[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User] ELI5:Why is American culture so prevalent in other countries?

[Assistant] Because America produces and exports a tremendous amount of media -- books, movies, television, and the like.  Which really isn't surprising, given that America is the largest English-speaking country (India and China have us beat in terms of numbers), so it's a huge market.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
[The Matrix] If you "uploaded" Kung Fu to your brain, would you know Kung Fu in both the real world AND the Matrix?

They never seem to show Neo or Morpheus or anyone using Kung Fu or other skills uploaded to their brains in the real world, but in theory, if you upload the info to your brain, shouldn't you have it in and out of the Matrix? If not, why?

[Assistant]
It's one thing to know kung fu, it's another to *use* it.

One might have a clear knowledge of the skills, but not have the physical conditioning, reflexes or necessary muscle memory to even attempt it. A body that's never so much as thrown a front kick at the air in real life can't really use the knowledge of intricate fighting moves requiring very toned and strong muscles without being clumsy or even injuring themselves. Remember, weeks or months ago these people's bodies were atrophied from sitting in a tank until well past adulthood.

Besides, in the actual world humans hide more than they fight, and there's no one to really fight hand-to-hand anyways. The only real enemy is the machines, and Kung-fu is not the skill you'd want to use to fight them.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User] ELI5 How are more than a hundred million transistors Fitted on an area of about a millimetre Square?

[Assistant]
By making them *very* small.

The "Node size" chip manufacturers talk about is based on a measurement of how 'big' the transistors are (the exact meaning of this measurement varies between manufacturers). Usually this is measured in nanometres, i.e. one billionth of a metre.

-"Hey! That would mean we need one metre to fit one billion" you might think; but consider they're not on a line, but on an area.

EIDT: To add, the manufacturing process involves shining light onto the material, and having the material brake down from the light. This is how you can make billions of nanometre-sized things cost-effectively. It's called "photolithography"


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
Does a horizontally moving mirror reflect any differently than an equivalently stationary one?

Scenario 1: You're in your bathroom looking at your mirror.

Scenario 2: You're standing perpendicular to some train tracks when a mirror strapped to a train passes by.

Given that the moving mirror is long enough so you can get a good look at yourself, are there any optical distortions? What if the train is moving relativistically?

[Assistant]
Divide the mirror up into infinitely thin vertical slices, each moving at velocity *v* on a train headed to your right. Define *phi* as the angle at which you are looking at the train -- *phi*=0 is normal to the mirror; pi/2 looks at the front of the train in the distance. Also, let's say the mirror is mounted above the train, like a fin on a sailfish, and that you are on a platform so as to be up at the level of the mirror seeing it whiz by  -- I'll explain this addition later.

Each slice of mirror is moving away from you at *v'*=*v*\*arctan(*phi*). So naturally, there will be some Lorentz boosting when you consider light leaving your reference frame and interacting with the mirror. But, there should be an equal and opposite Lorentz boost on the way back, so no need to worry about rewriting the laws of specular reflection.

But there is the pesky detail of the light blue- & red-shifting when boosted into the new reference frame. If your mirror is transparent to X-rays, radio, or any other kind of EM radiation, then at some angles, the mirror will get a Lorentz boost sufficient to turn the mirror transparent to visible light in your reference frame. From your perspective, any visible light should pass right through the mirror at that angle. This is where having the mirror mounted on top gets interesting.

Strange bands would appear at certain angles of *phi*. (Noting the train's velocity and the location of these angles would be a kind of spectroscopy that would tell you about the material of your mirror.) At the center of these bands, the mirror should be transparent to visible light (or at least, as transparent as the mirror would be to X-rays, radiowaves, or whatever the light got boosted into).

On the sides of each band would be a gradual transition between reflectivity and transparency, though. Looking at the transitions from left to right, you would see, on the left side, the mirror stops reflecting violet first. Instead, that color would be allowed *through* the mirror from behind, As you get closer to the center, the other colors would transition from reflection to transparency too. At the center of the band, it would be transparent. And at the right side of the band, the transition back to mirror would start with violet first, letting the red continue passing through until last.

Other commenters have pointed out that interaction time for light to bounce of a mirror is non-zero. This would make for an interesting distortion. You would see your reflection standing slightly to your right. You would not be looking eye to eye; your reflection would appear to be looking down the tracks a bit (just as you are). Without turning your neck, you could see more of the left side of your head (and less of the right) than usual. For sufficient *v*, you could look into your left ear canal by looking right!

Thanks for this really great question!


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
Eli5 why is the reason why people with Alzheimers Disease die?

What fails in the body?

[Assistant]
What fails is the brain.

The brain controls memory, which is the classic thing you think of with dementia, but it also controls inhibitions, motor control, balance, swallowing, breathing...everything your body does is controlled by some part of the brain.

Different parts of the brain fail at different times; so often memory or judgement are the first to go, and the more basic things like ability to chew and swallow food don't get destroyed until later stages.

Dementia (Alzheimer's is one kind, there are several) is organ failure in which the organ failing is the brain. If you are asking specifically how Alzheimer's causes the brain to fail, well, lots of research has gone into that over the years and there is still uncertainty. But if you Google "Alzheimer's brain scans" you'll find you can literally see the brain shrink over time.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
ELI5: Why do wealthy websites, like Yahoo, MSN, etc., need those crappy clickbait "Sponsered Ads" all over their website? Do they really need the revenue from these?

I see ads like these all the time:

"Man finds a secret entrance in his home, what he discovers changes his life forever"

"You will NOT believe what these celebrities have been doing lately!"

Etc.

I'm assuming the only reason the wealthy websites have pages like this on their website, is for the revenue from advertisements. How much money would they even get? Can't imagine why a multi-million dollar company would diminish the credibility of its website, just for the small amount of revenue stream from these clickbait ads.

[Assistant]
Yes, they do.

Yahoo still has a bunch of infrastructure: servers, cable, processing capacity, that sort of thing. They rent most of that out to other companies at this point, but other than that they don't have much in the way of income or market share. Google absolutely crushed them in the search engine and ad revenue department, and there is no way they will ever recover from that due to sheer weight of brand recognition. As a result, any scrap of revenue they can get from their website is still important to them.

People do still use Yahoo, mostly the more computer-illiterate types. Those are also the kinds of people most likely to click on clickbait. The demographics go with their strategy.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User] [GotG] Could Peter take Rocket to Earth and show him that he is indeed identical in appearance to a Raccoon? Moreover, couldn't he just go to Earth and get more modern music albums and music players any time he wanted?

[Assistant]
Peter could, yes, but he doesn't want to.

The most painful memory of Peter's life was the day he was taken from Earth. When he ran away instead of holding the hand of his dying mother. He can't go back without having to face that memory, and he doesn't feel strong enough to do so. Look at when we first see adult Peter in GotG - is that a person who is willing to do a great deal of introspection and accept his past failures instead of continuing to run from them?

Now that he's learned the truth about his parents, and has a new family (and has saved the universe twice), maybe can summon the courage to return to Earth once more. We'll have to see.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
[Breaking Bad] Gustavo Fring's past

The show dances around the subject at several points (Hank saying he can't find anything about Gus before moving to Mexico in 1986, Don Eladio's "The only reason you are alive and he is not is because I know who you are. But understand, you are not in Chile anymore.")

What could Gus's past have been that could've warranted such respect from a cartel kingpin and warranted the lengths he must have went through to completely erase his own history?

[Assistant] I always believed he was in the military and involved in many of the human-rights violations and opposition suppression carried out in Pinochets regime. He probably left when shifts were made to be more democratic and Pinochet was voted out in 1990.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
Do any animals have suicidal thoughts or tendencies?

Pretty explanatory. I'm just very curious.

EDIT: Thank you guys for responding with haste :) This really opened my eyes to a spectrum of possibilities.
Downvotes? Really?
EDIT: I removed what I had stated before. I was delirious and I'm sorry.

[Assistant] I remember an article about that bear farm in China where they extract bile from their gall bladder, which is extremely painful. A mother bear supposedly broke loose, killed her own cub, then ran head first into a wall effectively commiting suicide.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User] ELI5: Why does some food taste better when its hot?

[Assistant]
Your Sense of Taste is actually a combination of how you perceive food molecules with your tastebuds and with your nose. When you heat food, water in the food turns to steam which carries more food molecules to your nose than when the food is cold.

So basically more molecular energy = More smells = perception of better taste.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User] ELI5 : Why do people's stomach look bloated when they're malnourished?

[Assistant]
It's called kwashiorkor, and it's a sign of serious protein deficiency.  The stomach gets bloated because of fluid retention and because the liver expands with fat deposits.

Interestingly enough, kwashiorkor gets its name from what an African tribe called it.  Translated, it means "disease of the deposed child".  What would happen is that when a 2nd child was born, the first child would be abruptly cut off breast milk and put onto a more adult diet high in carbs and low in protein.  This resulted in protein deficiency.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User] ELI5: Why does laying out in the sun make me so tired?

[Assistant]
Homeostasis is a big part of it.

Your body has a pretty narrow range of conditions that it will tolerate before you're dying. A shift of ten degrees in air temperature is no big deal. Put on or take off a hoodie and it's fine. A ten degree shift of your core temperature and you're in pretty rough shape.

So your body has lots of mechanisms in place to keep that core temp stable. And those mechanisms all require energy to run.

So while you're laying out and relaxing, your body is actually burning a fair amount of energy circulating extra blood to your skin and dumping sweat onto it.

And once you start to overheat, your body will also encourage you to not generate any additional heat from muscular activity. One of the messages for "don't use your muscles" is "you feel tired".


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User] Why aren't NASA operations run in the desert of say, Nevada, and instead on the Coast of severe weather states like Texas and Florida?

[Assistant]
Launching rockets from a coastal area allows you to use a trajectory that's largely over open water so that in the event that there's a problem, there little to no chance that debris will come down in populated areas.

Note that there are some launches being done over land. For example, the White Sands area in New Mexico is used for some operations.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User] Eli5: How does Aloe Vera assist in reducing the symptoms and help heal sunburns?

[Assistant]
There are a lot of different things that happen in your skin when you apply aloe vera. It stimulates collagen production, helps bind moisture to the skin, it's an anti inflammatory, and it's even an antiseptic.

In the case of sunburn, this all helps your body's immune response to be more effective, while protecting the skin from more irritation.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User] If you are trapped underwater and need to make it to a breathing hole, what should you do (to survive) - swim slowly and limit CO2 production? Or swim quickly and reach the hole faster?

[Assistant] Well, disregarding any physiological effects, drag is proportional to the square of the velocity, so your required energy expenditure will be exponential with an increase in velocity.  So super fast would not be good.  That being said, there will be some optimum point as going super slow will most definitely not be an advantage either.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
[Star Wars] Why are the Resistance and the New Republic two separate entities?

The Resistance is called 'The Resistance.' What exactly are they resisting?

If the First Order is simply some outside force seeking to destroy the New Republic, why is the Resistance a separate (seemingly ragtag) entity? Why doesn't the New Republic have their own army OR why don't they directly support the Resistance?

[Assistant]
The New Republic has a lot of the problems that the Old Republic had - it's mired in bureaucracy, meaning that all decisions get made very slowly, and it's not eager to go to war.

General Leia Organa decided that the Republic wasn't acting quickly enough against the First Order, so she formed her own group, calling it the Resistance.  They're sort of like a rogue militia - they do what they want (illegally), and the Republic secretly funds them while turning a blind eye to what they do.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
[Forgotten Realms] Why is anyone evil?

For those in the know, the DnD setting forgotten realms has many Gods that each have their own portfolio and alignment that suit them, chaotic good or evil, lawful good or evil and so on.

People do know of the Gods and as such they must know of the planes that they occupy and use to host the souls of their faithful. Knowing this, why would anyone choose to be evil?

There is practically nothing you can get in your life by committing evil deeds that makes worth the eternity of suffering, or being forced to fight in the Blood War, if you wanted to live a blessed and comfortable life, being evil doesn't seem to be the way to go.

Keep in mind I'm not thinking about Chromatic dragons as they seem to be evil by nature, drows, orcs and gobelins seem to be forced into it by culture. Mostly humans, elves, dwarves and halflings seems to have the luxury of choice.

[Assistant] It's even crueller than you realize- alignment isn't necessarily a conscious choice. A sentient being can be brought into the world with a chaotic evil alignment through no fault of their own, suffer through a brutal and chaotic life, and then spend eternity suffering without ever having a real choice in the matter.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
ELI5: Why are sticky things sticky?

I was eating a cupcake and the frosting was sticking to my fingers, and it made me think: What makes stuff stick (e.g. adhesive, syrup, etc.)?  What is going on with sticky substances that make them act the way they do?

[Assistant]
For those kinds of foods, it's the sugar. The molecular formula for sugar allows it to make fairly strong bonds (Hydrogen bonds) with water. So whenever you mix the two, they bond together, or it becomes "sticky". In addition, you hands have a lot of moisture/sweat on them, so if you hold sugar in your hand, the sugar will bond to the moisture and stick to your hand.

EDIT: grammar

EDIT2: extra word.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
[The Oddyssey] Does the Sirens' song work equally well on both homosexual and heterosexual men? What about women?

Could a ship crewed solely by women make it safely past the Sirens? What about gay men?

(Did Greek society even make that sort of distinction about sexuality?)

[Assistant]
No, the siren's call is a direct spiritual call, and directly targets a spiritual bond at you. Homer was clear about this- it wasn't a purely physical call. Any existing sexuality is overriden by the platonic magic.

That said, if you were powerful enough for whatever reason to resist it, it may help with resisting it, but their song can bypass your desires to inspire a suicidal love.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User] ELI5: Why are objects in my car mirror closer than they appear? What's the point of that?

[Assistant]
if your side-view mirror was a traditional flat mirror, you wouldn't be able to see very much because of its small size and distance from your eyes.  Instead, a convex mirror is used, which means it is curved.  This allows you to see a greater field of view, showing you more of the cars that are off to your side and behind you, so that you don't have a "blind spot" any more.  However, while this type of mirrow allows you to see more things, it makes them appear to be smaller.  When objects appear smaller, your brain thinks they are farther away then they actually are.

The warning is there to remind you that they are closer than they appear and that you shouldn't change lanes or pull out in front of somebody based solely on what you think you see in the mirrow, instead, you should turn your head and glance at them quickly to make sure it's safe to do so.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
ELI5: Why do human eyes have so much white?

Compared to other mammals?

[Assistant] Researchers believe the amount of white around the pupil is an evolutionary effect. With its main benefit being that others can tell, with great detail, which way you are looking. Most likely used in non virbal communications about danger and food.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
ELI5: How some people can have voices like Freddie Mercury while others can barely sing an octave

Edit: To clarify the question I suppose I'm more interested in learning how important genetics are relative to training. Could someone potentially train from a young age and get a voice like Freddie?

[Assistant]
The same reason that some people get taller and some don't.  The same reason some people have darker skin than others.  Simply put- we're born that way.

Now of course, it's not that black and white.  People can do vocal exercises to increase the amount of notes they can sing (called increasing their "range").  However, people are simply born with a certain type of voice, and vocal exercises and lessons can only influence that a small amount.

Professional singers perform songs that fit into the range of notes they are comfortable singing.  That's why you'll never hear James Earl Jones cover a song by Whitney Houston.  Whitney's vocal chords are much smaller and able to create "smaller" sound waves in a much more powerful way.

While it may seem like most people you meet talk at around the same pitch, singing changes the way air moves over your vocal chords and you might be surprised at the vocal ranges of even your closest friends.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User] ELI5: When tearing some types of paper like newsprint or napkins, why does it tear really jagged in one direction, but in a perfectly straight line in the opposite direction?

[Assistant] It has to do with the grain of the paper! Lots of paper follows the pattern of the wood it came off of, even if its so fine you can barely tell. So just like you chop on the grain, you tear on it as well to get a neat tear. If you tear against it, theres no grooves for it to follow and itll come out more jagged and uneven.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
Why does a Faraday Cage work better than a solid object?

If I take a radio and put a metal mesh trash can over it, the metal mesh acts as a Faraday Cage and the radio stops working. However, if I take a solid metal trash can and put it over the radio, it continues to work.

Why does the Faraday Cage work but the solid metal does not?

[Assistant]
Both should work equally well, in theory.  The thing with Faraday cages blocking EM waves is that the diameter of the holes in the mesh should be less than the wavelength of the wave trying to pass through it.

Maybe check the material that the solid trash can is made out of?


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User] [World War]When humanity invent FTL the Race have trouble understanding how it works because they use different mathematical notation.Would learning alien mathematical notation just be matter of learning what are the equivalent of stuff like + & = symbols, or would it be more complicated than that?

[Assistant] It would be more than the basic symbols, ftl could use concepts like pi or Eulers constant. They may use a different number system, binary or base 360. It could require some complex translation, but math is math, regardless of language.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
ELI5: If an organ transplant recipient reproduces how is the offspring's DNA effected?

Does the body accept the organ and rid the DNA of the donor over time or does the offspring technically have genes from three people?

[Assistant] no ... DNA comes from the sperm and female egg unless one was cloning from the donated organ. To follow up the body NEVER accepts the transplanted organ. The patient must take anti-rejection drugs for life as of right now. This is why science is trying to find ways for one to regenerate organs using their own tissue / DNA makeup.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
[Dragon Ball Z] What parts of Androids 17 and 18 are human, and what parts are robotic?

We know that 18 has her original uterus and 17 has his original blood vessels. What parts of them are actually robotic, then?

[Assistant] Considering that there isn't a material in the universe that Goku can't punch through, paired with the fact that Gero demonstates with Cell that he's as good at manipulating biology as he is with robotics, not to mention that she can reproduce, it's likely that beyond the infinite energy generator and some computers in their brains, most of their augmentations making them so badass were biological.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
Asked my chemistry teacher (first year of highschool) this "Why do we use the mole (unit) instead of just using the mass (grams) isn't it easier to handle given the fact that we can weigh it easily? why the need to use the mole?" And he said he "doesn't answer to stupid questions"

Did I ask a stupid question?

Edit: wow, didn't expect this to blow up like this, ty all for your explanations, this is much clearer now. I didn't get why we would use a unit that describes a quantity when we already have a quantity related unit that is the mass, especially when we know how to weight things. Thank you again for your help, I really didn't expect the reddit community to be so supportive.

[Assistant]
We use moles instead of mass since it accurately shows how many molecules of a substance we have. The chemistry behind reactions is dependent on the number of molecules present, not their mass.
To put more simply, it's more important to know many ingredients you have for making a hamburger, then it is to know how much the ingredients weigh. It's more important to have two buns instead of just knowing you have 100g of buns.

Edit: Forgot to mention that the OPs question is not stupid, and is completely reasonable. As some others pointed it, it would be a good opportunity for the teacher to emphasize the importance of moles vs mass.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User] ELI5: Why does daylight savings time end in the fall? Wouldn't a constant shift in time to make more daylight in the evening be best in the winter as well?

[Assistant]
Mainly because we need some light in the morning. In winter, sunrise can be as late as 7-7:30am already, pushing it back past 8am can make it dangerous for kids walking to school for example.

The other thing is most of the pros for summer DST are things like people staying out later thus increasing business, but people generally don't want to stay out late in the cold anyway.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User] ELI5: Why does satellite television require a dish to receive, but satellite radio doesn't?

[Assistant]
The satellites are in different orbits.

TV satellites are in geostationary orbit, so they appear to be "fixed" in the sky so dishes can be rigidly mounted to point at them. Dishes have excellent reception characteristics, so they can receive the large amounts of data required for many channels of HD video.

Radio satellites (Sirius, for example) are in lower elliptical orbits. Because they appear to pass overhead across the sky, a dish would have to swivel to point at them as they moved which is impractical. Instead, an omnidirectional receiving antenna is used -- one that does not need to be aimed. The drawback to the omnidirectional antenna is that it cannot receive very much data, so only audio programming (or, theoretically, a tiny amount of video programming if they chose to deploy it) can be received with it.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User] If amphetamines and opiates both work by overstimulating dopamine production, why are their effects on the body almost polar opposites?

[Assistant]
I know this one!! Amphetamines work by not letting dopamine neurons suck back up dopamine (i.e., it is a dopamine reuptake inhibitor). Thus, the dopamine stays in the spaces between neurons for longer, giving it more opportunities to bounce around and activate other stuff. This is what causes the "upper" feeling.

Opiates work by activating opiod receptors that kill pain. Yes, it does cause an increase in dopamine as well, but that's more of an after effect of activating the opiod receptors. In other words, the increase of dopamine is not that important for the painkilling effect of opiods, whereas dopamine is the whole basis behind amphetamines.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
[Star Wars] The Empire was ran by very intelligent people, why did they attempt to rule by fear, force, and cruelty?

I get that the dark side twists and warps people until they become cartoonish villains with no redeeming, human qualities, but Palpatine was a genius strategist and not every higher up in the Empire was force sensitive.

Palpatine should be intelligent enough to know how poorly an empire full of oppressed, bitter, defeated civilians would function.

The needless cruelty and sadism of the Empire created a state of distrust and rebellion that eventually brought it down. The average person hated the Empire. You could be arrested for treason for arguing with a Stormtrooper who had wronged you. The inquisitors preached that the Jedi were violent criminals while killing and torturing civilians.

The entire population of Lothal was killed in a genocide just to make room for industrialization, and no doubt the general responsible for that decision created dissent and anger in his troops. This is one example in a plethora of vicious war crimes.

Was Palpatine aware of the extent of corruption, sadism, and oppression that occurred in his Empire? Did he realize how inherently illogical it was, how it would create rebellion and result in inefficient work and lost productivity? Or did the dark side blind him to these flaws, convince him that raw power was sufficient?

Why were Palpatine and most of the generals of the Empire opposed to giving people their bread and circuses and making sure the average person was content and unlikely to rebel?

[Assistant]
>Palpatine should be intelligent enough to know how poorly an empire full of oppressed, bitter, defeated civilians would function.

The oppression wasn't in service to the Empire. The Empire existed to oppress.

The only people who rose through the ranks in such an Empire were those who either turned a blind eye to, or actively propagated, that oppression.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
Would it be weird to send an email to a professor who's book I loved?

I read a book from an academic. It has no reviews anywhere but I really loved it and was wondering if would be weird to email them and tell them that I enjoyed their book?

[Assistant] This isn't weirdit's a rare academic author who wouldn't be delighted to receive such an email. Consider describing what aspect of their style or content you especially enjoyed. Don't feel bad if you don't hear back. It's also a rare academic author who devotes much time for correspondence.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User] [Tolkiens Middle Earth] was there ever a time where Sauron wasnt evil? Surely he had something of more humble beginning?

[Assistant]
Yes.

He was once a spirit of order and perfection, dedicated to the pursuit of excellence.

He still is, in a way-  that pursuit of order has become a desire to control everything, and that pursuit of perfection has become the desire to destroy anything that doesn't fit his vision. But still, same fundamental being.

Nothing in Middle Earth is born evil, they simply fall from grace.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User] ELI5 what is the difference between a headache and a migraine?

[Assistant]
A migraine is a very specific type of headache, often identified by the symptoms "POUND";
P: Pulsating
O: onset of several hours
U : unilateral
N: nausea
D: debilitating
Many people get extremely sensitive to lights and sounds and need to stay in dark rooms until the migraine goes away. Some people get changes in their vision called auras before the migraine begins.

There are several other headache types including "tension headaches" (the most common, often called stress headaches).


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
[Lilo & Stitch] Who exactly is Cobra Bubbles and why does he have his first name tattooed on his knuckles?

I can't help but think that it's more than a coincidence that a social worker, who happened to be former CIA with past extraterrestrial contact, just happened to be assigned to a family that was having contact with extraterrestrials.

[Assistant]
Agent Bubbles is just a good man, trying to do the best he can for the world.  He probably started off working for the CIA under the impression that as one of the highest levels of security he could help the most people.  Eventually this paid off, seeing as he was able to convince aliens to turn the Earth into a nature preserve, but sometime after that he likely was disillusioned with the bureaucracy and felt like he wasn't able to accomplish much in terms of actually helping people.  At that point he retired from the CIA, moved to Hawaii on his pension, and started his job as a social worker, helping people on a face-to-face level.

The tattoo of his name of his knuckles is probably some holdover from either when he was in the CIA (maybe working under cover?) or when he was a rebellious youth (I imagine some slightly tragic backstory that led to his lifelong pursuit of helping people)


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
ELI5: How do popular social media apps become popular when they start out with 0 users?

Take snapchat for example, you would think people would only use it when a sizable portion of their friends are using it too which explains why it is popular now, but how do people launch such things that are compelling for people to be the first people to "use" them before they spread?

[Assistant] usually an app will be tested by a group of people who the app is targeted at and the developers will see how they use it and then try to  cater it towards that market of users. once they know exactly what people want from the app/social media its entirely about marketing. getting the word out there, tell your friends about the app, they tell their friends, the userbase grows.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User] ELI5: Why are there so many different "B-vitamins"

[Assistant]
When vitamins and their functions were first being researched in the early 20th century an American scientist named Elmer McCollum isolated what we call vitamin A from butter fat and called it "factor A." He called another important nutrient that had previously been isolated from rice polishings by Casimir Funk, a Polish scientist, "factor B." Scientists continued to name vitamins in alphabetical order after that. (Edit: The German scientists who discovered vitamin K named it K for "Koagulation," the German word for coagulation, since it helped blood coagulate. They skipped a letter or two in doing so, but it generally stuck to convention).

However, scientists discovered that "factor B" was actually a bunch of smaller compounds that were often found concentrated together in the same foods. These smaller compounds are the separate B vitamins (thiamin (B1), riboflavin (B2), etc.) and together they make up what we now call a vitamin B complex (the same as the original "factor B"). We also now know that our bodies use the different B vitamins for distinct processes and that not all of the vitamins that have been classified as B vitamins are actually vitamins (this is the reason why there are only 8 B vitamins but the list appears to be longer - Bs 4, 8, 10, and 11 are no longer considered vitamins). This is the same thing that happened to vitamins F through J; they are no longer considered vitamins, so we skip from vitamin E to vitamin K.

Edit: the second paragraph for accuracy.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
A question about micro black holes and Hawking radiation.

How is a micro black hole (<1 yoctometer) able to absorb particles that are larger than it's diameter?

[Assistant]
Particles don't really have a diameter. Instead, they have a *wavelength.* The wavelength of a particle is a function of its energy, and it can be thought of as a sort of minimum bound on localizing that particle. You can't ever say that a particle with wavelength X is localized to a region Y, if Y is smaller than X.

This comes up in the study of black hole thermodynamics. What is the *smallest amount of energy* a black hole can gain? It's the energy of a photon with wavelength equal to the diameter of the black hole. If the photon has a wavelength longer than that, it won't interact with the black hole at all. (For more on this, if you're interested, consult the work of Jacob Bekenstein.

The other thing to remember is that very small black holes if they exist at all, which is not at all clear would vanish almost immediately in a burst of Hawking radiation. The temperature of a black hole is *inversely* proportional to its surface area. The bigger the black hole, the colder it is. A very small black hole would have a truly astronomical temperature, and would very quickly radiate all its energy away as blackbody radiation.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User] ELI5: How do chocolate chips somewhat hold their shape and not completely melt while being baked in chocolate chip cookies?

[Assistant]
They do usually melt completely.  You can see that pretty easily if you break open a cookie right out of the oven, the chocolate will spill out (though not super quickly, since melted chocolate is still pretty viscous).

They still keep their shape in the cookie because when they melt, theyre still surrounded by cookie dough (which doesnt melt), so theres nowhere for the melted chocolate to go.  Its just a ball of melted chocolate in a chip-shaped hole in the solid cookie dough, so it sits there.  Then when the cookie cools down, the chocolate solidifies again into something vaguely chip-shaped.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
How did the southern United States accent come to be?

The southern accent in the United States is very distinctive. How did it come to exist, and for that matter any of the other strong regional accents, like New York and Boston?

[Assistant] It's more like how did other accents come to be. The accent in the Appalachian mountains is closest to old English and southern accents aren't far off. The isolation of certain areas preserves the way of speaking over time while a greater variety of influence changes it. The Appalachian mountains isolated the region since they first started speaking English which is why it has changed the least. Also if it wasn't obvious by what I've said the modern British accent is a relatively new phenomenon all things considered.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
ELI5: Just how was the original Star Wars "saved in editing?"

I've seen this statement made a few times, but never seen it elaborated. Can anyone do so here?

[Assistant]
The original Star Wars was plagued with problems during production and pretty much everyone involved thought it wasn't going to do well. George Lucas was so confident it would do poorly he even famously offered a portion of all of Star Wars' proceeds to Stephen Spielberg if his film beat Poltergeist at the box office. To this day he still writes checks to Spielberg.

The reason for all the doom and gloom was that the first cut of the movie really did suck. The editors and the rest of the post production crew did a very good job of cutting and arranging the footage to add a level of excitement, fun, and generally good film making that wasn't there in the first cut.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
Is there any correlation between the shape of a 3d object and it's ability to conserve energy?

I'm interested to know if there is a correlation betwen the shape of the "object" and its heat conserving capacity, given the same surface area, material composition and external factors.

ex: Does a sphere lose energy faster than a cube?

[Assistant]
A sphere loses energy slower than a cube.

The shape determines how much surface area for a given volume an object has.

Higher surface area means more contact with the outside and quicker heat transfer.

This is why radiators have many small pipes with coolant and also have fins attached to the pipes.

A sphere has the least amount of surface area per volume and so it's most efficient at keeping its temperature all other things being equal.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
[Home Alone] What became of Kevin McCallister?

We know what he did as a kid, but how did he turn out now that it's been twenty-ish years? What's he been up to? What does he do for a living? Is he even okay?

[Assistant]
Kevin indeed got some national fame for his actions, but not directly because of what happened. While in prison, Harry and Marv passed the time by writing memoirs of their time facing a sadistic young boy and his home made traps. The day they were released, they sent the (poorly written) manuscript to publishers and miraculously got a publishing deal! Not only that, their story became a national, and then worldwide, bestseller! They became overnight celebrities and toured all the late night talk shows, had newspaper articles, even a few early internet websites devoted to them. Of course, they were never all that smart and as soon as their popularity faded, they lost literally every cent they made from their deals and quickly went back to petty crime.

Kevin was at the same time praised and vilified by the public. Some people saw him as an ingenious hero who saved the day twice while others saw him as a sadistic torturer, who should have just called the police and hid somewhere, instead of inflicting tremendous bodily harm on two idiots. As Harry and Marv rose in fame, Kevin got attention as well. He was a teenager by the time the Bandits became icons, so he had a hard time dealing with the stresses of growing up and being a public figure. He got some money doing press tours and trying to tell his side of the story, but Harry and Marv's tale was just too entertaining for anyone to really care about Kevin's perspective.

As an adult, Kevin was hired by a home security firm as a spokesman and commercial personality. The early commercials had skits that reenacted his childhood exploits, but as time went on, the commercials became more somber and professional. (Just a quick dramatization if a break-in, then he gives the speech on why his company is the best) This kept him financially stable as he lived his life.

Eventually, people forgot exactly why he was on the commercials for home security devices, but he was so ingrained as the spokesman that, in the one time they tried to replace him, their stock plummeted.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User] Can someone explain how a torrent works?

[Assistant]
You want a copy of a book you think you'll like. Some friends offer to photocopy pages from their own copy of that book. But that takes a long time to do for an entire book, so they split up the job.

Bob photocopies chapter 1.

Jim takes chapter 2

Anne takes chapter 3

Lauren takes chapter 4

Chris offers to bind all the chapters together.

This is good because one person making a big photocopy of the book by themself could get stuck, or their copier could break, and now you're waiting longer for the whole thing. Using the above example, if Bob gets hung up on copying chapter 1, the other chapters are still going to get done, and then maybe one of them can help Bob out.

To bring it all home, the book is the software, the friends are the people you download from on the torrent, and the advantage is the same sort of thing - if you download a big file from one server, and that server gets "stuck," then you're stuck too. But on a torrent, if one of the many download locations gets "stuck" you're still going to get your file almost as fast.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
Why are there two high tides per day if there is only one moon to pull the water?

Is it because on the moon's side of the Earth the tides are experiencing the most gravitational pull, while on the side of the earth opposite of the moon, it experiences the least amount of gravity, allowing more water to gather there?

[Assistant]
Tide 1:  the water on the side closest to the Moon is moving towards it faster than the earth is, therefore bulging out.

Tide 2:  the water on opposite side is moving towards the Moon slower than the earth is, therefore bulging out in the opposite direction.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
[Harry Potter] If Tom "Horcrux" Riddle from Book 2 were brought back to "life" would he look to merge with Voldemort? or would he be like a separate entity?

Could it be possible to have 2 Dark Lords? could other Horcruxes create versions of Voldy?

[Assistant] In theory yes since each horcrux is a seperate piece of the soul but it's a big unknown because not only are dark wizards very few and far between who would go dark enough to create a single horcrux, Voldemort was the only one who was crazy enough to create 6! (Harry doesnt count, he is not an offical horcrux) So while maybe it is possible it's still a massive what if since the detail about horcruxes are largely unknown.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User] ELI5: If the winter solstice is the longest night of the year, why does it mark the beginning of winter, rather than the very middle of it?

[Assistant]
The temperature of any given day has a bit to do with the sun, and a lot to do with the temperature of the land and sea.

The earth is constantly radiating heat, and the shortest day is when it will absorb the least heat from the sun - but it still has a lot of heat left over from autumn.

Over the next couple of months, although the energy being absorbed from the sun is more than the day before, it is still less than is given off each day. So every day, the land and sea (and thus the climate of that hemisphere) gets colder and more wintery.

The balance doesn't shift until the hemisphere is absorbing more energy each day from sunlight than it is radiating, which is around the time that day and night are equal lengths (i.e. the vernal equinox).

So, the coldest months are between the winter solstice and the vernal equinox.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
ELI5 : Teacher just said that when gravity is the only acting force, an elephant and a feather would fall at the same speed.

This makes no sense, as an elephant has greater mass, and therefore a greater pull towards the earth.

[Assistant] Think of the elephant as a million feathers tied together. A million feathers don't fall faster than one feather, whether they are tied together or not. (If you ignore the effect of the air, which is of course huge.)


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User] [Marvel] Is a shield best object that could be forged with vibranium? What else could be made that would take advantage of the metal's unique properties?

[Assistant] Literally anything made of the metal is vastly superior. Computers circuitry, batteries, reactors. Wakanda alone as come up with so many uses they have become a nation to rival the scientific might of even world powers.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User] How exactly does ATP allow a cell to do "work"?

[Assistant]
That's a great question, and it's one that isn't answered in a very satisfactory way in introductory biology classes (or even some biochemistry classes).  First off, the most common reaction associated with ATP in its capacity as energy currency is:

ATP + H2O --> ADP + PO4^(2-)

This reaction has a negative free energy; it's what chemists call exergonic, which means favorable.  Now, this will happen on its own if you throw some ATP into water.  That's not very exciting because the energy of the reaction will just turn to heat.

However, reactions can be combined in a phenomenon called "coupling".  If you couple an unfavorable reaction to a favorable one, you can add their individual reaction free energies together.  If you obtain a negative number, the coupled reaction is favorable.

The catch is that you can't simply throw two reactions worth of stuff into water and expect them to couple together.  What needs to happen is that one of the product molecules of the unfavorable reaction needs to appear as a starting material in the favorable reaction.  That links their two fates, so to speak.

For ATP, that magical coupling molecule is water.  That is, any chemical reaction that produces water as a product could, in principle, be coupled to the ATP hydrolysis reaction for enhanced favorability.  Luckily, a great many chemical reactions in biology produce water as a byproduct, so ATP is very useful.  The tricky part is to create an environment where ATP is able to forcibly remove water out of a molecule before the water it's floating around in does the job instead.  For that, you need an enzyme.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
If you're travelling at 0.99c, would you still observe light moving away from you at c?

EDIT: Thanks, I thoroughly enjoyed reading this discussion!

[Assistant]
Yes.

Also, remember, there is no such thing as "travelling at .99c" in the abstract; you might be moving at .99c relative to me, but you will experience yourself being at rest and me moving at .99c relative to you.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
ELI5: How can dogs be born with specific skill set as instinct, like herding?

I bought my Sheltie when she was only a couple of weeks old. She was barely walking when i bought her. She had never herded or been to a farm, but she loves herding kids and tried, for awhile, to herd me when i took her on runs. How can instinct like this be breed through generations? Does it occur in humans?

[Assistant]
All dogs have a natural instinct to herd, from a time when wolves would drive their prey into ambushes.

In some individuals, the instinct was a little stronger.  Those dogs were bred with other strong herding dogs until there were entire breeds with highly developed herding instinct.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
Chomskyan Political Philosophy

Neil Smith's *Chomsky: Ideas and Ideals* is typically recommended to understand his influence on Philosophy of Mind and Linguistics, but I don't know what to read to understand his opinions regarding politics.  What text best expounds his vision for libertarian socialism?

[Assistant]
Hes not a political theorist, and hell tell you that.

Most of his views come from a wide range of political thinkers like Rousseau, Humboldt (who is also important for his linguistics), Marx, Bakunin and Kropotkin, etc. IMO, his biggest influence is Bertrand Russell, who thought that we dont need theory so much as investigating actual events using common sense.

Hes also criticized Rawls *Theory of Justice* for being so abstract as to be completely useless in the real world.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
[Star Wars] Why is the Darksaber black?

Lightsaber colors typically respond to their respective Kyber crystal's colors. However, there does not seem to be a naturally occurring black Kyber crystal. What, then, explains the unique color of the Darksaber?

[Assistant] It's currently unknown but likely stems from a unique step in it's creation. It was created by a mandalorian Jedi long ago who may have brought materials native to mandalore or employed mandalorian smithing techniques in it's creation that have never been replicated. It also could be using something other than a kyber crystal as a focusing lense.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
[STAR WARS]: Why have the Rebels not made use of this tactic?

[Spoiler: The Last Jedi]

 In the last Jedi we see Admiral Holdo make a desperate kamikaze run in a mon call cruiser. One ship, jumping to lightspeed, is enough to cripple an entire fleet. Even the ships that weren't directly in the path of the cruiser were shredded.

Every rebel fighter is equipped with a hyperdrive, what is preventing the very desperate resistance from preprogramming their x-wings to line up and take a light speed suicide run at a Star Destroyer? Or even sacrificing a few astromech droids to pilot the ships. One fighter to take out a Star Destroyer seems like a damn good tradeoff.

Edit: as pointed out, A small one man fighter might not have enough mass. However in the battle of Endor a single A-wing crashing into the command deck was enough to take a super star destroyer out of comission. If the First Order hasn't altered the design to significantly decentralize ship control would a light speed suicide run at the command tower by a small fighter be a viable option?

[Assistant]
It basically requires you to be precisely in the exact position so that you are accelerating into Hyperspace but still in actual space. It's also very risky, because getting the calculations perfect is difficult. If you fail, you just go into Hyperspace and miss entirely. Likewise, for it to be effective, you need a large enough ship. Sacrificing a large ship is not something the Rebels can do consistently.

It's a decent tactic, but it's very risky and really only worked in this case because the First Order was no longer paying attention to the cruiser and thus was not taking the precautions of estimating distance and responding appropriately that all ships to in order to avoid such tactics being used on them.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User] ELI5: Why aren't time zone borders straight and equidistant from each other like longitude/latitude lines?

[Assistant]
Time zone borders are roughly drawn 15 degrees apart, but move do to the convenience of commerce.

It would be really bad, for example, for a time zone boundary to cross in the middle of a city. It would help nothing, and cause a lot of problems.

So, whereever possible, the time zone boundaries are in rural areas where the economic impact of the time change is minimal.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
[Firefly] What actually happened to Earth-that-was and how did people travel from the Sol system to the Verse?

It doesn't seem like they have any sort of FTL technology so did they use  stasis pods or generational ships? Did everyone leave Earth-that-was or did some remain behind? Also was the Verse the only destination for those that left or did others go to different solar systems?

[Assistant]
Generational ships traversed the great expanse between Earth that was and the star systems we now call home.  Not everyone left Earth that was, not because they didn't try but simply because it was impossible to evacuate everybody.  Those that remained almost certainly died in the polluted mess that existed in the last days of Earth that was.

The systems that we call home were by far the most ideal systems for any of the ships that set out from Earth, for that reason the combined America-China mission chose their to set up.  Their allies tried to make it there as well but it seems that none succeeded because none have appeared since the settlement of the systems.

Other forces that may not have been welcomed as friends by America and China may have chose sub-par locations, however near the end most of the operations to escape Earth were not recorded and so we cannot locate any other operations or determine if they were successful until we begin to expand out from the systems we colonized, which isn't likely given how the Alliance is not exactly feeling prosperous right now.  I'd imagine it is more likely that if we do get out of our home systems it will be because the Alliance has fallen forever and we're trying to find a new place that we won't fuck up.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
[Star Wars] Why is Palpatine considered so powerful when he's killed by being picked up and thrown into a hole?

Like, shouldn't he have had some answer to that?

[Assistant]
He put every single "force point" he had into electrocuting Vader in those final moments leaving him too exhausted to try any force powers to escape the fall.

Nobody else but the chosen one could have taken more than a second of those shocks. Even Luke Skywalker, an immensely powerful Jedi due to his bloodline, was immediately powerless on the floor as soon as he was hit with casual lightning strikes. Vader on the other hand, took several seconds of 100% effort lightning strikes AND he carried Palpatine over to the edge of the balcony to powerbomb Palpatine downwards. Palpatine's death is a testament to Vader's power, not to Palpatine's weakness.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User] What aspects of a speaker determine it's max volume?

[Assistant]
Two things can go wrong with a speaker.

The coil can push the cone too hard and it rips. This happens a lot with older paper speakers.

You can put too much electricity through the coil (a little transformer) and burn it out.

The volume produced is (sort of) the diameter of the cone times the travel in and out. That tells how much air it will move.

Also, some speakers are more efficient than others. If you use a lighter weight Mylar cone, it takes less electrical power to move the cone than a heavy paper one, and you can move more air.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User] ELI5: What kind of things does MI6 and the Secret Service actually do?

[Assistant]
The Secret Service is in charge of investigating counterfeiters, and provide protection services for the President, Vice President, Senators, Congressmen, and various other Dignitaries and their families in the US.

MI6 is the British Foreign intelligence Service. They spy on other countries, and attempt to counter spies in Britain though that is the primary purpose of MI5. The US counterpart to MI6 would be the CIA, and the counterpart to MI5 would be both the FBI and NSA.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
[Heroes] What is the deal with the marks that the company give people?

I'm re-watching Heroes and I don't remember them ever explaining the marks on the necks of some heroes... At first it seems like they are used to track them but later we find out that was Molly so what is the point of the neck injection?

[Assistant] It was the original tracking system using radioisotopes, Molly was meant to be a replacement for this system which didn't require them to abduct the people with powers and inject them. The marks are just from the needles used to place the trackers in them.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
If you construct a spaceship in orbit, does it even need to be aerodynamic at all? No atmosphere in space...

Couldn't an interstellar spacecraft by a huge blocky design, a la the Borg cube?  With nothing to fly through there'd be no reason for spaceships to be sleek in design, right?

[Assistant]
Lots of people are talking about the tenuous atmosphere in LEO. Yes, that produces drag. But it's not a type of drag where streamlining helps. Even at ISS' low orbit, the atmosphere doesn't work like a physics "fluid" anymore, but like individual impacts of very high-speed molecules. There's no way to get boundary layers, laminar flow, vortices, or any of those other effects we carefully streamline aircraft to create.

The amount of drag is so low nobody will care except the logistics office that plans fuel shipments. ISS consumes 7 tonnes/year of thruster fuel, to keep the 400 tonne station in the same orbit. If you're already shipping enough material into orbit to build a large craft, this extra mass shouldn't be a deal-breaker.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
Have human beings ever created a new species?

We're in AP Biology discussing speciation and the argument desperately needs some hard supporting facts. Microevolution is most definitely observable, but have we ever truly accomplished speciation?

Pardon the awkward wording; I'm trying to pay attention. Currently we're discussing pigeonesque chickens.

[Assistant] Bananas, broccoli, cauliflower, lettuce, maize, dogs, etc, etc.  Humans have artificially selected for any number of desirable characteristics in indigenous species--some to the point where interbreeding is no longer possible.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User] ELI5: How do detergents and soaps work differently? Aren't both of them designed to remove dirt?

[Assistant]
This is sorta like adhesives. Sticky things are sticky, but once you realize exactly what goes on on a molecular level, you can specially formulate adhesives that are really really good at sticking to wood. This might or might not make them really good at sticking to metals or plastics because they have a different molecular structure. And so you can end up with some general purpose adhesives and some hyper specific adhesives

Detergents use man-made chemicals so they can be tuned to particular jobs. Besides the fact that not all cleaning jobs involve dirt, dirt itself is not just one type of substance. In a bathroom, water marks and calcification from hard water are often a target. In a kitchen, oil and grease. In a carpet, dust and dirt probably trod in from outside, heavier particles. On elevated surfaces you get dust from shedding skin and airborne, lighter particles. These are all subtly different and if you know the molecular structure, then you can design chemicals to specifically help in cleaning those particles.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User] How does RAM work?

[Assistant] Let's say you have a large grid. In that grid you can either have no rock (0's) or a rock (1's). Those grids are called squares (bits). The squares are further segmented into blocks (bytes), with eight squares to a block. You know a secret language (binary) that let's you read what those blocks mean. The bigger the table, the more blocks you can have, and thus the more information (memory) you can have at once. Bigger tables cost more money though, but over time they get cheaper. Some people decide to have multiple tables (multiple RAM slots, such as 2x4GB), and some people decide to have tables just for pictures (video RAM).


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User] [A Christmas Carol] Were three ghosts overkill when Scrooge was nearly convinced to change his ways just by speaking with Jacob Marley and the Ghost of Christmas past?

[Assistant]
His change doesn't mean as much if its poorly motivated. Fear of death and eternal punishment is good, but that just means you're probably doing the bare minimum to checklist yourself into the Good Place. The first spirit also made him basically relive his failures and examine why he turned out the way he did, but its generally unhelpful to tell someone they're miserable and their life sucks without then offering a solution.

The other two spirits did this by basically restarting his sense of empathy and incepting the idea that his wealth, the source of his misery, can be used to make him happy by helping others.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
How does the nozzle know to shut off when my gas tank is full?

I imagine it would have a sensor that would know when liquid touched it, but how would that work? Whenever I go to the gas station, its usually just a metal nozzle attached to a hose...

[Assistant] Suction is applied to this pipe using a venturi. When the tank is not full, air is being drawn through the hole by the vacuum, and the air flows easily. When gasoline in the tank rises high enough to block the hole, a mechanical linkage in the handle senses the change in suction and flips thenozzle off.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
When A Man Throws A Rock Into The Water And Creates Ripples That Disrupt The Water Around It. Who Is Responsible For The Ripples, The Man Or The Rock?

Sorry - Don't know if this counts. This was a metaphor I tried to come up with for some stuff happening in my own life and idk if theres already a similar quote or philosophically equivalent thing or if this even technically is philosophical but I'm curious what people's thoughts are on that question...

[Assistant]
Generally in philosophy, responsibility (praise or blame) is only assigned to the who could have done otherwise. The rock could not have done otherwise so cannot be assigned responsibility.

This reasoning is based on a principle that is sometimes called 'Ought implies can'. You ought to do something only if you can do otherwise. This principle also implies that if you cannot do something, then it can't be the case that you ought to do it.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
What gives subatomic particles their charge?

When you consider any subatomic particle, e.g an electron and its antiparticle the positron, its stated that they are identical in every way except for their charge. Wouldn't this imply that there is some other particle providing that charge which is what creates the difference between matter and antimatter? If not, what gives a particular particle the charge it has?

[Assistant]
With today's understanding of the standard model, we have no real answer if what gives particles charge or spin. Before Higgs, we didn't have a definite answer for mass either.
There are theories that attempt to explain these fundamental properties. In string theory, tiny 1 dimensional strings of energy vibrate around in 10 dimensions if space. It is thought that the shape of these dimensions and the way the strings vibrate through them gives a particle it's properties.  Just a theory though. It's all math at this point.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
[Mad Max: Fury Road] What was Furiosa's plan to get rid of the Warboys if they hadn't hit the raiders and the storm?

She had at least a dozen guys with her.

[Assistant]
Furiosa had made a deal with the bikers in the canyon. They take out her escort and block the path for further pursuit, she leaves the war rig's guzzoline pod for them.

They turn on her because she had drawn Immorten Joe's full pursuit before reaching them ("You said a few vehicles in pursuit! Maybe! We count THREE war parties!"), and thus she and Max had to fight their way out of the canyon.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
Have whitening toothpastes improved measurably in recent years, or is it all hype?

Has the effectiveness of whitening toothpastes improved measurably in recent (or not so recent) years, or is it all hype? What, if any, ingredients are responsible?

[Assistant]
Dental researcher here. Whitening toothpastes *sort of* help. The abrasives only remove surface staining. The problem is that yellowed, deeply stained teeth have the underlying dentin as the problem. You need to penetrate all the way through the enamel layer, between all of the hydroxyapatite prisms to get to the dentin.The only thing proven absolutely to work is high concentration (10%+) of carbamide peroxide gel. This gel rapidly loses oxidizing/whitening power after the first 2 hours, but continues to work a bit after that. Whitening strips work OK, but the concentration isn't very high and the strips aren't custom made, so they don't always fit well. A professionally made tray molded from your teeth with 10% gel is the way to go. Make friends with a dental student. Any 2nd year can make one for you.
A word of caution, pro-strength bleaching can cause sensitivity/pain problems, because the pain response is transmitted through dentinal tubules, and when they open up from bleaching, it can hurt for a couple of days. Pastes like Sensodyne with Calcium and Phoshoprus suspensions may help a bit.
TL:DNR - whitening pastes don't really work for deep staining. Get a tray made by a dentist.
Edit: You can also prevent stains in the first place by drinking tea, coffee, or soda through s a straw. May look silly, but you'll bypass your incisors altogether. Oh, and don't' smoke, duh.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
CMV: There's nothing unethical about buying an extremely cheap smartphone from developing countries

Several friends of mine have bought smartphones from local stores. There's nothing special about prices here, they may vary by 5% to 10% from prices in other western countries but nothing special.

As expected, getting a phone with a contract is going to end up costing you more but people still choose this option for some reason.

I recently had my phone stolen and despite the fact that it wasn't super expensive I wouldn't like to spend much money on a phone again. After some research online I found out that ordering a phone from countries like China, Singapore, India etc. could end up being a lot more frugal. It's possible to find phones with the same capabilities as the most expensive Samsung ones for 1/8 of the price.

Of course the brand wouldn't be well known and there's no service warranty at all but the phone could very well be manufactured in the same factories with the phones we're familiar with here.

When I tried to take the advice of my friends most of them were extremely negative about my thoughts of buying a smartphone from there.

Claiming that if I did so I would be facilitating underpaid labor and create demand for products that their price is too unrealistic for western standards.

If we live in a free economy what about choosing the cheaper product is unethical?

[Assistant]
There can be no ethical consumption under the currently existing system. You show me someone who only buys products that are produced without using underpaid labor and exploitative practices, and I'll show you someone who is either lying or in denial.

And you can tell that to your friends. As you said, the phones were probably produced in the same or similar factories under the same or similar exploitative labor conditions.

However, if, hypothetically, your choice were between a truly ethical and expensive product, and a truly unethical but cheap product, and only those products, and those products were not necessities, then as a responsibly consumer you shouldn't necessarily buy the more expensive one, but you shouldn't buy the cheap one because in that case, you'd be creating a demand for an unethical product.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User] ELI5: When and why does a company require a board of directors? How come it can sometimes overrule or even push out the owner?

[Assistant]
A board of directors is usually found at a public company. The board is elected by the shareholders (the owners) to run the company on their behalf and look out for their interests. Usually, the board then hires the executives who actually run the company per the board's instructions.

The board works for the owners. However, in lots of cases, "the owner" is one of the original owners from before the company went public and they still own a lot of shares. But if they don't own a majority (very common with large public companies) then the other owners (the rest of the shareholders) have enough votes to push a particular person \*off the board\* or \*out of working at the company\*.

And since the board represents the \*majority\* of the shareholders, minority owners may not always get their way. If the majority of shareholders decide to sell the company, then the minority can be "forced out". They will still get whatever they're due from the sale but they may not be able to stop the sale.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User] ELI5: How did America become so powerful despite being such a young country (also having powerful enemies in their beginnings)?

[Assistant] A few reasons, both political and geographical. Geographically speaking, the US is massive, with incredible amounts of resources, which allowed for long term growth in many different economic sectors. In addition, the US was separated from the wars of Europe by the Atlantic Ocean. If the US had been bordering European nations, it likely would have never become as powerful. Politically speaking, during different periods in time, the US basically existed in a power vacuum. After WW1, the US emerged unscathed compared to Europe, which basically lost a generation of young men, and much of their infrastructure was destroyed. The US had completely intact infrastructure and comparatively few casualties. Then, post WW2, the US was the only real capitalist power, which gave it a great advantage , and allowed America to create a booming manufacturing industry that manufactured goods for the world. Further, the US policy of containment that led to involvement in Korea and Vietnam increased the importance of the Military, leading to the expansion of the US military into what it is today, the single most powerful force in human history.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
ELI5: How did humans discover how to make bread?

I'll just put this yeast in with this water and flour and - OH. It just seems like a strange thing for early humans to do and discover all around the world.

[Assistant] Orginally, bread did not have yeast.  It was simple water/flour paste that was cooked over flame or on a hot stone.  This is "unleavened" bread.  It's still made this way in many countries.  Yeasts were not something you bought...they were (and still are!) yeasts that are floating around in the air all the time.  At one point, some of these natural yeasts would have landed on the water/flour mixture and began to ferment... causing the bread to rise.  The ancient baker probably said  "what the hell...I'll cook it anyway" and basically realized that his new bread was something interesting.   He probably had no idea what happened...but he kept doing the same thing and it kept happening. Or, he kept some of the "new dough" that rose, and added to some new dough... this is called "sour dough" and we still do that.   It was not until fairly recently (1860) when we figured out what, exactly, yeast was.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
Phosphorus can make 6 covalent bonds?

I was reading my text book and I found the molecule PF6^- . Which is supposed to have an octahedral shape.

I can't understand how phosphorus, which has only 5 valence electrons, can bond with 6 atoms of fluorine.

[Assistant] Fluorine is extremely electronegative and will bond like crazy to anything it can, and phosphorus can also 'expand it's octet' meaning electrons can move up from the 3p orbital to the 3d orbital which can accommodate more bonds. These two factors help make the six bondson phosphorus more stable. For comparison fluorine also bonds with   xenon to make xenon tetrafluoride, and xenon has no valence electrons.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
ELI5: Why do people hate big banks like Bank of America?

I have an account at Bank of America and friends are constantly telling me to close it, "because of corporate America" and, "because they are evil". What's the real deal here?

[Assistant]
A lot of people attribute much of the recent economic meltdown to the banks, who overleveraged themselves with bad debt and took much of the capital market, housing market, and related economy with them when those bad bets came crashing down.

Some people feel they have been wronged by BofA and gang personally, e.g., through predatory lending practices, hidden account/transaction fees.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
For beta decay: During positron emission a proton becomes a neutron and emits a positron (and neutrino). During electron emission a neutron becomes a proton, emitting an electron (and antineutrino). How is it possible that they can convert back and forth by continuously losing particles?

I've had this question for a while. It doesn't make sense that they can convert into each other by losing particles each time. Can someone please explain.

[Assistant]
A proton is made of 2 up quarks and 1 down quark.  A neutron is 2 down quarks and 1 up quark.

In beta- decay, an up quark converts to a down quark, and emits a W- boson.  This boson decays to an electron and an antineutrino.

In beta+ decay, a down quark converts to an up quark and emits a W+ boson, which decays to a positron and a neutrino.

So at the nucleus level, what you see is a proton change to a neutron and vice-versa.  But what is actually happening has to do with quarks flipping back and forth.

One other thing to note is that the neutron has more mass than the proton.  As a result, a free neutron can beta- decay, but a free proton cannot beta+ decay.  The reaction isn't reversible (in that sense).  Beta+ decay can only occur in bound nuclear states, where some of the binding energy can go into the mass needed.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
ELI5: Why are beavers hardwired to build dams?

I just saw a video of a beaver in rehab building a dam at the front door of a house. What is it about their instincts/psyche that makes them want to build dams of all things?

[Assistant]
Beavers like to build nests/lodges in relatively still bodies of water. It looks basically like an dome made of sticks, and the entrance is from underwater. Very good for staying in and not getting eaten by a wolf. It also ends up being a good place for some of the food they like to eat to grow.

If there's no body of water they end up building a dam to -make- a body of water from damming up a river.

So the instinct is just part of the same evolutionary development that drives animals to do stuff like birds building nests, or squirrels burying nuts.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User] Since the surface of the Sun is only ~14 times hotter than my oven when I'm baking a pizza, why am I able to feel the Sun's heat from 93 million miles away?

[Assistant]
For one, the Stefan-Boltzmann law says that for a black body, the total power radiated per unit area scales with the *fourth* power of temperature. So the surface of the Sun may only be 14 times the absolute temperature, but the power radiated per unit time per unit area is multiplied by about 38,000.

In fact, this law is what was used to first estimate the temperature of the Sun. Suppose we know a certain object at a known temperature has some heat energy flux. We can then also measure the heat energy flux from the Sun across a region with known area. Comparing the two and using the SB-law then gives an estimate for the temperature of the Sun. (Stefan originally made an estimate of about 5700 K, which is very close to the actual value of 5778 K.) Note that for this method you also need some estimate of how much energy is absorbed by the atmosphere since only the energy flux at the surface of Earth was feasibly measurably at the time.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User] ELI5: How do one-way mirrors work?

[Assistant]
A little bit of physics and a lot of marketing.

One-way mirrors are just partially reflective mirrors.  They let some percentage of light through and they reflect most of the rest.  They do this equally in both directions, which the laws of physics are actually quite adamant about.  If a mirror could be set up to only reflect in one direction (while not consuming power) then it could be used to make a cold thing warm up a hot thing, which breaks thermodynamics.

Once you have a partially reflective mirror you just make one side of the mirror very bright and the other side very dim.  This way when you're standing on the bright side of the mirror you see a very bright reflection and have a very dim view of the other side.  When you're on the dark side you see the bright room clearly while the reflection is too dark to matter.

This effect is helped along by the fact that there's a *massive* range of brightness that our eyes can deal with.  A brightly lit room can easily be hundreds of times brighter than a dim one.  That really helps the view of the dim room get washed out by the bright room.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
[DC] What Lantern Corps would the The Joker be in?

If he had a lantern ring?

[Assistant]
The only Corps that would knowingly accept a psycho like Joker are the Indigos, for compassion.

"But Joker has no compassion," you might say. That's the neat part: they take psychos like Joker and *force* them to feel empathy whether they like it or not.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
[DC] what would Batman do with a diamond ring that he found in the gutter?

Batmans a world class detective, at a cursory glance, he could tell the rings been lying there for months just going unnoticed. He also knows, based on cut, weight and clarity, that its value is at least breaking the 50k mark.  Obviously an expensive ring, but not so expensive that its overly unique or rare (meaning it should be in a museum)

Lets say hes in the middle of an investigation... trying to track down Mad Hatter before he kills again.  Would he stop to pick it up and use up time to run it to a police stations lost and found? Would he even bother to take it with him?  Would he leave it up to fate for someone else to find?

[Assistant]
He'd likely pick it up just to keep some drug addict from pawning it or trading it for meth.

Then, as Bruce Wayne, he'd put an ad in the paper or ask around town among the people that could afford a 50K ring if they lost one and have them describe it. There would be no reward requested, but he might ask for a charitable contribution if they could afford it to the Wayne Foundation or something.

If there's no response, he'd then sell it in a charity auction with the proceeds going to help the needy.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
In quantum theory, what does it mean when a particle is "measured"?

I assumed that "measuring" means to have that particle interact with another particle, but isn't the interaction really just an interaction between the fields of the two particles, since they never really come into contact? If that were true, then a particle would never be in a superposition since it is always interacting with fields (gravitational, magnetic, electrostatic, etc.); therefore, can't it always be measured? Help me understand this please?

[Assistant]
A measurement is any process that causes there to be a correlation between the state of the measured system and the state of another system, the "measurement apparatus."

For example if you bounce light off an object and let the light hit a camera sensor, the picture recorded in the camera memory depends on the position of the object, so this counts as a measurement of the object's position. Here the camera is the measurement apparatus.

More subtlely, if you bounce light off an object the state of the reflected light depends on the position of the object, so this counts as a measurement even without the camera: we can think of the reflected light as the "measurement apparatus."


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
[General Scifi] Are there any examples of alien races adopting Earth's real-life religions?

Off the top of my head, I remember a piece of flavor-text from Mass Effect stating some Turians adopt Zoroastrianism or Confucianism. They're an atheist species, as tends to be the rule in scifi, but they find it gels well with their existing cultural values.

I think aliens sometimes comment on earth religions in Star Trek but I can't think of any specifics.

Are there others? Do any futuristic alien races become Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, anything like that?

[Assistant]
*The Streets of Ashkelon* by Harry Harrison is an interesting look at this. It's about a Christian missionary who attempts to convert a friendly alien race, and encounters some success.

Major spoilers:

>!The aliens have no concept of fiction and are incapable of lying, so they believe absolutely everything he tells them. However, the lack of immediate or even recent miracles troubles them, and they come to the conclusion that, for a new world, a new Messiah is needed. So they crucify the missionary, very carefully, and wait for him to rise from the dead. The story ends with them beginning to realise that he's not coming back, and that they are now murderers.!<


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
Why are physicists searching for magnetic monopoles?

I'm an undergraduate physics student and I've heard that the discovery of magnetic monopoles could be really important for the simplification of essential equations in theories like supersymmetry. My understanding of the electromagnetic force is that magnetic fields are generated by aligned spins of charged particles. If this is true, then anything that generates a magnetic field must be polar. So why do physicists have reason to believe that magnetic monopoles exist?

[Assistant] Ina 1931 paper, Dirac showed that if there is a single monopole anywhere in the universe, then electrical charge must be quantised, provided that Maxwell's equations hold true. As charge is in fact quantised and Maxwell underpins everything taht we know and use in electronics, monopoles are consistent with reality. Like dark matter, they elude discovery. Electrical charge monopoles exist everywhere. Electrons are an example, but their magnetic counterpart is absent. Arguably, they are too massive to create or too unstable to last, although their decay would be interesting. Indeed, magnetic monopoles may be required to be black holes.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
[Halo] Who had the better ground-based weapons during the Human-Covenant War?

Projectiles or plasma, you decide!

[Assistant]
Incidentally, the human designs, while not as advanced, were considerably more pragmatic in design. Plasma's pretty dangerous, but the platforms through which they were delivered were limited. If your plasma pistol wasn't cutting it, you couldn't just flip a switch (most of the time) to toggle to a new rapid fire setting. Plasma's also not really much of a penetrator, and will usually dissipate a ton of energy once it makes contact with anything. Your plasma rifle isn't so good when it loses effectiveness once it smacks into the surface of a table. Sure, the table's on fire *now* and the hole left behind is pretty big, but a bullet would have punched through and killed the guy behind it by now. No need for a followup when using ballistics against concealment.

Human weapons had a leg up in that regard. Not only could you change rate of fire on the fly, you could change the sort of damage you were dealing with a single reload, assuming you had the ammunition. Suddenly those covenant elites aren't so zealous now that you've cycled a couple of Willie Pete's through that eighty Mike smoothbore to light the brush around them ablaze!

Other accessories such as suppressors also lended a significant advantage, as the Covenant would often broadcast their firing positions in the field to anyone the next three anti-sonofabitch-machines over. Plasma (in Canon and gameplay) is bright as lightning because it pretty much *is* condensed lightning, and true to the age old adage of *'tracers work both ways'*, you're likely to know exactly where the covenant firing positions are the moment they start shooting.

The *real* advantage though was that the guns weren't fashioned around any cultural or religious trends. Covenant weapons look cool and awe inspiring, but in the five seconds it takes for a Wraith plasma blast to meet a suspected target, a Scorpion will have had enough time to observe the Wraiths firing position, chamber a dedicated AP round and pop that Wraith from a hull-down position, probably even through a tree or two. The Covenant had plasma weapons with hundreds, possibly thousands of years of religious dictation in their design. Humans had guns designed around what *actually worked*.

The biggest reasons humanity had been losing the war, were primarily naval combat actions and shields. Ballistics below a certain caliber barely tickled, and we're all probably pretty aware of how bad the fights in space went. With sheilds, covenant elites effectively weaponized their blind zeal that would normally be fatal for most religious people stupid enough to charge head first into the middle of a well trained infantry formation. Like the Master Chief, Luke Skywalker, Walker Texas Ranger, and Ross from *F.r.i.e.n.d.s*, a few seconds of tangible plot armor can give you a lot of potential to mess up even the best of the best.

That, and it's pretty easy to lose when the enemy fleet can bombard your ground positions with impunity.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
[Star Wars] What do Rebel atheists think about the Alliance's catchphrase and the Jedi?

Especially once Luke started showing off his powers in the ROTJ timeframe.

[Assistant] The Force is a provably real thing in-universe. There are religions centered around it, but not all of them - and it is not a deity. An atheist would not believe in the religious aspects of various Force traditions and may or may not believe in the Force itself, as those who can use it to any noticeable degree are way beyond rare.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
[American Dad] Did Tearjerker actually happen?

So I always assumed that Tearjerker was just an alternate universe or something of the likes.

But we see that Roger has memories of the Tearjerker story and when the 200 are running to fight it shows Tearjerker along with them.

So did this really happen and they just don't mention it?

[Assistant] Roger clearly has some minor reality-manipulation ability, he's just unaware of it, or ignorant that other species don't.  His paper-thin disguises work 99% of the time, even on people that lived with him for years.  Remember, his species kept Sinbad alive for decades, and somehow he exists as a ghost traveling with Jeff through the universe in a spaceship.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
If our solar system were to be moved out of our galaxy, what changes would occur?

Not into another galaxy, but far away from any galaxy. Short and long term effects?

[Assistant]
We would have no star filled sky anymore, night would be darker. There would be no chance of getting hit by a nearby supernovae.

For the humans: no extrasolar spaceexploration, finding other planets would be impossible with the technology even of the next decades.

Asteriods and meteorites usually are from within our solar system, so not much difference there.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
When an engine is overloaded and can't pull the load, what happens inside the cylinders?

Do the explosions still keep happening?

[Assistant] The detonations that take place in the cylinders can only do so while the engine is spinning. When you stall an engine by overloading it you stop the rotation of the crank, stopping the pistons from moving up and down and stopping the sequence of events that leads to more combustion cycles. Even in modern e.f.i. Engines there is sensors tell the injectors when to fire. There won't just keep shooting fuel into a cylinder that isn't cycling anymore.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
Should a person who is happy and ignorant become miserable and wise?

Regardless of whether or not it's true that "the truth" will cause an individual increased suffering, assuming that it will, should someone remain ignorant or seek the truth?

[Assistant] " **It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the fool, or the pig, is of a different opinion, it is only because they only know their own side of the question.** " John Stuart Mill


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
ELI5: How is ATP used as energy in our bodies?

I've been taught that breaking ATP into ADP and a phosphate releases energy, but in chemistry I've learned that breaking bonds always requires energy, so I'm confused.

[Assistant]
ATP is adenosine triphosphate. It's an adenosine molecule with 3 phosphate groups attached. The phosphate to phosphate bond has a lot of energy stored in it. ATP then goes to various enzymes in your cells. An enzyme called a kinase helps remove a phosphate group off of ATP and attach it to another enzyme. Generally speaking, when that enzyme has a phosphate group attached, it's activated and can do important things in your body. For example, some enzymes break down glucose to make more energy. Others pump sodium out of your cell and potassium in.

The reason why ATP gives off energy is because ATP hydrolysis has a negative Gibbs free energy. This means that ATP is not in the most stable form. It wants to get rid of that phosphate group and the energy associated with it. If a reaction has a positive Gibbs free energy, it needs energy in order to proceed.

It's sort of like if you have a wagon on a hill. If you are at the top of the hill, you have a lot of potential energy. If you just give the wagon a small push, it will fly down the hill. But if you are at the bottom of the hill, you need to give it a bunch of your energy by rolling it to the top of the hill first.

There is one more useful detail here. The wagon didn't start flying down the hill until you gave it a little push. Even though it "wanted" to fly down the hill, it needed a little bit of extra energy to start before it could let gravity take over. In the same way, most chemical reactions need a bit of activation energy before they start to proceed. ATP works the same way. It needs a tiny amount of activation energy before it can give off its energy. Enzymes lower the activation energy needed for ATP to transfer a phosphate group. They don't affect the Gibbs free energy at all, but they make the activation energy needed  much lower so the reaction can proceed more easily. Generally speaking, your body regulates these enzymes so that it uses more ATP when useful and stops using ATP when useful.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User] If you somehow condensed all of the sunlight that hits Earth into a beam 1cm in diameter, how hot would that beam be?

[Assistant]
The beam would have the same spectrum as the sun but with a crazy high energy density. The emission spectra determines what is the temperature of the light beam, in the case of the sun it is approx 5200 celcius. basically, concentrating the light does not change it's temperature but change the power per surface area.

anything that is hit by that beam would instantly vapourize up to a temperature of 5200 oC.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
Do nuclear submarines use the hydrogen they get from electrolysis or just dispose of it?

Not 100% sure if this is the right flair, call me out if I'm wrong. I'm curious, since nuclear submarines get their O2 from the water surrounding them do they also use the hydrogen for power or even welding purposes? Or do they have other ways of disposing it?

Edit: For some reason I can only see some of the comments... responding is hard when I can't see the comment itself.

[Assistant]
Using electricity to produce hydrogen and oxygen, then using the hydrogen and oxygen to produce electricity just leaves you exactly where you started, except with a waste of electricity, due to all the inefficiencies in the chain.

If we had fusion reactors that could work in a submarine, that would be another story.

And hydrogen simply isn't very good for welding compared to other options like acetylene.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User] ELI5: How does swarm intelligence work? How are ants or bees smarter as a group than an individual?

[Assistant]
Each individual has a very short list of rules.  For an ant, it might read something like, When outside, look for food.  When you have food, release scent.  If you have no food, follow the scent.  For any individual, these instinctive behaviors dont appear very intelligent.  The average ant wanders around at random until he finds food and begins laying a scent trail.  But when you have a thousand of them, those individual behaviors add up so that you have a network of ants running back and forth along scent trails.  At the micro level it is chaos, but at the macro level it looks almost planned.

There is no single individual responsible for making plans or coordinating the activity.  They have just learned or inherited a set of behaviors that resemble If/Then/Else statements.  They are like tiny robots, and each one only makes a very simple decision.  Each individual probably has no idea what the overall goal is.  They just repeat their programmed behavior and the next generation inherits it.  If the behavior was ineffective, they die and that failed strategy does not get passed to the next generation.