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[ "Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum", "Where does the term Generation X Y Z come from and now that we are on Z is AA next?" ]
Generation X was the generation after Baby Boomers. They were called that because "X" is the stereotypical unknown variable and, at the time, nobody really knew what they were going to be like. They grew up in a peaceful, prosperous time of American history without any major social strife. They were also significantly smaller than the Boomers & largely overshadowed. Calling later generations Y & Z is just laziness.
[ "Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum", "How can fruit be GM'd or selectively bred to have no pips (eg oranges) if they wont be able to reproduce?" ]
They graft branches from the seedless variety onto pre existing root systems of non seedless varieties. fwiw, where are you from? Pips is not that common a term for seeds.
[ "Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum", "Why do companies give away free stuff to new customers but I get bugger all as a loyal customer?" ]
You said yourself you are a loyal customer. They've already got you! They're trying to create even more loyal customers like you via special promotions for new customers
[ "Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum", "What characteristics make a certain liquid/solid \"flammable\"?" ]
Volatility, or the tendency of the substance to vaporize and form a gas. Liquid gasoline, for instance, is very hard to burn. However, the vapors coming off of the gas are easy to burn, because they have enough access to oxygen to easily complete the combustion reaction. As for solids, such as wood, the same principle applies. The reason that wood must be significantly heated before it will catch fire is because the heat causes some of the wood to break down. The products of this "pyrolysis" (heated decomposition) are flammable gases, as well as solids. The gases burn, while the solids (char and ash) do not burn.
[ "Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum", "Why do artists in older bands sound so different than artists today?" ]
There is a thing called the ['Loudness Wars'](_URL_0_) which is probably what you're noticing. Basically, old music was recorded more simply, but record labels found people like songs more if they 'sound louder' (but aren't actually louder, really, kinda-its technical). So they started processing songs using a lot of ['Compression'](_URL_1_). Many people reckon this has destroyed music. [Here's](_URL_2_) an article talking about exactly what you're saying, which might explain better than me.
[ "Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum", "What exactly causes the mirage of reflective water on the road?" ]
On a sunny day, when the road gets much hotter than the air above it, a temperature gradient is established, which bends the light upward. What appears to be water is actually bent light looking at the sky.
[ "Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum", "How is it possible that police in other countries can fire their weapons so few times a year?" ]
For the most part in Great Britain police officers don't carry firearms. Turns out it's pretty easy to not fire something you don't have.
[ "Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum", "How do sewer systems in tall buildings work? Does your crap free-fall all the way to street level?" ]
Generally sewer systems in high rise buildings are designed to avoid 2 problems. 1. free-fall of waste, both to avoid ramming into to the pipe at the bottom of the fall, and to avoid increase in air pressure in the sewer line at the lower floors. Increased air pressure might cause sewer gases and water in the P traps of lower floors to back flow. 2. Sewer fluids that are swirled around the edge of the pipes help wash the inside of pipe, and prevent build up that lead to clogs, while leaving the center available for air flow. Unfortunately, that's the limits of my knowledge, hopefully someone with a strong background structural engineering can give you more information.
[ "Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum", "How asthma puffers work?" ]
They contain a drug that forces all the tiny pathways in your lungs to open up. The misting just makes it easier to inhale and get where it needs to be quickly, rather than taking pill and waiting an hour for it to start working.
[ "Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum", "why do painkillers like percocet and vicodin contain a little bit of the painkiller and alot of acetaminophen" ]
APAP (acetaminiophen) kills pain in different ways than opiates & combining the two is far more effective than just taking the opiate alone. This means you can take a cocktail of the two and get better pain relief with lower cost/addiction potential. Another benefit - if you're concerned about law+order and preventing drug addiction/abuse - is that massive doses of APAP are *really* bad for you. We're talking "liver death, enjoy slowly dying over the next week with no chance of recovery" bad. Until a few years ago, we considered this to be an effective deterrent against "diversion" (the sale of prescription drugs on the black market for recreational use) and allowed combination drugs to be sold as *Schedule III* controlled substances rather than the more restrictive *Schedule II*. Schedule II drugs have a number of legal complications - you can't get prescriptions that allow refills & those prescriptions can't be simply phoned into the pharmacist.
[ "Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum", "Why did hitting electronics (like old T.Vs) temporarily \"fix\" them?" ]
Sometime problems were caused by debris on the circuit or a relay (spring loaded magnetic switch) sticking. Vibration might shake the problem free, restoring normal function.
[ "Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum", "Why is it OK to use the same utensil on raw chicken all the way through until it is cooked?" ]
If you work with food then it's not. You have to have separate utensils for raw & cooked: and it's especially important with chicken. At home, using the same fork or something like that isn't really a big problem as it's not a big chance of bacteria being transferred in any significant quantity, and it'll be killed again each time you put it back to cook some more.
[ "Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum", "How do Area 51/ other secret service workers get chosen?" ]
You apply to work for the government. Your next job in the government requires a higher security clearance. So, your life is investigated by the government, and they decide to give you a clearance. Then your next job requires access to compartmentalized information. So, you get a more through investigation. Eventually you have a clearance high enough that when they're an opening at Area 51, because some alien spaceship killed your predecessor, you're on the short list of people with "enough clearances" to do the work. You get a secure email from the Area 51 HR department asking if you're interested. Say Yes, and the MIB start erasing your friends. OK, I made that last bit up.
[ "Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum", "How can phones make emergency calls without a SIM card, reception, etc...?" ]
As stated already, you always need reception, there's no way around that. To explain the lack of SIM, you need only look at the meaning of the abbreviation: **S**ubscriber **I**dentity **M**odule. A SIM is not actually required to make a phone call, it's just required to identify you and associate your phone with an account and phone number.
[ "Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum", "Would it be possible to implement universal healthcare by state?" ]
Sure. That's what Canada does. Both Vermont and Colorado have said they're looking into it, at some point in the recent past. I think that shows that it is possible to some degree, and experts have at least toyed with the idea. I imagine state taxes will go up by a bit, but I think people will be fine with it eventually, because you wouldn't have to pay insurance premiums anymore (it's effectively paid for through the taxes). I moved from US to NZ. In US, I had private insurance from work. In NZ, I have universal public healthcare. I earn about the same in NZ as what I earned in US, but I took more money home, because my taxes in NZ is less than what my taxes plus premiums were in US.
[ "Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum", "How do I use Flashcards for studying?" ]
topic name on one side, short description of topic on the other. So it could be an important name with a short explanation why the person, place, or thing is important. could be "member of the XXX cartel" with the members on the other side. Get creative, have fun. The point is to make a connection between the information on one side of the card and the other.
[ "Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum", "Why and what are puppy mills and why are they bad? Why don't \"ethical\" breeders sell to pet stores?" ]
A puppy mill is a place that just breeds dogs round the clock and pumps out as many puppies as they can. The dogs likely won't get much attention or be able to play, run around etc its literally a puppy factory. Pet stores will buy from normal ethical breeders, but sometimes they might not realize that they are buying from a puppy mill, or they might not care as a puppy mill will sell the dogs for a much lower price then a normal breeder. Generally its wise to do your homework if you're looking to get a puppy no matter where you're looking.
[ "Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum", "How are movie companies able to get entire roads/highways/places shut down in order to film? If I payed enough money, could I shut down highways?" ]
In theory? Sure. In practice? Not unless you have a good reason... like say a few million dollars and a movie to film. "Just because" isn't going to fly.
[ "Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum", "How do transmissions such as Wi-Fi signals and cellular phone signals transmit through solid objects like glass and wood? I understand that it degrades the signal, but how does it still make it through in the first place?" ]
Have you ever shined a bright light through your finger tips? Notice how you can see the light coming though? It may not be as bright because your finger is absorbing a lot of it but still light makes it through to the other side. well wifi or radio signals are essentially light or electro magnetic radiation. They are simply outside of the human visible spectrum so we don't see them. Same thing happens though with certain wavelengths of light can penetrate through solid objects. They'll be weaker on the other side but they can go through. On an atomic level there are gaps even in solid. If light is of the right size aka wavelength it can slip through these gaps. Differing materials have different gaps and density this absorbing different amounts of light. Glass will let through more light than metal for example.
[ "Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum", "Why are car batteries so big if they lose their whole charge after leaving a dome light on overnight." ]
They're designed to put out a large amount of power for a short time -- enough to start your car engine, which is heavy. But the designers assume they'll be constantly recharged thereafter (by the car's alternator or generator).
[ "Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum", "Why did the USA govt bail out the banks instead of the home owners?" ]
Because a bank failure is worse for everyone than homes being foreclosed. Though I'm sure someone who had their home foreclosed upon would disagree.
[ "Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum", "If someone needs a kidney transplant, does the donated kidney have to be from the same side? Like, can you replace a left kidney with a right kidney?" ]
When a person receives a kidney transplant, it is not in place of one of their kidneys. The new kidney is typically placed in the patient's pelvis. The artery, vein, and ureter (tube that connects the kidney to the bladder) from the donor kidney are then connected to the recipient's iliac artery, iliac vein, and bladder, respectively. [This](_URL_0_) image describes what it looks like pretty well. Like another commenter said, one of the recipient's kidneys is not usually removed unless it is causing a serious problem (i.e. extremely high blood pressure). There's also always a risk with surgery involving a highly vascular organ like the kidney, so there's no reason to tempt fate. So to answer your question, it doesn't really matter which side it came from or to which side it goes. Edit: Grammar
[ "Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum", "If the use of antibacterial soaps and careless use of antibiotics is discouraged because it could produce very resilient and dangerous bacteria, how come mouthwash isn't being given the same treatment?" ]
The "antibacterial" part of mouthwash is ethyl alcohol; bacteria are about as likely to develop a resistance to it as they are to bleach.
[ "Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum", "Why are autocorrects getting less correct?" ]
Google Keyboard has been the best auto correct software I've ever used, it's fast almost always gets the word right, unobtrusive, and it leanrs what worda are most commonly used.
[ "Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum", "Why isn't a vacuum created in my body when I fart?" ]
Vacuums would only be created with rigid bodies. When you fart it's more like popping bubble wrap; Your stomach compresses rather than having a vacuum.
[ "Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum", "Why does water taste weird in the morning compared to at night?" ]
You'll have to be more specific, water sitting on your counter or stagnant in the pipes will be warmer and have more oxygen or minerals dissolved in it making it taste different. Other wise factors like brushing your teeth, or having a lot of build up of bacteria in your mouth while you sleep can affect the taste as well.
[ "Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum", "Why is there a rise of radical conservative officials in public office around the world right now (e.g. USA, Brazil, South Korea, Britain, Ukraine, Hungary, etc.)?" ]
It's simple. 1% of the world population ,who are continually hording the world's wealth at the expense of the rest of the 99%, have been doing such a good job that lately, that the 99% started to take notice and even started a movement (by the same name) across the world, pointing out how more and more people fall into poverty to keep those few nice and warm with all their bags of money. See, those bags of money are awfully nice, and they don't want to have to give them up, so , the 1%, decided to put all their efforts and energies into exploiting one side the 99% against the other (White, low-income class persons vs everyone else) in an attempt to keep the 99% occupied while they continue to exploit them for even more sweet ass bags of money.
[ "Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum", "How are porcelain brakes, on my car, guaranteed for life? Do they never wear away? How do they not produce brake dust?" ]
Do you mean ceramic? They produce dust still, but it's light colored so it's practically invisible compared to the dust most other pads produce. They definitely still wear out but they have a very long lifetime. The ceramic compound brakes on my 330i have lasted through track days at Laguna Seca, California Speedway, 2 years of autocross, and 3 years of daily driving and they still have life left in them. It's that long life that makes a lifetime guarantee possible. It's a great selling point but will probably be only used very rarely. The typical car will be sold before those pads ever wear out. It's probably *extremely* rare that the guarantee gets used enough to eliminate the profit from the initial purchase.
[ "Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum", "Why is it hard to speak when we are emotional?" ]
Emotions are caused by chemicals being released in the brain. These chemicals can cause love, panic, fear, nostalgia, etc. When surprising information hits your brain, it can get flooded by these chemicals and can hinder other non essential brain operations.
[ "Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum", "What causes the “burn” in muscles when working out?" ]
When you perform strenuous exercise, the movement of your muscles require more energy than can be provided by aerobic methods which use oxygen from your blood. Your body is then forced to produce energy by anaerobic methods (without oxygen). These processes end up producing a substance called lactic acid which causes your muscles to burn.
[ "Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum", "Why is the letter \"Y\" sometimes a vowel?" ]
Even though we label *letters* as consonants or vowels, it's really only *sounds* that are consonants or vowels. And thanks to English's screwy writing system, "y" can be either - at the start of "you", it's a consonant, and at the end of "try", it represents a vowel (well, a diphthong, so it's sort of two vowels strung together quickly - aah to eee). In the word "tray", "ay" represents a diphthong, as well, but you can say that the "y" is just one vowel of the pair. That's also why "w" is sometimes included as a vowel, in words like "how", where the "ow" is a diphthong that goes from aah to ooo.
[ "Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum", "What is the deciding factor in whether or not a light wave is absorbed or reflected?" ]
Mostly the electron configuration and whether the light energy is the right frequency to promote an electron in the receiving material. Light hits electrons, makes them more energetic, and they either do so stably, unstably, or just arent the right match. Arent the right match and they go dtright through, stably and they are absorbed and unstably they reflect.
[ "Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum", "How do people \"grow out\" of allergic conditions like Asthma?" ]
This is ELI5, so simply put, your body gets used to the allergen that it overreacted to in the first place. The protein/carb/lipid tags on the foreign body are so familiar to your immune system there isn't any reason for it to go into a reaction. In theory most allergies can be "cured" this way, but for some reactions the risk isn't worth it. For less severe allergies, this is the basic premise of this aspect of immunotherapy.
[ "Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum", "Why does rain make us feel cozy?" ]
Less fomo: it's socially acceptable and expected to get cozy when it rains. Guilt free cozying without missing out on the coolest party ever or other socializing because there's a good chance everyone else is just getting cozy too.
[ "Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum", "Say I have a bad cold with an impossibly stuffed up nose. No way to breathe through my nostrils. Now say I get kidnapped, and they put duct tape over my mouth. Would my body react to un-stuff my nose so I could breathe to live?" ]
I wouldn't worry about it. Next time you have duct tape (and preferably no facial hair) take a strip and put it over your mouth and try to get it off without your hands. It's absolutely trivial. The whole "I have duct tape over my mouth so now I can't talk" thing is just for the movies. Honestly it's one of their sillier gags since anyone with a roll of the gray, shiny stuff can show how implausible it is. As for your actual question in a non-duct-tape scenario, I can tell you that in my experience adrenaline has a lovely head-clearing effect. I wouldn't be surprised if this is a normal reaction to extreme fear.
[ "Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum", "Why does Nutella need no refrigeration or microwaving?" ]
It's ingredients do not spoil at room temperature until said expiration date, similarly to peanut butter, and is edible as is; the ingredients have undergone their completed industrial processing and are safe to eat from the jar.
[ "Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum", "How can the car industry be so diverse, and still be so successful?" ]
For the same reason there can be dozens of fast food companies, dozens of soft drink sellers: there is a huge, huge market with lots of different preferences.
[ "Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum", "Aussies, what are bogans?" ]
bogans are culturally marginal people. they wear shit clothes and speak in non sensical platitudes. they smoke value pack cigarettes and drink goon. they vote labor for the benefits, and are all about 'straya. they are borne of underage and unmarried parents - and again fall pregnant and create more socially parasitic spawn
[ "Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum", "How can you not bleed to death when surgeons cut you open? I mean a papercut can still bleed" ]
They clamp major arteries, and use an IV to put fluids back into your body. For a minor surgery, the fluids are enough to keep your systemic pressure up while your body makes new blood. For major surgery, they give you whole blood or plasma, as needed.
[ "Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum", "how do we know how old Saturn's rings are if we never been there?" ]
When you say never been there, people's may not have been there but the rings have been analyzed through Hubble, Voyager spacecraft and Cassini space probe. It used to be believed the rings were created like 100 million years ago but ring features seen by instruments on Cassini -- which arrived at Saturn in 2004 -- indicate the rings were not formed by a single cataclysmic event. The ages of the different rings appear to vary significantly, and the ring material is continually being recycled. They think it could be as old as the solar system 4.5 billion years old. Here is the article: _URL_0_
[ "Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum", "The United States debt. Does it just keep increasing forever? what will eventually happen?" ]
Yes, it does; it goes up and up forever. In the late 1600s, a group of businessmen in England lent about a million pounds (in 1600s pounds) to the government of England. The credit of the government of England was so bad at this point that the businessmen demanded concessions from the government for making such a risky loan. What they got in return was the right to issue notes against the interest on that loan, and thus created one of the first currencies based on public debt rather than a large pile of metal sitting in a vault somewhere. In order to administrate the loan, the businessmen founded the Bank of England. In 319 years, that loan has never been paid off, and there are no plans to do so. What's more important than paying off the debt is paying the interest, which is what keeps currency based on public debt stable.
[ "Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum", "If a person's heart stops, and blood stops going to their organs, they become brain dead, and then dead dead; why can't we just pump oxygenated blood through them artificially after an hour or so, to revive them? Why do they stay dead?" ]
On my phone but basically, your body uses oxygen as the final electron acceptor as it makes ATP (this is the form of energy the cells in your body use). No oxygen = no ATP can be formed. If there is no ATP, your body can't pump sodium out of the cells with the Na+/K+ ATPase pump, and the cell gets filled with lots of sodium ions. Water outside the cells "follow" sodium, and the cells get too big and burst, releasing cell contents and obviously killing the cell. This happens well within an hour of loss of blood flow, and isn't reversible.
[ "Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum", "How do pirates still exist today/what exactly do they do?" ]
More or less the same things they've always done: hijack ships in order to steal the ship itself and/or its cargo and/or hold the crew for ransom. Piracy really hasn't changed much for most of human seafaring history. When people think of modern pirates they usually think of Somalia although the problem isn't limited to those waters. Modern pirates will approach large commercial ships generally using small, faster craft. They are usually heavily armed and often fire a few warning shots to let the target ship know they mean business. After boarding the ship, it can go a few different ways: they might take valuables and/or hostages and leave, or they might take the ship itself to a friendly port and use it as a "mother ship" for future piracy operations. The hostages are used to demand payment in order to secure their release. Despite all the danger, deaths due to piracy are rare.
[ "Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum", "How does a ship force a submarine to leave an area?" ]
The only thing a submarine has is stealth. It uses the depths, different thermal layers and silent operations to hide in the background ocean noise. Getting detected means the submarine is pretty much a sitting duck. It reflects either a mistake made by the submarine crew, or the skills of the surface fleet at anti submarine warfare. Attack submarines following or monitoring enemy fleets, even during peace time is common. When they get detected, enemy attack subs do things like blast their sonar, surface ships and aircraft drop sonar buoys over the location of the detected submarine. So the detected submarine gets chased away, and will most likely try to follow again without getting detected again.
[ "Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum", "Why do gas stations with the same name, have different prices from location to location?" ]
Most such gas stations are part of something called a franchise, which means that the physical gas station you're at doesn't actually belong to the company that owns the name. Instead, the owner of the gas station pays fees to the company that owns the name, wears their uniforms, and follows their standard business model in exchange for the right to display that companies logo. The idea is that in doing so the gas station will get increased business because people will recognize the name as one with which they're familiar. Fast food is another industry where this is common.
[ "Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum", "Why do Americans in the highest income bracket and with the most education tend to consume the most alcohol?" ]
You are confused by the poll. The poll doesn't say that rich drinkers drink more than poor drinkers, it says that rich people are less likely to claim to be total abstainers. Why might this be? I can think of four reasons. The most likely reason for an American to abstain totally from alcohol are (1) membership in a fringe religious group, (2) recovering alcoholic, (3) has spent time around alcoholics and hates alcohol as a result, or (4) has very severe health problems thay prevent drinking. Poor Americans are more likely to belong to extreme churches, to suffer from alcoholism to the point they cannot function, and to have life-threatening chronic disease. So they are more likely to try to quit. Note that this is not the same as saying that richer Americans drink more by volume.
[ "Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum", "Why do sunburns feel warm?" ]
Blood is rushed to those areas for repair thus causing the feeling of more heat in a specific piece of your body.
[ "Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum", "Do worms travel with a single orientation? Do they have a \"belly\" side that they usually travel facing down with? Or do they just move without caring about their rotation?" ]
They have a "belly" (abdominal) and a back (dorsal). They are not symmetrical inside. The neural system is the top side, the digestive system is the bottom side. And they aware of which side is up and down.
[ "Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum", "Why are wedding dresses white?" ]
Because Queen Victoria wore a white dress when she married Albert in the middle of the 19th century. A white wedding dress became fashionable, then the fashion turned into a tradition.
[ "Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum", "Why does our vision look black and white when it is dark and our eyes get adjusted?" ]
In our eyes we have two different recepters called rods and cones. Cones help us see color and rods help us decern between light and dark. Cones are only useful if there is light, because color is a reflection of white light. Rods, on the other hand, are fantastic at making out shapes and figures when there is no light around. With no cones active, we are using only our rods making everything appear black and white.
[ "Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum", "Can dogs understand other dogs when they bark?" ]
Dogs don't bark in a language like how you speak English. Languages are an invention which must be taught to our children and requires constant care and revision to be mutually intelligible. Dog barks are extremely simple vocalizations. Though it is probable that dogs have a better idea of why another dog is barking than your average human, that doesn't mean that there's any content for the dog to "understand". Dogs don't bark to communicate with each other in sentences, they are merely vocalizations that are indicative of aroused emotional states.
[ "Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum", "When it's sunny out, how does closing one eye allow you to open the other eye fully without discomfort?" ]
Because when you close one eye, you're instantly stopping 50% of the light from entering your brain. That's why you wouldn't feel discomfort.
[ "Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum", "Please help me understand what systemic vascular resistance is." ]
Emergency Med. PA-C here. SVR is the back-pressure within your arteries that your heart must overcome each contraction to pump blood to the rest of the body
[ "Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum", "How and where does acid in our stomach come from?" ]
Sure, we start out as a mass of cells, but that doesn't really say much. Cells are capable of a variety of tasks. Detecting light, moving the body, pumping blood, firing electrical impulses, creating new cells. Producing acid isn't especially unique as a 'cool thing cells can do,' cells do all kinds of crazy things including synthesizing lots of chemicals. Our stomach itself has gastric glands, with cells called parietal cells. These cells produce the hydrochloric acid we use in our stomachs, by combining hydrogen ions (derived from a combination of water and carbon dioxide we have taken in) and chloride ions (which we have also taken in, for instance in salts). This is secreted along with potassium chloride and sodium chloride to form the stew we call stomach acid. This process occurs continuously, to replenish our stomach acid as it is depleted.
[ "Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum", "the difference between murder and assassination." ]
Assassination is to murder as beagle is to dog. Assassination is a specific type of murder generally defined by its political nature or the prominence/celebrity of the target.
[ "Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum", "today's science's view of the shape of the universe." ]
If you're referring to the "observable universe", it is the distance from Earth we've been able to observe. It's a sphere because earth is a sphere. That is not the whole universe
[ "Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum", "\"pretty sure you're in some list now.\" Does the government really tag each individual as possible \"criminals?\" And if you do something illegal do they use this information gathered on you? Is this legal?" ]
It depends on what you do and if you get caught. If you get caught doing something illegal then yes the offence will be put in public records so anyone can look you up. You probably aren't on a list unless there is a reason you should be.
[ "Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum", "Under what circumstance could residents of the United States overthrow the government if said person/organization would immediately be charged with treason and/or imprisonment?" ]
The entire point of overthrowing a government is that the usurpers are declaring that the government is not valid, and than none of its laws apply. If they succeed, then they rewrite the laws, and will not be charged with a crime by the new government that they create. Basically, overthrowing the government is only illegal if you fail.
[ "Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum", "Does the Earth make a sonic boom?" ]
It doesn't, because it isn't moving trough anything. Sonic speed is based on the medium propagating the sound. No medium, no sound, no speed of sound, no sonic boom.
[ "Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum", "What determines if gas is expelled out the body as flatulence or a belch?" ]
If the gas is liberated in the stomach, it goes up as a belch. If the gas is liberated once passed the pylorus, it will exit as a fart
[ "Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum", "why is it that elderly people tend to wake up earlier the older they get?" ]
You're looking at a biased sample set. Once they get old enough, they don't wake up at all.
[ "Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum", "How can so many movies claim they are the \"#1 movie in America\" and not be lying?" ]
By not defining what they mean by "#1." If they don't say it's the #1 movie at the box office, or the #1 movie according to critical rating, or #1 highest rated movie on metacritic user reviews, or such, they're not lying. By not quantifying it they can easily decide for themselves what it means, and argue that it's just an opinion, that it's considered the "#1 best movie in America" by "some people". If you can produce one person who believes that, it's not lying. Even if it's someone who worked on the damn movie.
[ "Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum", "What does \"paper money has no intrinsic value\" mean and what are some examples to help understand the word \"intrinsic\"?" ]
Intrinsic means inherent value that the item has just for existing. When they say money has no intrinsic value, they are basically saying that money is valuable because WE say it is valuable, not because money is naturally valuable.
[ "Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum", "Where did the tradition of having bedrooms on the second floor come from?" ]
Bedrooms have been upstairs since houses had two stories, because it puts them away from the public spaces, away from the livestock, and away from some of the creatures that crawl around on the ground. Also it's warmer in the winter, and catches more breezes in the summer.
[ "Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum", "How do you run for president?" ]
- Convince a few wealthy people you'd make a good President and get them to help finance your campaign. Alternatively, be wealthy enough to fund yourself in the early stages. - Enter the primaries for one of the major parties, campaign hard in each state, press flesh, get people to believe in you, and solicit more donations. - Win the primary, and campaign across the country with the full backing of the party machine.
[ "Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum", "Why can't we build a graviton detector?" ]
Basically, gravitons are just really hard to detect because their interaction with matter is so limited. We have the same problem with neutrons. It takes massive underground tanks just to detect a couple neutrinos. Detecting gravitons is several orders of magnitudes larger. To simplify the passage you posted, if we had a detector the size of Jupiter, it would only detect one graviton every 10 years because most of them would pass right through without touching any of the matter. There's also no way to tell the difference between a graviton and a neutrino - filtering out the neutrinos is almost impossible.
[ "Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum", "Is is Possible for a Moon (Satellite) to Have its own Moon?" ]
Yep. It's completely possible. From a physics standpoint there's really no different between the Moon orbiting the Earth and the Moon orbiting the Earth which is orbiting the Sun. The reason you don't see many natural satellite around planets' moon is because, on a long enough timeline and given the relatively small distance between planets and moons, the planet's gravity is going to "win" and the moon will lose the satellite. But there are still bodies orbiting moons which orbit planets, they're put there by us. There are satellites (artificial) around the Moon. Same dynamic.
[ "Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum", "Why do elderly people get shorter as they age?" ]
It's most likely to do with posture and strength of the intervertebral discs within your spine. In your spine, between each vertebrae (bones surrounding and protecting your spinal cord) are discs full of fluid (known as intervertebral discs). As you age, you lose this fluid, which leads to those discs becoming compressed. This can somewhat shorten your spine. Also, as you age, your muscles aren't as strong as they were before and you lose your upright posture. & nbsp; EDIT: I should also mention osteoporosis. Bones lose some of their density due to a loss of calcium within the bone. This makes bones more susceptible to compression.
[ "Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum", "How do Americans afford/pay for their extortionate healthcare fees and why is the government so unwilling to help?" ]
Most Americans can't actually afford their healthcare. So your option is hope that random pain you're feeling isn't serious enough to put you down so badly other people take you to the ER. Or alternatively hope it kills you quickly so that there is no need for a doctor. Govt. doesn't give a shit for a multitude of reasons but they get taxpayer subsidized healthcare.
[ "Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum", "How can generic supermarket brands like Great Value and Kirkland produce such a variety of different products and and still maintain good quality and value?" ]
They don't pay for advertising. Their products are usually made by the exact same manufacturers as the "brand name" products you would otherwise buy. However, those other products spend a significant amount of money on advertising. You know all that "free" stuff you get everywhere? Like free radio? Free reddit? Free youtube? Free broadcast TV? Well, it's not really free. You pay for it by inflated prices when you buy name-brand goods.
[ "Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum", "Why does a negative number when multiplied by another negative equal a positive?" ]
Because it actually is just getting negated twice. So -2 × -5 = -(-10) = 10 The reason --10 = 10 is essentially because negation is making things opposite, and if you flip things twice, you generally end up back where you started. What's the opposite of Up? Down... What's the opposite of Down? Up. So what's the opposite of the opposite of Up? It's back to being Up. As for real world applications... there are too many to count. Some really important ones being chemistry, physics, and accounting.
[ "Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum", "Why are abs shaped like little squares instead of being one large muscle?" ]
It's actually two muscles, one long one on each side (running top to bottom). What creates the indents is connective tissue. The muscles are called the rectus abdonimus and the connecting tissue is called linea alba.
[ "Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum", "Why are aliens portrayed as stronger and superior?" ]
The general thought I see it as: If an alien race has the technology to come to our planet, they are technologically advanced/superior to our own. But, this isn't always 100% accurate: See War of the Worlds, where they are stopped not by humans, but by disease that we are immune to (or well, resistant to the point of not dying from).
[ "Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum", "How did the first STD's originate?" ]
The fact people are born virgins doesn't matter, it's what happens after they have sex. Probably the first STD was transmitted by some other means AND could be transferred sexually. If there were 1000 strains of a virus and one could be transmitted two ways instead of one, that strain would have an advantage. Even if it started off as being relatively hard way to get transmitted, eventually at least one strain of at least one disease would mutate to get better at getting transmitted sexually. The thing to remember about evolution is the huge numbers involved. Of the thousands (millions?) of diseases, only a few evolve to be sexually transmitted. Of the thousands (millions?) of strains of STDs, only a few evolve to be really effective STDs. But with each generation (millions) the "best" strain gets improved upon. That modern AIDS virus, for instance, is truly standing on the shoulders of giants.
[ "Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum", "to a European why so many Americans value the founding father's opinions and views over anything else? It seems in America, the \"founding fathers\" opinions are viewed as the sole acceptable opinion by many when there must be many others intelligent enough born after the \"founding fathers\"" ]
The founding fathers were some of the best educated thinkers of their generation. They actually wrote the constitution with checks in mind to prevent future authoritarian leadership (such as a monarchy). They also knew the future was going to be different but wanted to assure principle freedoms to all persons. They allowed the constitution to change through amendments and such to adapt. And yes, that has happened and there were smarter people - and we've added their ideas to our government as time went by. Social security, welfare, woman's suffrage, emancipation, etc. Listening to the founding fathers therefore ends up being 'timeless'. Their ideas are humanistic by nature.
[ "Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum", "If I light a candle in my dark bathroom and put it in front of a mirror does that double the amount of light in the room or does it stay the same?" ]
I know this is marked as Explained, but I just want to expand on this. The amount of light in the room doesn't necessarily double. It depends on what you had before where the mirror is now. Say you had a wall painted black before. The black wall would absorb a good portion of the light, and the room would still be fairly dark. Place a mirror there, and the light is reflected back into the room instead of absorbed. In this case, a mirror would significantly brighten the room. Comparing a pure white wall to the mirror: they reflect about the same amount of light, relatively. The mirror just reflects the light directly back, in the same pattern as the light entered the mirror, while a white wall spreads out the light and reflects it differently. The difference between the light in your bathroom if you had white walls, or if you had mirrors, is minimal, and depends on the type of mirror, paint, and surface of the wall.
[ "Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum", "How can reddit have such severe and constant server issues over a long period of time when all content hosted on the site is text-based?" ]
A metric assload of traffic that surges every now and then. A metric assload of people upvoting and downvoting and commenting, resulting in constantly changing pages that makes caching comment pages pretty much impossible. Every user not only seeing the default subreddits has a customized front page. The site gets billions of page views a month. It's a lot to keep up with.
[ "Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum", "Why is there so much gang raping in India?" ]
You should check out the UN's recent study that surveyed men in South Asia and why they commit sexual violence. Though the study doesn't include India, it includes many surrounding SE Asian countries and the reasons for raping are interesting (such as feeling entitled to womens' bodies, not having learned what consent is, etc). Details on the UN study: _URL_3_
[ "Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum", "At what minimum time is it more efficient to idle than turn your car off then back on?" ]
For gas consumption...30 seconds. But it wears your engine bearings every time you start the engine.
[ "Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum", "What's the Difference Between the Shia and Sunni aspects of Islam? As both groups are following the Koran, whats the major differences?" ]
Basically after Muhammed died there were disagreements as to who should follow him and become caliph. Ali, the prophet’s cousin and son-in-law became caliph but only after a couple competitors were assasinated. Ali was eventually assasinated as well and it all went to hell after that. That was where the split occurred. Within both Sunni and Shia there are a broad variety of beliefs and practices. Similar to Christianity.The Wahabi sect from Saudi are extremly fundamentalist. But many Muslims are fairly secular. They might observe Ramadan or not eat pork and that's the extent of it.
[ "Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum", "Why there doesn't seem to be any defense against a DDOS." ]
So a DDoS would be like me having 1,000 people an hour call your cell phone, constantly, so that you couldn't make any calls and (more importantly) people trying to call you couldn't get through. Though in the computer world it's more like 100,000 or 1,000,000 an hour. The point of the attack is to prevent legitimate web traffic from reaching a site. In that sense, it's fairly easy to do. All you need is enough people to ping a site, either voluntarily or via a botnet (a network of infected computers that will do this on your command). The solution for your phone would be to have another phone number that people knew to call in the event your main number was messed up, but that kind of coordination can be costly and confusing to people. Some websites and companies can reduce the impact of a DDoS by rerouting traffic, but it's not something that's easy to accomplish, especially for commerce based sites.
[ "Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum", "Why don't modern compilers such as gcc cut out the middle man (assembly) and compile directly to machine code?" ]
Assembly is just machine code written in slightly more readable form. There's no reason to cut it out.
[ "Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum", "What's stopping us from harnessing the energy in lightning?" ]
Energy storage We simply have no way of storing the concentrated power but short duration involved in a lightning strike. People have imagined capacitor storage banks, heating piles etc. but as yet we have not created a technology that can store that energy quickly enough Any other method of storing energy in present usage i.e. batteries, hydrogen, hydro etc. are *incredibly* slow in comparison. There are a great many other considerations like unpredictability, distribution etc. but essentially .... .... storage
[ "Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum", "How do older movies look better on Bluray? Ex: The Shining" ]
Film records at a resolution higher then any current media form can play back, so they can take a movie that is old and still transfer it to new media like blue ray to give you a better looking product.
[ "Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum", "The Koch brothers and their influence on politics." ]
The government was worried about people donating lots of money to candidates allowing them to buy more commercials, and pay more people to help them get elected. They were worried that If people could do that the politicians would do lots of things to help out their friends who helped them get elected. So the government passed a laws that said you couldn't give a politician more than $2500 for an election. Some people didn't like this law, they thought that money was the same thing as speech, so they asked the supreme court to look at the laws the government had made. The supreme court agreed with them, and said that you could spend all the money you want on a politician's election as long as you don't give it to the politician. Now people with a lot of money like the Koch brothers can go and find candidates they like and buy all the ads they want telling people to vote for their candidates, and no one can do anything about it.
[ "Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum", "Why do I feel awkward seeing nudity/sexuality when I am with my parents? Its just the human nature after all." ]
Normally we do not see our parents as sexual creatures. Since we do not look at our parents in a way befitting that type of intimacy, it feels wrong (edit: I should state "wrong" meaning socially abnormal, as much of the social stuff is learned behavior, that doesn't make it "wrong" in the traditional sense). That was more "ELI18" but it's the best I could do.
[ "Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum", "What would happen to a human body in space?" ]
* Water on your tongue and eyeballs would begin to boil off. * Your eyeballs would bulge, and there would be pain in your sinuses and inner ears. * You would pass out in ~15 seconds due to lack of oxygen. * Over time, your body would dessicate.
[ "Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum", "What was so offensive about that Jeopardy champion contestant guy, Arthur Wu, and the way he played the game that made him so hated?" ]
Arthur Chu jumped categories a lot in an effort to hunt down the Daily Double. Some people felt this was unsportsmanlike. Others were annoyed because they couldn't keep track of the category themes when playing along. Because he was successful and nontraditional he be came a kind of villain for the very tiresome sort of person who could be made to care about such things.
[ "Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum", "Why does cold metal feel wet?" ]
The feeling of "wetness" isn't actually a sense, but more of a combination of senses. If you've ever touches water through gloves, your hand feels like it's wet, but you're not actually getting any water on you. This is because, even though you have gloves on, it's a combined triggering of your cold thermoreceptors and various mechanoreceptors that contribute to the perception of wetness, and these can be felt through the gloves. The same is true for the metal.
[ "Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum", "Why do we feel so thirsty after eating sweets (ex: Ice Cream, Chocolate, etc)?" ]
When you eat sugar, it is absorbed relatively quickly into your blood. Now your blood has more molecules (sugar) floating in it than usual. Your body tries very hard to keep your blood the way it likes it (not too acidic, not too much water, not too much or too little anything). Now there's extra sugar in your blood, so your body wants to add more water to dilute your blood back to normal. So your body sends thirsty signals so you'll drink water. This can also happen after very salty food.
[ "Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum", "How does red dot sights work?" ]
The dot in a red or green dot sight is not actually a coloured point that's hovering in a fix spot in the air like an iron sight does. Instead, the red dot you see is a reflection of a little red lamp that falls onto a spherical mirror which filters out only the red (or green) spectrum. This mirror is installed in a way that no matter what angle *you* look on it, the Red dot will always point towards the spot the bullet will hit. EDIT: That way the Red dot itself is virtual and basically only exists in your eyes, two people looking through the same sight at the same time from different angles would see the spots in different 3-dimensional places, but still pointed towards the target.
[ "Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum", "Why is it that sometimes we humans can sense when another human is looking at us?" ]
Confirmation bias. There's a ton of times when you look over and nobody is watching you, but you only remember the times when they are.
[ "Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum", "Bid-Ask spread and how Brokers make money off it." ]
If someone comes up to you and says "i want to buy a cake for $1" and you're a cake broker, you would then go out to all the cake sellers and if one of them said "i'm selling cakes for 0.98" then you'd make .02 and selling it to your captive buyer for $1. like that. no actual cake involved.
[ "Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum", "In regards to sports: Why is it considered \"proper sportsmanship\" to essentially stop trying when you are comfortably winning?" ]
...so as not to humiliate the opponents. Bad enough they lose by a minute, awful if they lose by a mile.
[ "Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum", "How can they tell how much oxygen is in my blood just by shining a little light at my finger?" ]
The colour of your blood changes when it's oxygen rich compared to when it's oxgygen depleted. Your finger is a good place to get a reading on that because it's quite thin (to let the light through) but gets reasonable blood flow, your earlobe would also be a good but less common place. [Here](_URL_0_) is a picture of two blood samples - the one on the left is after the subject held their breath for 7 minutes, the one on the right is fresh.
[ "Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum", "How can people tell when they're being watched?" ]
I am pretty sure our brains are able to process information very quickly related to a pair of eyes on a person (or some other animal perhaps) locked on us. It would be a valuable survival mechanism. And like most valuable survival mechanisms it will over compensate and be subject to false positives (no one actually looking), the trade-off being that you do not have many false negatives (missing cases where someone is actually watching). People with this skill lived longer and reproduced passing on the ability. So I would guess it is the result of evolution. If you are religious, then God did it.
[ "Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum", "Why Does the Tetanus Booster Vaccine Hurt so Much?" ]
The tetanus vaccine is a toxoid, meaning that what they inject is not living attenuated bacteria, but rather the toxin that Clostridium tetani produces. This toxin is neurotoxic in that it causes intense muscle spasms (think the classic 'lock-jaw' of tetanus). This is what kills people who get tetanus (tetany is medical-talk for sustained muscle contraction). The toxoid in the vaccine causes these muscle spasms and pain, but since there is no new production of toxin, your body recognizes, fights off, and then builds immunity to the disease. The same process happens without the vaccine, but unfortunately the body is usually not strong enough to not die in the process. Hope this answers your question.
[ "Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum", "Why is the minimum age for president in the US 35? Is there something special about that age, or is it just kind of a number that was decided on a long time ago and was kept around?" ]
The main reason is it really is just an arbitrary number they chose, but one which is sufficiently young enough to allow a good portion of the civic population access to the office with a reliable "live til the end of the term" while also ensuring that whomever gets the job is likely to have some form of life experience to make them a good president. It's important to remember that the presidency the founding fathers, besides Hamilton, envisioned was not a powerful office. The people running the county were meant ot be congress, and the presidency becoming the strongest of the three branches has largely born out of the job of being the executive and multiple crises moments dumping authority onto it/
[ "Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum", "Why can't Iran have nuclear weapons" ]
From a treaty standpoint, Iran signed the Nuclear non-proliferation treaty that states that countries without nuclear weapons will not develop them. From a practical standpoint, Iran has been very openly hostile to the US and its allies, with former presidents of Iran stating that they will "wipe Israel off the map". They also are well know for supplying weapons and money to palestinian groups like Hamas which regularly target israeli civilians and exist for the sole purpose of destroying the Jewish state.
[ "Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum", "What is going on with the lost IRS emails?" ]
The IRS (internal revenue service) is in charge of federal taxes. A scandal emerged, where it was found that the IRS was intentionally targeting conservative groups trying to get tax-exempt, not-for-profit statuses. Lois Lerner was the director of the IRS Exempt Organizations Unit, which decides whether groups are tax exempt. Basically, this scandal occurred under her leadership, and she has been trying to protect herself by pleading the 5th. Recently, Lerner claimed that about 2 years worth of her emails were lost in a "computer crash" and the hard drive that contained the information had been thrown out. So, to answer your question, we don't know what's going on, because people are covering their rear ends, and then lying about it. And people are buying it.