him being a Nazi superhero who is the poster boy of the regime. He stands for everything the Nazis do: German unity, order, and stability. Due to his upbringing in the *Hitlerjugend*, he sees Nazi policies through an extremely propagandized lens, to the point where he's able to justify to himself that the oppression of the Jews- the restrictions, revocation of citizenship, the yellow stars- is for the best.
During the war, despite being a young boy, he serves with honor and single-handedly repels the Normandy landings to save his older brother, a Wehrmacht artilleryman who is caught behind the Allied advance. This act gains him the attention of the Nazi government, who take a special, potentially sinister, interest in the boy.
Following the Soviet surrender after the withdrawal and hasty capitulation of the Americans and British, Superman grows up as **the** example of the Aryan: strong, smart, brave, and utterly loyal. Superman's *other* attributes are a carefully kept secret, known only to certain higher ups in the German government.
One day, Superman is at the post office picking up his parent's mail, as every good German child should, when he is erroneously handed a package that was fumbled by the German postal service. His curiosity overpowering his sense of respect for the security of the mail service, he uses his X-ray vision to look into it, seeing a 5 kilogram mass of gold. Using his extraordinary knowledge of chemistry, he analyzes it as 18 carat gold, aka dental gold. This discovery, of a mass created from at least 2500 gold teeth, leads him on a journey that shakes everything he's ever known to its core. | 78 |
[Star Wars] How drastically would Tatooine’s ecology change if Starkiller Base absorbed one of its twin suns? | 20 | Ultimately it would disrupt and destroy the entire system. The loss of one of the suns would change orbital patterns. It wouldn't be a case of Tatooine now getting less solar radiation, but rather that it could now find itself drifting into the remaining sun, ejected into interstellar space, or on a collision course with other planets, moons, or debris in the system.
Take away the sun, and Tatooine is doomed. | 34 |
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Was the 1970s Stagflation caused by Government overspending? | 51 | Alan Greenspan in his autobiography suggested that the 1970s recessions were caused by the oil embargoes which, corresponded to the US in 1973 reaching domestic peak oil.
This jives with the widely held belief that global economic growth in the 20th century was driven in large part by extremely cheap and plentiful energy from fossil fuels. | 40 |
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ELI5 why do people with dementia sometimes have really inappropriate sexual behavior? | I understand that dementia impairs the brain but im just curious - is there a common factor among the people who exhibit these behaviors? | 49 | The prefrontal cortex is the area of the brain that governs inhibition.
You're standing at a bridge and looking over the edge, and suddenly get the thought to jump. You don't = prefrontal cortex.
You see a beautiful woman with enormous... Tracts of land. You want to grab them. You don't = prefrontal cortex
You're in an argument with a child and feel extremely angry. You want to hit them. You don't = prefrontal cortex.
The limbic system is the "emotional" part of the brain (emotional, sexual urges, addiction, impulses).
In dementia, Alzheimer's and some neurodegenerative disorders, the inhibitory connections from the prefrontal cortex to the limbic system are lost.
So, more impulsive actions are taken which normally would be restrained. | 283 |
[Shrek] How did Donkey manage to get Dragon pregnant? | Are Dragon anatomy and genetics really that compatible with the donkey counterparts? We know they didn't adopt or use a surrogate, because the offspring were Dronkeys. Does their success in breeding have anything to do with Donkey's use of the Happily Ever After potion?
I need to know! | 39 | In the world of Shrek, procreation isn't based off of something as silly or far-fetched as genetics. Any two people of opposite gender can procreate as long as they share that most important and divine aphrodisiac; True love.
Conversely, people who aren't truly in love cannot reproduce, even if they had compatible parts. (Villains may be an exception to this rule.) | 51 |
Why is the solution of a second order, linear, ordinary differential equation the linear combination of two linearly independent solutions? | Let's say that we have a second order, linear, homogenous, ordinary differential equation y'' + a(t)*y' + b(t)*y = 0. The general solution of this equation is Y=c1*g(t) + c2*h(t), where g(t) and h(t) are both solutions to the equation, and g(t) and h(t) are linearly independent. My question is this: Why is the general solution a linear combination of TWO linearly independent particular solutions? Why not a linear combination of three, four, or five linearly independent particular solutions? Thanks in advance to the mathematicians of reddit. | 22 | In general a linear nth-order homogeneous ODE is a linear combination of n linearly independent solutions.
Let's stick to the 2nd-order case. One way to think about a 2nd-order linear ODE is as system of two first-order ODEs,
y' = x
x' = -a(t)x - b(t)y
If you solve for and substitute x you see it's the same 2nd-order ODE, but this form lets us see it as a pair of functions whose derivatives depend on function values. Hence the derivatives are all on the left side. Now we can envision the solution as a parametric curve [x(t), y(t)] in the cartesian plane. The equations give us a "vector" at every point x0, y0, and this vector points in the direction of the solution curve [x(t), y(t)] that has x0, y0 as the initial condition, x(0) = x0 and y(0) = y0. In other words, we can choose x0 and y0 however we wish (in convenient cases anyway) and the solution curve x(t), y(t) is then completely determined. In other words, every solution is characterized by a pair of real numbers and every pair of numbers uniquely characterizes a solution. Moreover it need not be x(0) and y(0) that characterize the solutions. It could be some other numbers r, s, where x0 = 5\*r + 38s and y0 = -2r + 9s, or something.
Another way to think about this is the 2nd order ODE works for any choice of y(0) and y'(0) (since x was just y'). Solving the 2nd order ODE for y'' shows the "acceleration" is determined completely by what y and y' are doing, so we can pick those two numbers arbitrarily (in nice enough cases).
On top of that, the ODE is linear, so if u and v are solutions then so is a\*u + b\*v for any choice of a, b. If u and v are linearly *dependent* then u = c\*v (or vice versa) for some constant c and we find a\*u + b\*v = (ac + b)\*v. This means the constants a, b produce the same solution as the constants 0, ac + b. But previously we saw pairs of numbers yield *unique* solutions. So having u, v being linearly dependent doesn't cut it, there's more "solution" out there to be explored by starting with two solutions that aren't just a multiple of one another (i.e. linearly independent). | 11 |
[Dragonball] Why did that giant purple cat thing come to Earth to punch everyone and why is the magic wish snake scared of the cat thing? | 74 | If you're referring to Beerus (one of the Gods of Destruction), he came to Earth because he had heard of how delicious the food was. Beerus would travel from universe to universe, from planet to planet, searching for the most delicious food he could find.
Shen Long showed reverence to Beerus because he recognized his ki, and who he was. Shen Long knew that Beerus was much more powerful than himself. | 40 |
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Is it possible to remember being born? | 156 | No.
Episodic memory starts around 2 years after your birth. Mostly due to the fact that you brain undergoes lots of change that, basically continously reformating, before settling.
Poor wording, feel free to correct me. | 104 |
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ELI5: what makes people so attached to college sports teams when the actual teams themselves are barely the same from year to year? | I mean, I get sports, I am a huge mlb and nfl fan. I live getting sucked up in my teams "story". But I don't get college sports. Anybody exciting is only with a team 1, maybe 2, years. It's like minor league baseball, which is not really that popular beyond the local level.
What gives? | 20 | Most people are fans of the school they went too. In that case the "connection" is that they attended college there... and then continued to follow the team after they graduated there.
Other teams carry massive regional appeal (the University of Alabama is a prime example) ... which is also often linked to a lack of a professional team attached to that area. | 15 |
Why does rice suck the moisture out of things? | 641 | Rice (like a lot of other grains) is hygroscopic, which means it can trap water molecules inside of it thanks to long biopolymers like cellulose. Rice can gain and lose water in a sort of osmotic balance with the atmosphere. It balances out so that the vapor pressure of water inside the rice grain is equal to that of the atmosphere outside. If you put a wet phone in a closed bag with dry rice, the equilibrium eventually shifts from wet phone and dry rice to less wet phone and wetter rice.
Cooked rice is already supersaturated with water, so that's why you only use dry rice to desiccate your phone. | 294 |
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CMV: The mainstream media has not negatively impacted my opinion of Trump, and I don't think they necessarily treat him unfairly. | So, the president gave a [batshit press conference](http://www.politico.com/story/2017/02/trump-press-conference-top-moments-235110) today. He claimed that the press treats him unfairly, that they are dishonest, and that the negative stories written about him are fake. I disagree.
I'm a center-left guy who voted for Obama and Hillary, so naturally, I don't like his policies on principle. But his being (nominally) a conservative isn't the issue for me: we've had conservative political leaders before, including presidents, and I haven't disliked them, only disagreed with them. I dislike Trump intensely, mainly because he's an entitled, petty, whiny, self-important little child of a man all the time.
Clearly I perceive him negatively, but I don't think I've been tricked into perceiving him this way by a biased media. Ever since he got into politics, back when he got in on the birther conspiracy, I've disliked him based largely on his own statements. In situations where there have been no questions asked or commentary offered (like seeing him deliver a speech live) I consistently think he's absolutely awful, based solely on what he himself says freely. In fact, if the media took it easier on him and gave him the benefit of the doubt (which they aren't supposed to do), I'd probably just hate him *more* for having somehow secured a free pass from scrutiny in a job that is rightfully the most scrutinized in the world.
To CMV, convince me that the media has somehow pulled the wool over my eyes. Show me that he's actually a responsible and thoughtful leader who cares more about uniting the country than validating his own bloated ego. Show me how the press has buried that fact and twisted his words to cast him as an incompetent and selfish buffoon.
As a caveat, I should add that pointing out a single instance of a journalist being unfair to him probably won't do it. He's said a LOT of stuff to make me dislike him, so I need to see a pretty decent pattern of manipulation by the press to make me question that.
> *This is a footnote from the CMV moderators. We'd like to remind you of a couple of things. Firstly, please* ***[read through our rules](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/rules)***. *If you see a comment that has broken one, it is more effective to report it than downvote it. Speaking of which,* ***[downvotes don't change views](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/guidelines#wiki_upvoting.2Fdownvoting)****! Any questions or concerns? Feel free to* ***[message us](http://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=/r/changemyview)***. *Happy CMVing!* | 15 | If the media hasn't had any effect on you then can you provide a couple of literal examples of things that have affected your view on him?
An awful lot of what you are saying is kind of buzzwordy stuff that isn't really examples. | 11 |
[LOTR] Where did all of Bilbo's gold go? | Bilbo was at the Shire, he left the Shire with nothing but his book and a good journey with elves and fantasy.
For a good amount of years, mind all.
Frodo became the heir I guess. But what happened to all that treasure? Is it really in the Hobbit hole somewhere?
| 41 | He didn't have much to begin with: two small chests, one full of gold and the other full of silver. Considering his tendency to give many gifts (especially to less well-off hobbits) and other large expenditures (like his farewell party), it's not surprising he managed to spend almost all of it in the 60 years before he left for Rivendell. He took what little remained with him to Rivendell and later gave almost all of it to Sam after the One Ring was destroyed. | 53 |
ELI5: Why a widescreen movie played on a widescreen TV still has the thick bars on the top and bottom? | 70 | Because some widescreen movies have pictures that are still wider than HDTV. HDTV has a picture that is about 1.78 times wide as it is tall (this is called the "aspect ratio", expressed as 1.78:1 or 16:9 because 16 divided by 9 is roughly equal to 1.78). Many movies have a "Flat" aspect ratio of 1.85:1, as the picture is only slightly wider than HDTV, such movies can play on HDTV without needing black bars.
But some movies are much wider. Many movies have an aspect ratio of 2.35:1, also known as "scope," in memory of the first widely used wide-screen presentation format, 20th Century Fox's "Cinemascope." Some movies are wider still. The wider moves still need black bars top and bottom on an HDTV in order to show you the full width of the picture.
And no, there is no picture information hidden by the black bars. | 39 |
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ELI5: Why does your nose burn when you burp through it after drinking sodas? | 36 | drinking soda makes unstable solution of CO2 ( carbonic acid ). after consumption drink releases CO2 and it again gets condensed in respiratory track to form a dilute carbonic acid..
Or this could be due to brisking phosporic acid in it. | 11 |
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[Star Wars] What was life like for Emperor Palpatine after he took over the galaxy? | My understanding is that he didn't REALLY give a shit about the politics? He's a sith lord, so I know he wants to amass more power, but what does he do?
How does a typical day go when he doesn't have to deal with any politics? What's he doing? Where's he travelling? What are his next step/plans?
Also, I guess a side question, did he always wear that black cloak outfit everywhere, or did he have more elegant outfits for public appearances? He'd look like a homeless beggar if I never knew he was the emperor. | 64 | He sat back and watch the sun rise over the grateful galaxy. Essentially.
In new canon - and to a certain degree in old canon too - not long after creating the Empire he sort of secluded himself, doing sith stuff, it was very rare for his subjects to actually see him in person.
I believe in both canons he was very preoccupied with transcending death - in old canon he was researching and practicing essence transfer into clone bodies, and in new canon he researched some sith sorcery. | 83 |
[Star Wars] If Yoda considered Anakin too old to train, why did he leave Luke hanging around in a desert for so long before training him? | If using Luke against the Emperor was always in his plans, why didn't Yoda just take Luke to Dagobah with him, and train him from childhood? | 256 | Using Luke like an anti-Sith weapon wasn't always the plan, but then fate/the force intervened and forced him to take part in the rebellion. Yoda knew that Vader would eventually find Luke and with zero Jedi guidance at all, he would have easily been turned to the dark size.
As for why Yoda immediately turned around and seemed to refuse to train Luke when he arrived on Dagobah, the answer is twofold. First, Yoda had to make sure Luke wasn't exactly like his father. If Luke showed the same trouble signs as Anakin: impatience, arrogance, irrational anger at slight inconveniences, Yoda would have walked away. If Luke was too much like his father, Luke was doomed to fall into the same traps that destroyed Anakin.
Second, Yoda was always a bit of a wildcard and liked messing with people. So his "He is too old" and erratic behavior upon first meeting Luke was both a test and Yoda's actual eccentric personality showing through. Yoda reined himself in when he had to be serious and instruct Luke. | 195 |
CMV: there is a conspiracy (or a set of them) whose goal is to spread anti-intellectual ideas on the world, and to prevent any form of critical thinking. | Confusion, denial, dissonance, crazy stuff in general; so crazy that you're forced to believe "don't think about it." Isn't that what people nowadays are into? Those that are going on in TV and social media? I've seen people are digging this stuff a lot, and they show no signs of stopping.
I think we let our guard down once we stop thinking about anything, at least critically. It does look like to me that they're doing everything in their power to make us none the wiser.
It's probably due to me just correlating this to 1984, which is just fiction. Except propaganda and disinformation is real, and have proven to be potent weapons of control.
I for one, would hate to be controlled by stuff like this, so it shouldn't be a surprise that this is one thing I fear. | 1,180 | Surely a much more likely explanation for all the anti-intellectualism and propaganda is that people with similar goals will end up using similar tactics and talking points to achieve their goals without forming any kind of conspiracy.
Say there's a new bill or set of policies meant to combat climate change, an oil lobbyist might want to oppose it because it would hurt their companies profits, while a neo-liberal might not like the amount of government spending and nationalisation in the bill, and a career politician might be against it simply because it might make their opponents who proposed it look good.
So they all go to the public square to attack it, and when one of them manages to capture a lot of attention they all copy that person's homework to use the tactics and points that work. And if that happens to take the form of attacking the idea of "experts" or claiming climate change is a Chinese hoax, or regulations are ways for "elites" to keep down small business so be it. They can't get good science behind them after all because good science points towards the policies being necessary and helpful.
And thus with no conspiracy or coordination whatsoever you have an anti intellectualism movement on the go. | 343 |
[Star Wars] Did Sidious intend for Vader to be his successor? If not, what was his exit strategy as Emperor? | Also, did Vader intend to become Emperor after superseding Sidious some day? Or would he have wanted to continue in a military role while someone else became a figurehead as Emperor? | 29 | Darth Sidious' plan was to rule the galaxy at the head of the Galactic Empire. Ultimate power. Forever.
Sith Lords are the ambitious type.
For some background, Darth Sidious was trained under Darth Plagueis, a Sith Lord who focused on using the force to sustain and even create life. Unfortunately his skill at sustaining life with the use of the force could be undone through sufficient application of Sith lightning.
Darth Sidious was particularly fond of using Sith lightning, hence his master's undoing. But Sidious still learned of his former master's ability to use the force to manipulate life itself.
How do you think Anakin was able to survive his wounds long enough to be placed in a walking metal coffin? Darth Sidious was at his side, refusing to allow him to die and sustaining his life until the medical droids could place Anakin within his new body.
| 40 |
ELI5: What's with the popcorn kernels that don't pop? | I have no idea what the right flair for this is, sorry. | 719 | Popcorn pops because of steam pressure. The inside of the kernel contains starch and water, which are contained in a hard shell. When you heat it, the starch liquifies and the water turns to steam. When the steam pressure gets high enough, the shell explodes, the starch instantly solidifies, and the corn is popped.
If the shell is broken, steam won’t build up. Bad kernel
If it is too dried out, not enough pressure will build up. Bad kernal | 915 |
Double slit experiment with electrons using detectors | My understanding of the standard electron double-slit experiment is as follows:
If you fire electrons at the correct momentum at a pair of slits, the electrons hit the screen in the distribution of an interference pattern. i.e. each electron hitting the screen at a position with a given probability which follows a wave-like distribution.
What's really odd is that this probability function is even obeyed if we send one electron through at a time. The explanation I've heard for this is that the electron actually travels through both slits and interferes with itself.
My question is whether this can be detected. Since electrons in motion produce a magnetic field, we could stick a field detector in each of the double slits. We could then work out which slit the electron went through.
What happens here? Is the magnetic field detected half of what we expect of a electron moving with that momentum?
| 15 | If you detect which slit the electron goes through, you collapse the wavefunction so that its position is defined at that point, so no wavefunction 'goes through' the other slit and there's nothing to interfere with. Instead, you see a simple ballistic pattern, without interference.
To say that another way, measuring which slit it goes through forces it to choose. We can't detect bits of wavefunction, only actual electrons, because the detector either detects nothing (the wavefunction didn't collapse to have the electron here) or an electron (the wavefunction did collapse to an electron here). Once we know which slit it does through, the interference of wavefunction through the other slit is negligible, even if you use an interpretation that says these paths are possible. | 15 |
ELI5: Where does light go? | If one were in a perfectly sealed room and turned a light on, there would be light in the room and none visible from the outside. However, if the light were turned off, the room would get dark. Why? Where do the light waves go? | 24 | It would get absorbed by everything in the room, including the walls, ceiling, and floor. That happens even when the light is on--some is absorbed, and some is reflected off, and what you "see" is the light reflected off of, say, a wall. The light keeps bouncing around the room, until it's eventually all absorbed. But as long as the light is on, more light keeps bouncing around, and some is absorbed. As soon as you turn the light off, the light continues to bounce around for a fraction of a second, before it is all absorbed. | 41 |
At what time in your undergraduate career did you really just want to move on to your PhD? | At what time in your undergraduate career did you really just want to move on to your PhD? In other words, did you ever reach a point where you were just ready to begin your PhD? | 18 | You could easily say this about any stage of your life. HS to UGrad. UGrad to PhD. PhD to faculty. Faculty to tenured.
It's not really constructive to worry about whether you're doing it right or wrong. Your undergrad is one time in your life where you can do a certain set of things. Focus on setting yourself up to be a *great* PhD student while you can, it's hard enough to learn along the way. | 14 |
[Power Rangers] How powerful exactly are all the main villains in each Power Ranger series? | I’ve been wanting to knows for quite a while. | 36 | In general we can presume that they're stronger than the monsters they sent individually, but not strong enough that they aren't risking their own lives fighting the rangers
MMPR: Rita is a witch with various magic abilities, but doesn't fight at all. She did use her magic wand to blast Divatox, but that was effortlessly caught by Astronema. Zedd was better, where he can defeat Tommy Oliver rather easily, but retreated once his staff was broken. Serpentera, his zord, can destroy a planet, but runs out of power fast. Lord Vile can create powerful monsters way stronger than Zedd's or Rita's, but isn't seen fighting.
Zeo: King Mondo, even with his Damocles sword, was defeated by the Super Zeo Megazord, so more powerful than the average monster, but not the strongest.
Turbo: Divatox can teleport and have eye lasers, but also rarely fights.
Space: Astronema has fighting skills on par with the rangers. Dark Spectre took two planet destroying missiles before dying, and can launch a civilization wiping meteor through telekinesis.
Lost Galaxy: Scorpius took on all the rangers at once, but was killed by sneak attack by the red ranger. Trakeena, after training, easily defeated the red ranger, and her upgraded form survived a point blank hit by a battlelizer.
Lightspeed Rescue: Queen Bansheera has various magic abilities, and in her second form can summon a city destroying tidal wave. She was killed by her own demon underlings when she dropped into hell.
Time force: Ransik can fight the entire team by himself, but held back by his sickness.
Wild force: Master Org final form nearly destroyed all the zords and can regenerate as long as his heart is intact.
Ninja Storm: Lothor can take on the rangers by himself through martial arts, but was defeated by Mesogog.
Dino Thunder: Mesogog final form can absorb energy and multiply, but there's a limit.
SPD: Grumm can defeat the main five rangers, but lost to the shadow ranger one on one.
Mystic force: Octomus can travel through time and devour magic, but there's an upper limit until he explodes.
Operation overdrive: Flurious can freeze an entire city, and took two point blank attack from the battlelizer.
Jungle Fury: Dai Shi final form absorbed the powers of all the masters, who blew up all his monsters when they combined their powers.
RPM: Venjix defeated the main three rangers, and can delete people from existence until he was hacked.
Samurai: Stronger than all the rangers, and suffered zero damage from their attacks, but has a weak spot, but still took multiple attacks that could one shot other monsters on said weak spot before dying.
Haven't seen the other seasons. | 45 |
CMV: Christianity is used as a way to justify pre-existing moral beliefs, not as a source of them. | This argument will be specific to Christianity, although I do think it likely applies to other religions. However, I don't know enough about other religions to have a meaningful conversation, so please keep your arguments focused on Christianity. This is also specific to Christians who claim the Bible is the word of God. I am aware that some Christians believe the Bible is the word of people, and their reflections and thoughts on God.
There are several reasons I think Christianity is not a source of most of it's practitioners beliefs, but instead is used as a form of confirmation bias to support beliefs they already hold. These reasons are: Bible verses that get ignored, how it is determined when books are added to the Bible, and how Christianity changes over time with society.
My first point is that people often cherry pick Bible verses. I know that this is pointed out often on change my view and gets tiring, so I'm not going to post examples. I also know that this differs across denominations and that Bible verses are open to interpretation, but in my opinion this actually supports my point. People choose Bible verses to argue beliefs they hold outside of the Bible. If a person believed the Bible was the word of God, why would they pick out specific things from it to believe? To me, it's clear that people don't believe in things such as harsh punishments and not eating shellfish because society no longer cares about those things. However, people do have very strong views about, for example, homosexuality and claim these views are because of the Bible, while simultaneously ignoring other verses of the Bible. This, to me, shows that people are not generally interested in learning from the Bible, but moreso using the Bible to support internal beliefs they can't find support for elsewhere.
They second point I mentioned was about how books get added to the Bible. This applies specifically to Catholics because I'm getting this information from the Catholic school I went to. However, the general methodology for deciding which books to add to the Bible I think applies to probably all denominations. Sometimes, people apparently find books that they think should be added to the Bible and whether or not they get added is determined by what people think about God. This information about God comes from the currently used form of the Bible. Why are we using the Bible to determine what other books should be added to the Bible if the Bible already says contradictory things about God? My view is that it isn't the Bible we use to decide what books get added, it's our own preconceived ideas about what "good" is, and since God is good, we ourselves use our ideas of good to decide what God does, not the other way around.
Finally, society changes all the time, and Christianity changes with it. Before, Christians used to believe gay people were evil, now it's just that they are sinning. We also used to believe in very serious punishments for what we now consider minor crimes. We used to be ok with slavery, and in fact, the Bible tells how slaves should act. But as society changes, so to do the teachings of Churches. To me, this is evidence that people don't get their beliefs from God, they define God's beliefs based in their own. Change my view.
Edit: Thank you guys for all the responses. I just wanted to clarify a few things.
1. I hold no animosity towards Christians in general. I have many Christian friends who I consider to be very intelligent. I will say that this is primarily because they see it as more of the experience and deciding for yourself what an all wise all good God would be like. They don't believe God himself had a direct influence on the writing of the Bible, only that it was written about him by people.
2. I'm already aware the purpose of Jesus was to invalidate the New Testament, or render its rules unnecessary. This kind of also proves my point on a more macro scale. As far as I'm aware, Jews and Christians believe in the same God, but Christians believe the messiah was found. The entire religion of Christianity was founded by a guy who thought those regulations were outdated and got rid of them. And also, why would an infinitely wise God have to change his mind about which rules are necessary? | 1,068 | Both are correct. Some people use religion to justify their moral beliefs. Others base their moral beliefs on their religion (AKA What would Jesus do?). Others do both at the same time.
When a religious leader changes the personal belief of a follower by quoting their religious texts, the follower is basing his morals on his religion. The religious leaser might be justifying his morals with his religion or might genuinely believe what he preaches. | 125 |
CMV: Progressives not voting for Biden are hurting the very people they are trying to convince to vote for their candidate. | After Bernie Sanders withdrew from the election, a vocal group has come forward arguing that progressives should not vote for Biden.
It is very difficult to determine how much of this group is Trump supporters trying to split the Democrats and how many are Democrats who genuinely would rather have Trump than Biden.
But I am talking to the latter group.
The political primary is an opportunity to try to convince voters to vote for your candidate and respective platform. While Bernie Sanders had a very strong campaign, he ended up not gaining the support he needed in voters. While I am a strong supporter of Bernie Sanders for both 2016 and this election, I am not of the mind that we should now abandon the Democratic party.
Here are my main points:
* The Democratic voters that progressives are trying to sway to their cause are the very people who are punished if we abandon them.
* By abandoning our strongest allies (even if they dont support everything we want) we are hamstringing the future of the progressive movement.
* Splitting the Democratic party is exactly what Republicans want, and we cannot ignore how much they would like this.
* Both Republican and Democrats: no matter how much you dislike the candidates, one of them will be president (Trump or Biden), therefore it benefits you to vote for the one CLOSEST to your political ideology.
* More on the above point. The US's political system forces political groups to team up with any other group they can stand to be with because even if you have only 1 vote more than your next competitor, you end up with 100% of the Presidency. Because of this, we need to be
* The president brings in THOUSANDS of people with him who will fill roles. With Biden these people will probably accept the science of global warming and believe in women's reproductive rights.
* Even if you only support Biden 1% over Trump, that is logically reason enough to vote for him.
* We cannot force a progressive ideology on the population. Wanting such a thing is tyrannical. We have to get the populace to buy into the ideologies by voting for progressive candidates.
* **In bloc voting systems, we ALWAYS need to vote for the lesser of two evils.** Moderate Democrats make up a larger group than Progressives, but if a Progressive democrat was actually the option, we would WANT moderates to vote for him over Trump for the very same reason. This is the essence of a bloc voting system. Ignoring that only hurts you and your closest allies. | 60 | How do the democrats manage to keep finding candidates so bad they could lose to Trump?
Biden something something pervert.
Hillary corrupt as shit
The democrats are going after the rational and moral as part of their schtick. Yet pick these duds. Wtf | 26 |
[One Piece]in what sense are the straw hat crew pirates? I don’t recall them pillaging anything, and they’re actually pretty cool guys. More adventurers than anything. I don’t think they know what a pirate is. | 17 | In One Piece verse, a pirate is someone who has Jolly Roger. That specifically means that they’ve taken up arms against the government.
In the pilot chapter, there were explicitly two types of pirates: pillagers and adventurers. | 34 |
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ELI5: Why can you grow plants hydroponically but if plants in soil get too much water they get root rot and die? | 1,050 | Plants’ roots need oxygen, as counterintuitive as that seems.
In soil, there are a lot of tiny gaps that hold air. When you over water a plant those gaps stay filed with water instead of air and the plant drowns
Any hydroponic system includes a way to get oxygen to the roots. Sometimes they leave the roots exposed to the air for a while (ebb and flow), or sometimes they pump air into the water like in an aquarium (deep water culture) | 1,141 |
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ELI5: Why does certain music give us chills? | You know, like when you hear a really good song and your get chills at your favorite part. | 15 | Research shows that’s because music stimulates an ancient reward pathway in the brain, encouraging dopamine to flood the striatum—a part of the forebrain activated by addiction, reward, and motivation. Music, it seems, may affect our brains the same way that sex, gambling, and potato chips do.
Strangely, those dopamine levels can peak several seconds before the song’s special moment. That’s because your brain is a good listener—it’s constantly predicting what’s going to happen next. (Evolutionarily speaking, it’s a handy habit to have. Making good predictions is essential for survival.)
But music is tricky. It can be unpredictable, teasing our brains and keeping those dopamine triggers guessing. And that’s where the chills may come in. Because when you finally hear that long awaited chord, the striatum sighs with dopamine-soaked satisfaction and—BAM—you get the chills. The greater the build-up, the greater the chill.
| 13 |
Why don't people with hypertension eat equivalent amounts of potassium rather than limiting sodium intake? | We know sodium can increase blood pressure and make hypertension worse, some people avoid/limit sodium in food.
Wouldn't eating potassium in proportion to one's sodium intake significantly reduce risks while maintaining quality of life?
Why I'm asking?
I searched and found eating potassium is an effective way of controlling high blood pressure but no one I know with hypertension does it. Is there something I'm missing or they should start doing this.
Edit: e.g. what if someone eats 1g of Sodium chloride with their food and then eats 1g potassium chloride or (however much is needed to balance the consumed sodium).
Edit: not advice or suggestion of any kind, purely academic question. | 26 | Increasing potassium intake can help control high blood pressure when the cause of high blood pressure is too much sodium. There are other causes of high blood pressure, such as obesity, hormonal conditions, kidney disease and sleep apnea. Potassium sparing diuretics due this without a change in diet, but are most often used in conjunction with an ACE inhibitor to reach a healthy blood pressure. | 22 |
[Superheroes] Hey there, I'm an upcoming superhero and just passed the first year mark and I've started to notice something peculiar? | there seems to be a 1 in 5 chance that whenever I arrive on the scene the cute girl from my workplace that I'm crushing on is part of the danger in one way or another, is this a common thing for other heroes or what? | 29 | You've got a stalker. Not too surprising, relatively normal for a celebrity.
As a superhero there is a significantly above average chance they want to kill and/or torture you into going evil. You should probably look into that. Deliberately causing scenes to try and get you to show up is also a possibility, which is better or worse depending on how much you value the lives of the public. | 21 |
CMV: Movie Theaters should let people bring in outside food and drinks on the condition that they charge the people a small fee | I feel like Movie Threaters could be alot more successful if they allowed outside food and drink if they charge the person like 2 dollars for each item. Most theaters do not have food that I would actually want to eat during a movie and being able to bring in my own food for a cost would be great. Many people find movie theater food expensive and end up not buying anything. If movie theaters let people bring food in they would be making money on people who would not have bought food anyway. Plus, many people sneak in food anyway so its not like it would destroy the consessions stand's business. And while yes it could lead to people illegally selling food to others for a cheaper price, it would seldom happen and would not affect the sales in a huge way. | 17 | The fact is the movie theatre makes most of its money on the food. The ticket price is primarily to pay for the movie rental from the distributor/studio. They keep the concession profits for themselves. | 29 |
[MCU] Were the Avengers' actions in Avengers: Endgame legal under the Sokovia Accords? | 27 | At that point in time, what Accords? Most governments would have been struggling to offer the most basic of services, accepting help wherever they could get it, including from the Avengers. The Sokovia Accords at that point were worth only the paper it was printed on. | 44 |
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Light cannot escape the gravitational pull of a black hole. So where does the light go? | I mean, why is the black hole not lit up when the light gets "absorbed" | 37 | Fun fact: If you were orbiting a black hole, and say you were invincible,the gravitational pull of said hole would be so strong that light would orbit, enabling you the ability to look forward and see the back of your head. | 22 |
The Earth & The Sun Spin Counterclockwise, Why Doesn't Venus ? | Venus & Uranus are the only two planets that spin clockwise. Why? | 102 | No one knows exactly why, but a very good hypothesis is that they both experienced collisions with massive objects in the past. Since the early solar system was a comparatively chaotic place (consider for example the quite likely collision of Earth and another planet named Thea, the debris from which was ejected from the Earth and formed our Moon). | 29 |
What stabilizes a Neutron in a Nucleus from Neutron Decay? | The question is simple, but the answer is difficult.
If you have a neutron in, say, a helium atom... that neutron is stable for billions of years.
Contrast this with a free neutron, which has a half life estimated to be somewhere between 10 and 15 minutes. Free neutrons decay into a proton, an electron and a gamma ray (and an antineutrino or something like that?)
So what is it that makes such a huge difference in the stability of neutrons (in a nucleus vs free)? | 65 | Nucleons in (stable) nuclei are bound, they have less energy than free particles. A helium-4 nucleus has less energy than a helium-3 nucleus plus a proton plus an electron (and also less energy than lithium-4 plus electron). The neutrons cannot decay because there is not enough energy. | 37 |
CMV: The main reason that artists generally aren't paid as well as STEM positions is because artists produce something that is readily available in nature | This is sort of a weird view of mine but it makes sense to me. This discussion is about artists in general, but to make things simpler I'll focus mostly on one of the classic forms of art - paintings. I am referring specifically to visual forms of art though.
First, some context. I see this discussion all the time on Reddit. Artists vs. STEM, the "STEM circlejerk", etc. One of the most common arguments I see is - "Imagine how much the world would suck if we didn't have art". Generally, this is a response to the idea that STEM fields produce something practical which therefore has value. Art fields do not produce something practical, but something that is valuable purely for its aesthetic qualities. The second is a lot more subjective when determining something's actual value (i.e. the value of a car is a lot easier to see than the value of a painting, particularly a painting you may not like). Therefore, people who defend the value of artists commonly argue that living in a world without art would be absolutely miserable, and therefore art has value.
I don't think this argument holds up. Art has value because it is something that people enjoy looking at. Generally speaking we consider a "good" piece of art to be one that is beautiful, and a "bad" piece of art to be one that is ugly. So the inherent feature of art that makes it valuable is its beauty. In other words, if you make ugly art, no one is going to consider it valuable.
However, art is absolutely not the only source of beauty in the world. There is beauty in nature literally everywhere you look. Look at a waterfall, or a flower, or a tree, or a colorful bird, or an interesting rock formation, or the ocean, etc. The list is endless! There is **so** much beauty in nature everywhere you look, and the best part is that it's all free. Going outside costs nothing.
So when people say "Imagine a world without art", I do imagine it.... and it doesn't sound all that bad. Sure, there are pieces of art that are pretty. But if I want to see something pretty, I can just go outside. Now, I'll admit that it isn't quite that simple for a lot of people. If you live in the middle of a big city, seeing nature might be difficult. However, I think that the number of people who have absolutely no access to nature whatsoever is very small. For these people, I will concede that art fills a void that they are unable to experience otherwise. But most people, especially in America, can go outside to see nature if they really want to.
I also think it's very telling how prevalent nature is in art. Paintings of flowers, trees, landscapes, etc. are all extremely common in works of art. But, if you'll pardon my language, why the hell would I want to look at a painting of a flower instead of just going outside and looking at a flower itself?
So the way I see it, art is just another "flavor" of beauty. And it's a flavor that costs a lot more and is much harder to access. Sure, maybe it's your preferred flavor. Maybe you really do think that a painting of a flower is prettier than a flower itself. But here is the difference, and this is the crux of my argument. If you prefer looking at paintings to looking at nature, you are not gaining anything new. You are only gaining some better version of something you already had.
If you compare this to the things produced in STEM fields, it's quite obvious that STEM fields produce things you would not have had otherwise. Cars and smartphones don't grow on trees. Beauty literally does.
So since artists produce beauty, they're having to "compete" with nature. And that's hard to do. Nature provides us with a free, diverse, healthy, readily available source of beauty. So for artists to even compete, a person has to **reeeeeeeeally** like a piece of artwork before they'll spend hundreds or thousands of dollars on it. And that isn't going to happen very often for a person.
So in summary, artists are paid less because they produce something that is already produced everywhere for free. It might be slightly better (in some peoples' opinions) than what is produced naturally, but it also costs significantly more, and is much less diverse (i.e. a walk through the park changes every time; a painting stays the same every time you look at it).
So it makes a ton of sense why artists are paid less! CMV
EDIT1: I am referring specifically to forms of visual art, such as paintings, sculptures, etc. Music and other art forms don't factor into my view here.
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> *This is a footnote from the CMV moderators. We'd like to remind you of a couple of things. Firstly, please* ***[read through our rules](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/rules)***. *If you see a comment that has broken one, it is more effective to report it than downvote it. Speaking of which,* ***[downvotes don't change views](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/guidelines#wiki_upvoting.2Fdownvoting)****! Any questions or concerns? Feel free to* ***[message us](http://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=/r/changemyview)***. *Happy CMVing!* | 23 | The next time you walk into a grocery store and walk down the aisles, really take a look at everything on the shelves. Even at things like rat poison. There's going to be one thing in common: *all* of it will have art on it. *All* of it will have come from someone putting in their artistic labor for the benefit of that brand. Name brand companies will charge more for their product and have much better logos, graphics, type-setting, etc. Their products are perceived to be better, and their choice in graphic marketing is a huge part of that.
None of that is available in nature. It does, though, have a massive impact on the corporate structure of our society. If you want to be successful in any kind of business, branding is going to need to be included. That includes hiring artists of varying caliber to complete that for you. Your profits are contingent on the skill of the artist you hire. The worth of art, at that point, is the worth that it would bring to your company. Which can, in a lot of cases, be quantified in a practical way.
tl;dr: Art has practical purpose, even in a production-based, capitalist society. There are artists who successfully break into "commercial" art with a wide range of mediums and earn salaries equivalent to and exceeding STEM fields. Those who don't don't fail necessarily because of the purpose or presence of beauty in art, but because they failed at applying their art to commercial purposes. | 20 |
CMV: The chicken came before the egg | I am of the believe that, in regards to evolutionary biology, the chicken did in fact precede the egg. I admit, my specialty is neuroscience rather than broad evolutionary biology, but I fail to see any compelling reason or science for why the egg would come before the chicken. The egg is a way by which hens give birth to baby chicks. It makes no sense to me that a chicken-centric (a new term I'm coining, and you are more likely to get a delta if you use it too) method of reproduction would come before the very creature that procreates the egg itself. I know single cell organisms originated in the Earth's oceans millions of years ago, but how on Earth would an egg come before the creature itself? Especially since, based on my understanding, chickens are the evolutionary descendants of creatures that resembled dinosaurs. There is a clear evolutionary chain that precedes chickens, so to claim that the chicken came after the egg makes so sense to me.
CMV. | 15 | The chicken egg came before the chicken. The thing that laid the first chicken egg was a close relative of the chicken, but not quite a chicken.
This fits with what I’d call the common definition of what a chicken egg is - an egg with a chicken embryo in it - but if you want to claim it was a chicken-relative egg because that’s what laid it, you’d reach the opposite conclusion.
Obviously, eggs evolved before chickens, overall. | 34 |
ELI5: How does the earths first gain more layers if there is a finite amount of material? | When we learn about history we learn that layers at the bottom are older and stuff up top is newer, so it's like things just keep piling up. Where did we get the stuff then? Will we run out of stuff? | 15 | Volcanoes eject material from below the Earth's surface to the top of the Earth's surface. Dust also travels with wind and can end up halfway around the world. Additionally, CO2 from the atmosphere is fixed by plants and those are eaten by animals. They all die and end up as part of the Earth. CO2 to fuel this can come from volcanoes, the oceans, or released by erosion. | 19 |
ELI5 - How are "Pirate" car parts made? | I recently purchased some DEPO branded headlights for my car, because I was planning to cut them up to retrofit projectors.
Upon inspection I noticed that each component of the assembly was almost OEM apart from a few areas where plastic seemed to “leak” out of the mould.
I was curious as to how they are manufactured to the same shape and specifications as OEM if they had to use their own production techniques. Are these parts just manufactured using old OEM molds and dies? | 15 | A decent amount of the time they're made on the same molds and dies as the OEM parts. Some factory in China takes an order for 20,000 headlights from Ford, makes the tooling, makes the order, then files off the logos on the mold and runs off another 50,000 until the mold wears out.
Most of the big OEMs aren't really interested in pursuing that sort of thing because it's just seen as the cost of doing business in China. | 50 |
ELI5: How Apple can publicly claim iPhone 5 is the thinnest smartphone in the world? | In their keynote they had a slide dedicated to this point. A simple Google search will show that there is more than one phone thinner. iPhone 5 = 7.6mm; Huawei has one that's 6.7mm, and ZTE has one that's 6.2mm and Motorola Razr is stated at 7.1mm.
Is there any commission keeping companies accountable for these things or can everyone just lie? | 22 | American false advertising laws are incredibly lax. Only a competitor has any standing to complain about it; if a complaint *is* substantiated, they usually just have to run what's known as "corrective advertising". Let me tell you what that would look like:
iPhone 5. Thinner than most*. Better than all.
[in size 2 font:]*We mistakenly claimed that the iPhone 5 was the thinnest smartphone in the world. It is actually the thinnest smartphone in the United States. | 12 |
ELI5: How do aircrafts know when they are being targeted? | 25 | Two basic ways:
Sensors on the aircraft detect the targeting radar of a ground installation or missile being pointed at the aircraft. Radars depend on hitting a target with energy and then detecting the energy as it bounces off the target and returns. Planes can detect when a radar is simply scanning the whole sky and when it is focused specifically on them by analyzing the radar energy hitting the plane.
Missile Approach Warning systems scan the sky for missiles using pulse-doppler radar, infrared, and ultraviolet sensors. The radar can quickly detect objects moving fast towards the aircraft, and the IR/UV sensors look for the bright light produced by the missile's rocket motor. | 30 |
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[Spider-Man] How much web fluid does Spider-Man use daily? | 47 | It’s unclear exactly how much web any given amount of fluid can make. It certainly seems like a small amount of web fluid goes a long way based on how long Spider Man can fight without refilling his rather small web shooters | 27 |
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I believe alimony should be abolished. CMV. | After a divorce, I believe people should divide what's theirs and part ways. I think it's insane to expect a person to pay the other to maintain a certain lifestyle they grew to expect while in an intimate and legal relationship. Just because one of them makes more than the other doesn't mean the less financially well off person deserves "their cut." Yes, if there is a big gap in their wages one is going to be better off after the divorce and I could see how that's not fair. However, that's life; some people are very wealthy, some are very poor, and most are somewhere in the middle.
I'm not saying it can't be done voluntarily and this has nothing to do with child support, but being forced to pay out of pocket to support a perfectly capable human being after ties with them have been severed just doesn't make any sense to me. So, change my view if possible.
| 412 | You can't just inspect the ownership of possessions at a superficial level like you're doing though. Yes, you could split up everything 50/50, or whatever split is deemed appropriate, but many decisions made during the marriage have effects that last long after. What if one spouse decided to forgo college or a career to raise a child at home while the other went and worked? In that case the stay at home parent would now be punished for a decision they made together during the marriage. Due to lack of training they might be completely unable to support themself because the couple built their lives together under the assumption that one income would cover both of them. | 364 |
Why are countries really far from the equator so much more advanced than countries on/near it? | It seems like the most technologically advanced countries are really far from the equator and most countries on/near it are "third world." Is it because the climate is way colder/less consistent far from the equator and inhabitants had to make advancements to adapt/survive in it? | 56 | Jared Diamond guns germs and steel is a book which goes in to this. Boils down to availability of animals you can domesticate that are any bloody use. The Llama for example isn't very strong, the zebra is feisty and also not strong, elephants are a bugger to breed. We had horses, we lucked out, the industrial revolution couldn't have happened as fast as it did without them - they were a labour saving device the likes of which people living on the equator didn't have until they'd got them from us. If you doubt this theory, try mining with the aid of a kangaroo to pull your wagon load of metal ore. People power is always there, but people aren't very strong and they tend to rebel. | 71 |
Why do many people still talk about stock trading when index funds exist? | YouTube for example is full of people trying to teach you how to profit from stock trading, what is the point of wasting time micro managing stocks when index funds exist? Am I missing something? | 138 | There is a small, but nonzero chance of your stocks doing better than index funds. If you do your research into a firm and have an understanding of the industry it's operating in, you may identify smaller firms that will grow significantly more than indices. Investing in a stock index is basically the ultimate in diversifying in the stock market: Your chances of making huge money go down, but your chances of losing money also goes down.
Then the videos themselves can be useful tools to understanding how the stock market works and getting some grasp of economics. So even those who do not participate might watch and come out better.
On the flipside, the romanticization of the first paragraph's concept, where you could make more money by betting on individual firms rather than on indices brings in viewers as well. The potential rewards of having first put money into Facebook and come out 5 years later with millions of dollars is attractive, if incredibly unlikely. Despite the unlikelihood of this, it is still powerfully attractive to some people, enough to keep a few Youtubers making guides on how to invest, despite them possibly giving advice that would cost their viewers money in the long run.
Further, some people find it fun to manage their own stocks. In this case, making money may not be the primary goal, but instead finding successful businesses and rooting for them, as a hobby is. Like most hobbies, this may cost money but it can be fun. | 115 |
[ELI5] How does a glass of water standing for a while create small bubbles on edge of the glass? | 20 | Bubbles mean something in the water is ~~changing from a liquid into a gas~~ escaping the water as a gas.
Tap water contains atmospheric gases, such as nitrogen and oxygen, dissolved in it (dissolved means microscopic bubbles of gas get 'trapped' in the water by any change in pressure, such as water in a pipe or the wind blowing against the top of the ocean). As the glass filled with water sits out for a few hours, its temperature rises slightly (water gets warmer), which causes the dissolved gases in it to come out of the water and form bubbles along the inside of the glass. | 13 |
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When the last black hole in the universe evaporates and explodes, what happens to that radiated energy? | A model of the future universe predicts that, after trillions upon trillions of years into the future, all the stars have exhausted, all matter has accumulated into black holes, and the black holes themselves evaporate. When the last black hole in the universe radiates away, there are no other structures in the universe to interact with those fluctuations. What happens to that last bit of energy? Does it simply diffuse through the impossibly vast, cold, empty universe? Does that mean that there will always be some amount of energy (and information?) that persists? | 25 | Just like most other radiation and stable particles (only a very small fraction will fall into black holes) it will just fly through the universe forever. The expansion of the universe will separate all these particles from each other. | 23 |
Dasein vs Cartesian self ? | What is the difference?
To my understanding, the cartesian self is a mere abstraction of mind over matter, that asumes that these two are kind-of two separate things.
Then Dasein is kindof the state of being *with* the world, being *in* the world. For what I get this Dasein is a boundless self where identity melts into the world ?
I'm drowning *in* Heiddeger **HELP** | 32 | You are on the right track. Another important thing to notice is that Dasein is "always already" in a world, while the Cartesian subject begins isolated, and then systematically builds up the world around it (although this seems more like Fichte than Descartes).
For Heidegger, we don't start with the "I" of the "I think," but start with Dasein's *eksistence*, our way of Being. Then, we "say I," because this Being is always "mine," but most of the time, when we say "I," we are really not ourselves, but merely *"das Man"*. That is, when we say, for example, "I don't think you should do that," we identify ourselves with "what one should do."
Heidegger is also worried about the tradition of grounding everything in the subject, and the subject/object distinction in general. Husserl also finds this troubling, but maintains this language. Heidegger drops the language altogether.
He also thinks that in modern philosophy, we understand Being to mean "present as an object before consciousness." Kant, for example, says that Being isn't a predicate, but only a relationship between the thing and our act of judgment. This is part, in his view, of the "forgetting" of the question of Being.
He sees the role of the subject or transcendental consciousness in modern philosophy as comparable to the medieval view of Being as "something created by God." Beings, in the middle ages, are understood as something created by God, a relation between an existing thing and the act of creation. Things "are" as long as God gives them Being.
He sees the modern subjective point of view to be prefigured already in Greek philosophy, where beings are understood in terms of the *eidos* (form or outward appearance).
The problem with this, for Heidegger, is that it leads to a picture where knowledge is only possible through representations. This covers over the Truth of Being. | 15 |
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