Question: How do hatmakers turn cotton fabric into a semi-rigid, leather-like hat?

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 How do hatmakers turn cotton fabric into a semi-rigid, leather-like hat?

Here's a [_How It's Made_ segment]( URL_1 ) on exactly this. Hatmaking has more steps to it than you'd imagine. Edit to add: I misread/misinterpreted OPs bit about cotton. Oilskin and waxed cotton use precisely what it sounds like to toughen up the cotton/denim base after the hat has been sewn. [oilcloth with link to waxed cotton]( URL_0 )


Question: What the hell are all these schools and states sueing Juul for?

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 What the hell are all these schools and states sueing Juul for?

The states are suing because it is illegal to market adult products using teen/child themed advertisements, for example... juul specifically used barely younger models vaping juul in a house party type situations to attract a younger crowd. It is alleged that this behavior preyed on teenagers to use the products illegally. That is why alcohol commercials typically use bars as backdrops because it's a scenario that teenagers shouldn't be in. In addition, states allege that Juul isnt doing enough to prevent underaged teenagers from using the product aka no enough awareness of the dangers of vaping. Does this help?


Question: How do dryer sheets remove wrinkles and/or reduce static if it's just the small sheet? Wouldn't it not be touching all the clothes in the load?

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 How do dryer sheets remove wrinkles and/or reduce static if it's just the small sheet? Wouldn't it not be touching all the clothes in the load?

Dryer sheets are fabric squares soaked in fabric softener (either quaternary ammonium salts or silicone oil). As the dryer blows hot air through all the clothes and mixes them around, the fabric softener very lightly coats all of the load. This thin coating of softener gives the laundry the nice scent and the positively charged chemicals (cations) help equalize the electrons building up from all the clothing rubbing against each other.


Question: Why does metal get colder than plastic?

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 Why does metal get colder than plastic?

It doesn't. Leave a metal bar and a plastic bowl out at 0 degrees Fahrenheit in the winter, and they'll both end up 0 degrees Fahrenheit over time. But when you with your warm hands picks them up, the metal will cool your hands faster than the plastic will, and so it will feel colder.


Question: why does it sting a lot when you initially get water on a wound (like a small cut), but it say after a while of running water on it, it doesn't hurt that much?

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 why does it sting a lot when you initially get water on a wound (like a small cut), but it say after a while of running water on it, it doesn't hurt that much?

The physical sensory cells across your body can't continuously fire at 100%. They get tired. Pain is from our pain receptors, and they get tired, too. Also, your brain adapts to continuous sensations; it decides it's not as important to pay attention to something if it's the same intensity all the time. If it was important, you would have reacted to it already. So the brain pays more attention to other sensations, like the pressure of the water. The pain is still there, it's just less focused on. And finally, the other sensations interfere with the pain sensation. We have pressure and other touch sensors in our skin, too. If they're sending signals at the same time, the brain has to choose how much attention to give each sensation. At first, it pays attention to pain because pain bad. But the other sensations interfere with the pain sensation.


Question: How do social media “bots” work? Are they like programmed trolls? How do their accounts/comments seem as if they could be a real person’s?

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 How do social media “bots” work? Are they like programmed trolls? How do their accounts/comments seem as if they could be a real person’s?

A lot are actual people. There are offices in some countries full of people getting paid to maintain dozens to hundreds of accounts and shitpost constantly all day long. Also commonly called a Troll Farm. It sounds crazy, but think how many posts you could make in a solid 10hrs if you were just swooping in, posting some sort of divisive one-liner, and then dipping out to let the people argue amongst themselves in your wake. It's probably the highest rate of return of anything you can spend your Psy-Ops money on.


Question: Why do house plants require so much maintenance and still die easily, where as their wild/outdoor family with no maintenance survives for decades?

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 Why do house plants require so much maintenance and still die easily, where as their wild/outdoor family with no maintenance survives for decades?

A few reasons! Rainwater is generally better than tap water as it contains more nitrates for plant nutrition. You might also get general detritus more commonly outside, contributing to soil health. Human watering habits are also usually inconsistent, and unless perfectly balanced pot plants don't have the combination of water retention and drainage that natural earth does, meaning the plants are usually under or over watered... Light levels inside are also usually inconsistent, not to mention low.


Question: Why does our ear(s) randomly ring for a short period of time and slowly recede?

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 Why does our ear(s) randomly ring for a short period of time and slowly recede?

Your ears are actually just a lot of small hairs that detect noises around you. Some detect very high, some low, and many varying from loud to really quiet. When your ears are ringing, it usually means they are retuning. This might mean a difference in air pressure outside, or because you went from a silent space to a loud area or even just because biology with wax buildup and the ears ability to catch surrounding noises. After a little while, your hearing will be tuned for your current conditions, and the ringing will be tuned out or ignored effectively. (Edit) Touching on some more reasons for ears to ring: *Note: Ringing usually lasts longer here* * Tinnitus * Ear Infections * Inner Ear changes * Blood Pressure * Tumors / Trauma in the Head or Neck


Question: What causes people to believe a celebrity they've never met loves them?

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 What causes people to believe a celebrity they've never met loves them?

The particular condition is called *erotomania*, and it is a type of delusion. For most, erotomania is tied to a disorder of a nature that is rooted in psychosis (e.g. bipolar, schizophrenia) but some people seem to have it independently. I know of a woman (friend of a friend) who has had 20 restraining orders executed against her, almost all from celebrities who she believed loved her. She has no other comorbid mental illnesses as to my knowledge. As for the "why", the answer is no more clear than the cause for delusions of grandeur in general. A lack of attention, low-self worth, and other factors *may* play a part, but subjects of this nature are very nuanced.


Question: How does the NSA make any sense of the huge amounts of data in collects?

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 How does the NSA make any sense of the huge amounts of data in collects?

You're probably thinking of some agent huddled over a computer with the shades drawn, thumbing through individual files one by one. Noooope! With that amount of data the only way to go is to use automated tools to get what they need, and to sort and filter. Kind of like how the post office uses machines to sort letters into neat stacks or into bins rather than having a person look at each address individually; it's the only way with all that mail! One big tool would be a keyword. So as data comes through it's scanned for certain words identified as being important. When one comes up, perhaps it goes to a file, or gives someone in the office an alert. A lot of the data is completely useless to them and will probably be archived away or, more likely, discarded. Two people sending kissy emojis at each other 20 times a day hardly warrants even a passing glance. Perhaps an automated tool could surmise that the owner of phone number 123 and the owner of 456 are in a relationship and Mark that as such if they're keeping detailed logs.


Question: Why is it much more difficult to take a tight-fitting ring off your finger than to put it on?

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 Why is it much more difficult to take a tight-fitting ring off your finger than to put it on?

After you put the ring on, some of the blood leaving your finger is obstructed by the ring. Your finger will begin to swell, thus preventing the rings removal. After some time, the finger may become inflamed due to irritation from trying to force the ring off. This only increases the size of your finger & therefore further prevents ring removal. Use oil & hot water to safely remove a metal ring stuck on a finger.


Question: Why is “Short Stop” seen as a superior position in baseball? How does it take more skills?

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 Why is “Short Stop” seen as a superior position in baseball? How does it take more skills?

Short stop has a lot of territory to cover, has longer throws than Second Base (who has a similar amount of area to cover) and deals with a higher percentage of hits coming their direction. This means that in general they have to be more active, athletic and a better player to perform well consistently.


Question: Why can't a browser just stop and resume downloads later, like a torrent can?

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 Why can't a browser just stop and resume downloads later, like a torrent can?

Most websites send you files by pointing your internet browser to their warehouse address and say "Come pick up your package whenever you want it" but your computer still has to do the work and go "pick it up" itself. You can't compartmentalize it (generally, but this is ELI5). With torrents, instead of being told to come pick up your whole package they basically have a whole bunch of different warehouses all around the world (One for screws, one for the wood frame, one for the couch cushions etc). Instead of being told "Here's where your package is so come get it" a torrent will first send your computer a file that's basically "Here is an itemized list of every single box that you're going to need shipped to you one by one" and the file is also a "Here is how you let every single warehouse know whenever it's time for you to ask for their box/part." tl;dr Most websites just tell you to pick up the couch from their house but torrents will break it down and mail it to you one screw at a time Source: Am Network Engineer Edit: I know this is more like ELI12 but I don't think 5 year olds understand that we've taught rocks to do math. Also thank you for the award, anon.


Question: How did physicists figure out the structure of an atom at a time when it was impossible to observe them?

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 How did physicists figure out the structure of an atom at a time when it was impossible to observe them?

The first experiment was done by Geiger, Marsden, and Rutherford. Basically, they shot alpha particles (a helium nucleus, so 2 protons/2neutrons bound together) at pieces of very thin gold foil. The idea is that charged particles like the alpha particle should get deflected based on the electric force with other charged particles. The particles get deflected in a way that suggested a positive core, and a cloud of electrons. Basically, most of them did nothing, which tells you they "missed", but when they did deflect, it was for a pretty large value. At the time, the dominant theory was actually a smeared mush, the 'plum pudding' model. Neutrons came later- they were harder since they don't have a charge. But we knew something was up, because the protons didn't immediately repel each other. At first, people thought there must be electrons in the nucleus to handle things, but it didn't match up with data. It was discovered by Chadwick in 1932, where radiation experiments he did had nuclei that ejected neutrons (which are chargeless, but still have mass etc, so they're detectable). > when it was impossible to observe them? In most cases, we don't observe them like you would normally think of them. We use similar techniques to the Rutherford experiment, just a lot more refined, and then reconstruct an image from it. A lot of small scale physics works roughly on this idea. If you want to study something tiny, you find something roughly the same size and hit them against each other. Then try to back your way out of a reasonable model


Question: 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?

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 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?

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.


Question: Why do we prefere to listen to sad songs when we are sad?

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 Why do we prefere to listen to sad songs when we are sad?

Have you ever heard the expression “misery loves company”? If say, you moved a lot as a kid, you’d be extra excited to find a friend who had the same experience. We want to be able to relate to others. When we are hurt, we want to know that we are not alone. We want to know that someone else understands our pain. If that someone is a musician, so much the better. Musicians specialize in making art out of emotion.


Question: MSG+ alcohol = roofie spiked drink??

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 MSG+ alcohol = roofie spiked drink??

Lots of food has msg in it without any effect if you drink as well. I've seen a site where they added msg to various alcoholic drinks to see what impact it had on flavour (they didn't recommend it) and they had no side effects. Overall I think this is a myth.


Question: do planes actually have to request 'permission' to land at airports even when they have flight plans?

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 do planes actually have to request 'permission' to land at airports even when they have flight plans?

Busy airports schedule their flights to the minute, and a flight plan is not anywhere near that specific. If you want to land at a controlled airport you need to announce your intentions and await permission. Flights with a special status (like a declared emergency) can do what is necessary to protect the lives of passengers.


Question: Why does the Salt in McDonald's Salt Packets Taste Different from the Salt They're Prepared with?

The user asks a question, and the Assistant answers it. The assistant provides the user with the answer that strictly follows the following guidelines. The answer should be enclosed within <answer> </answer> tags, respectively, i.e., <answer> ANSWER HERE </answer>.
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<answer>
[Your final detailed answer goes here]
</answer>
 Why does the Salt in McDonald's Salt Packets Taste Different from the Salt They're Prepared with?

It's all just salt. The difference is the size of the grains. The salt that is used when making french fries has super-fine crystals - it's almost a powder while the salt in the packets is more like a traditional table salt. The size of the salt crystals greatly influences how it impacts your taste buds.


Question: How does the brain repress memories and not let people remember entire parts of their lives?

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 How does the brain repress memories and not let people remember entire parts of their lives?

Just to make clear "repressed memories" isn't a medically sound diagnosis. There are known issues related to people struggling with memories around a traumatic event or time. The two more common issues are: Denial- Something really traumatic happens and as a protective measure, your brain won't allow a solid memory to form the way a pleasant memory would. Your brain is literally denying an event ever happened. Diassociation- During a traumatic event your brain refuses to accept it/checks out. You kinda start experiencing the event like someone watching a movie, it's not really happening to you. At it's most extreme you can lose time all together and your understanding of what happened can differ extremely from the reality of it. ETA: The idea of "repressed memories" is hotly debated within professional circles, and people should be wary of "memory retrieval" therapies as they haven't been proven 100% sound and false memories are a known phenomenon. In disassociation and denial, your brain is still forming memories, they just don't look 100% right. Sort of the difference between a photograph of something and a stick figure drawing you are trying to do with your non-dominant hand.


Question: Why do unresponsive network operations freeze your computer?

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 Why do unresponsive network operations freeze your computer?

Because of cheaper (or lazy) programming. Every behavior could have been controlled, unless you go into extremely demanding math or graphics. However, the proper management of cases that should never occur is expensive and not very productive. The case of unresponsive network also has an additional problem when one has to decide what to do in that case. Something like "Ok, I've controlled unresponsive network, now I must tell the system to... what? I have no network. Do I close? Do I show a message? Do I wait a bit more? But if I was going to wait a bit more, what was the point of controlling the situation? If I allow the system to move without network? What do I do when the network comes back? Do I store all user actions and dump them there? What if it's too late? As another way of thinking about it, separate "network is down" into "network has been down for 10ms, 100ms, 1s, etc." It soon creates a long list of hard to decide situations that can take a lot of code to manage.


Question: How can "power naps"(10-30m) be more effective than longer naps? (1-3h)

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[Your final detailed answer goes here]
</answer>
 How can "power naps"(10-30m) be more effective than longer naps? (1-3h)

A Power Nap ends before you enter the phase of Deep Sleep. & nbsp; Sleep occurs in four cycles of around 90 minutes each- + Light Sleep Cycle + Deep Sleep Cycle + Dream Cycle + Light Sleep Cycle *(repeat)* & nbsp; If you wake up in b/w a cycle (before it's finished, but after it has started), you'll feel very tired. Which is why you should sleep for either six hours, seven-and-a-half hours, and nine hours. ______________ The power nap is thought to maximize the benefits of sleep versus time. It is used to supplement normal sleep, especially when a sleeper has accumulated a sleep deficit.


Question: Why was Nazi Germany so fixated on Heavily armoured tanks rather than improving their anti-tank shells and technology to combat the Soviet KV tanks?

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[Your final detailed answer goes here]
</answer>
 Why was Nazi Germany so fixated on Heavily armoured tanks rather than improving their anti-tank shells and technology to combat the Soviet KV tanks?

You phrase your question as if it were only just one or the other, when the reality was both options were pursued. But what does 'improving anti-tank shells' mean exactly? Well, there were two main types of anti-tank shells in common use by the Germans, your standard kinetic penetrator round (aka, 'AP' round) and your High Explosive Anti-Tank round. By the time of Operation Barbarossa, the German anti-tank weapons consisted of towed AT guns ranging from 3.7cm to 8.8cm. A number of these towed weapons did have the firepower to penetrate KV tanks from a range. But there's a problem--towed AT weapons are primarily a defensive weapon. These guns need to be towed into position and set up, which is bad if you're on a battlefield that's constantly shifting and, contrary to popular belief, the Germans used a lot of horses to move guns around, which makes it a slower process, especially for the big 8.8cm guns. So towed guns are generally poor for offensive operations, which meant AT duties when on the offense fell to tanks and infantry. The infantry had the ~~ubiquitous panzerfausts~~ Faustpatrone (edit: derp on my part, panzerfaust came in 1943; faustpatrone was the predecessor used at the start of Barbarossa), which was more than a match for the KV's armor, but those things were not easy to aim--effective ranges were usually less than 60m, less so if you want a good chance to hit. What about the tanks? Well at Operation Barbarossa's time, their primary anti-tank tank was the Pz III armed with the 5cm cannon, supported by Pz IV's armed with a short-barreled 7.5cm cannon and the Stug III armed with the same 7.5cm. The Pz III's gun had an armor-piercing composite-rigid round that could punch through the KV's armour, but only at 500m or less. Meanwhile the 76mm guns of the soviet tanks could punch through German armour at twice that distance. In addition, the 7.5cm cannons of the Pz IV and Stug III had high-explosive anti-tank rounds that, yes, could penetrate a KV's armour--but they were armed with very short-barreled cannons that made their accuracy a bit lacking. Edit: in addition, the StugIII and PzIV at the time were predominately for attacking infantry positions and carried mostly high explosive rounds. In other words, being able to penetrate is one thing, but if you have to get in close to do that then you're going to have problems with your tanks exploding before they can get a shot off. So what's an army to do when faced with this issue? The problem isn't the ammunition, it's the guns that are firing them. The 5cm on the Pz III just isn't strong enough to take the kind of explosive charge needed to propel a shot with enough energy to punch through the KV's armour, and the 7.5cm on the Stugs and Pz IV's are too short to reliably hit anything at longer distances (plus I do not know how prolific HEAT rounds were at the start of Barbarossa). Edit: in addition, AP rounds in the non-8.8cm category generally needed tungsten cores to have a chance of penetrating the KV-1's armour, and tungsten was not something Germany had in good supply. Thus, supplies of these rounds were limited. Solution: mount a bigger gun on your tanks. Well, it just so happened that a long-barreled 7.5cm cannon was being fitted to Pz IV's, but that started only weeks before Operation Barbarossa began. The Pz IV was originally slated for support purposes, not anti-tank duty, but it had a turret that could house the longer barreled 7.5cm so it got the new job. The other gun they decided to use was the powerful 8.8cm cannon--put that thing on a tank and you've got a gun that's more than capable of dealing with a KV in excess of 1000m. Slap more armour on it so it can withstand the return fire and you've got yourself a tank that can laugh in the face of KV's. Since none of the current tanks they had could fit the 8.8cm, they had to make a new one, and thus was born the Tiger tank. Please note that I am an amateur at history at best (and in the loosest sense of the term) and this has probably glossed over/simplified a lot of details. TL;DR - it wasn't a problem with the shells, it was the guns firing them. So they made a bigger tank to carry the bigger gun. Edit: I feel like I rambled a lot and could've answered this more concisely...


Question: - Why does checking your credit score damage your credit score?

The user asks a question, and the Assistant answers it. The assistant provides the user with the answer that strictly follows the following guidelines. The answer should be enclosed within <answer> </answer> tags, respectively, i.e., <answer> ANSWER HERE </answer>.
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 - Why does checking your credit score damage your credit score?

YOU checking it through the three reporting bureaus doesn't impact it, but outside organizations checking it does. Now, if you're searching for a home loan and they see that four companies have checked your credit, lenders will probably understand and the impact will be minimal or not appear until you've already obtained the loan. But a wide range of checks or several checks a year might indicate that you are a credit risk as you appear to be seeking lines of credit from a range of institutions and needing to get multiple companies to check to get a line of credit. This might indicate that you are overly stressed with debt or unable to get credit easily when you need it. It's one of many indicators of risk.


Question: How can a black holes singularity be infinity small, but still have mass?

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 How can a black holes singularity be infinity small, but still have mass?

We're not sure. When we plug in the numbers involved in a black hole into our math for physics, we get absurd answers, and different branches of physics give you different absurd numbers. The idea for infinite density is: When you squeeze something hard what stops it from collapsing? At the start it's electromagnetic force, holding atoms and molecules apart. Squeeze it harder and it's Electron degeneracy pressure holding the neutrons apart. Squeeze it harder and... well we can't name a single thing that might hold it apart. So it goes smaller. What stops it from collapsing further? ... well we can't name a single thing that might hold it apart. So it goes smaller. What stops it from collapsing further? ... well we can't name a single thing that might hold it apart. So it goes smaller. What stops it from collapsing further? ... well we can't name a single thing that might hold it apart. And so on, the conclusion being that since nothing we know of in the universe can stop it from being smaller, it must keep going smaller until it's infinity small.


Question: Why can't we take hormones or vitamins from someone's blood/body and give it to someone else?

The user asks a question, and the Assistant answers it. The assistant provides the user with the answer that strictly follows the following guidelines. The answer should be enclosed within <answer> </answer> tags, respectively, i.e., <answer> ANSWER HERE </answer>.
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</answer>
 Why can't we take hormones or vitamins from someone's blood/body and give it to someone else?

We probably could. But that would incredibly inefficient, difficult, and have a shit tone of potential ethical problems regarding how one gets the vast amounts of human blood/tissue needed to do this, while meanwhile we have other much easier and cheaper sources of the same vitamins and hormones and etc. Even with the shortage, the amount of estrogen that could be harvested from human blood would be so minuscule and so hard to get, it wouldn't make a difference. By way of comparison, insulin used to be produced from the pancreas glands of slaughtered pigs and cows. These pancreas glands were taken from animals already being slaughtered for food, so they were a waste product. Over two tons of pig pancreases were needed to extract eight ounces of purified insulin. Even using waste products to produce it, that's a lot of work for very little insulin. Today, insulin is produced by modified bacteria and yeast. And bioidentical estrogen is made from yams and soy, while premarin is made from pregnant mare urine. That's going to be a lot cheaper and easier than getting enough human blood that usable quantities of estrogen can be extracted from it.


Question: How can encryption methods be open source?

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 How can encryption methods be open source?

It is a generally accepted security precept that "The enemy knows the system." That is, when you are designing an encryption algorithm (or any security measure) that you assume the enemy knows its design. You assume that, eventually, an adversary will get a hold of the algorithm and therefore A) you cannot rely on the secrecy of the algorithm for security; and B) your algorithm should be secure despite general awareness of it. The strength of encryption methods lies in the keys (and, for asymmetric methods, the inherent mathematical difficulty of reversing the encryption process). For example, the most secure encryption method, the One Time Pad (OTP) has an extremely simplistic algorithm. ALL of the security is invested in how the key is created, used, and kept secret.


Question: Why do we have to pay to freeze our credit?

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 Why do we have to pay to freeze our credit?

> Considering that we never consented to them collecting our information in the first place, and the only way we can get them to stop sharing it is to pay them, how is that not extortion? You did consent to them collecting it. Inside of that dense packet of information that you agreed to when you signed up for your credit card, apartment, utility, etc. there was a paragraph saying that your information would be shared with the credit monitoring agencies (Equifax, Experian and/or TransUnion). **Edit**: It is for that same reason that it isn't extortion. Extortion requires threats or intimidation by the extorting party. In this case, you agreed for them to collect and house your information and distribute it to people who request it. They offer a service where they can temporarily stop doing that, but charging you to stop doing something that you agreed they could do isn't a threat. As for why you pay, well, that is a service that they offer that they feel they can charge you for.


Question: Why do we skip a number when two (or more) things are tied for the same rank?

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[Your final detailed answer goes here]
</answer>
 Why do we skip a number when two (or more) things are tied for the same rank?

We skip a number because it doesn't matter if there are 2 tied for first or there is a first and a second, the next one is the 3rd best -- because there are 2 ahead in the ranking. It's the number of people/cities, etc. ahead, not the number of unique scores that matter.


Question: Why does "trickle-down" economic philosophy not work?

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 Why does "trickle-down" economic philosophy not work?

In simple terms - because there is an upper limit on how much the rich will invest/spend. The core concept of "trickle-down" economics is that the rich invest and spend money and that drives the economy forward benefiting everyone. In practice however, at some point the rich have invested in everything they wish to invest into, bought everything they want to buy, and are left with nothing to do but save. Contrast that with the lower and middle class consumers who for the most part spend every dollar they have. Give a $1,000 to a rich man and he might spend and invest $800 of it. Give $1,000 to a lower class person and they'll spend every single penny.


Question: why do laptop and PC manufacturers install all of this useless software that slows the computer down so much?

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[Your final detailed answer goes here]
</answer>
 why do laptop and PC manufacturers install all of this useless software that slows the computer down so much?

$$$ You'll notice that a lot of the software has a premium version and it tries to get you to upgrade after the trial period is over. These software companies pay the OEMs to load the trials onto the prebuilt machines in hopes that a small percentage of those who buy them will buy the premium version when the trial runs out. HP, Dell, and other OEMs load the software on the machine because it lets them charge less for the machine while still making the same amount of money and lets them move more machines that way.


Question: why does plastic degradation take so long?

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[Your final detailed answer goes here]
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 why does plastic degradation take so long?

A quick google: URL_0 Things organically break down because organisms break them down, stuff like bacteria or fungi. These have evolved to break down certain things and ignore certain other things - just like how people have evolved to eat fruits and meats, not wood or metal. We evolved this way because we chose what was abundant, but also what was easy to digest. You eat to gain energy, so you don't want to *spend* energy just to get it. Plastics are made of extremely strong molecular bonds. These are extremely rare in nature (so evolution would rarely know of it) and extremely tough to break (so organisms would prefer other things) TL;DR: Because plastics are man-made and there isn't anything that eats plastic.


Question: If we were shrunk down to the size of a bug, would dropping something like a feather be loud? Would we also have the same durability as a big if we were dropped from a relatively extreme height?

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 If we were shrunk down to the size of a bug, would dropping something like a feather be loud? Would we also have the same durability as a big if we were dropped from a relatively extreme height?

That kind of question cant really be properly answered, because it depends a lot on how all your biological systems work. Thing is, if youd shrink a human body down it'd just stop working. Most systems cant just be scaled like that. E.g. the friction and capillary forces in the tiny arteries would be way too strong for the heart, and blood circulation would stop. If we only look at the hearing apparatus and ignore the rest - well , your ears wouldnt work anyway. Hearing depends on resonance frequencies - essentially to parts of your ear being very hood at transmitting certain frequencies - and those change drastically with size. You either would only be able to hear extremely high sound, or there would be some mismatch and you wouldnt hear anything at all. The movement of the bones in your ear - which is toughly what determines loudness - would be smaller in any case. As for durability against dropping - yes that would be pretty good, as weight scales with volume (~size^3) and mechanical strength with the area (~size^2).


Question: how does quenching steel work?

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 how does quenching steel work?

Steel and iron respond different to non-ferrous metals (copper, silver etc). When you heaT up a non-ferrous metal, it's mollecules become disorganised, making it malleable. Quenching it quickly prevents the molecules from reorganising, so you have a soft piece of metal to work with. This is called annealing. Steel and iron work the opposite way. Quenching hot steel doesn't leave it soft, it hardens it. To anneal steel to keep it soft and workable, it needs to cool slowly. I worked as a die sinker and engraver for 15 years. When I made punches for letters/decoration etc, I'd heat my punch to red hot, then let it cool in charcoal to leave me with a soft steel. Then I'd reheat, looking for the steel to change colour to a light straw yellow. When the tip went yellow, I'd quench. This left me with a punch that was super hard at the top, where the design was, but softer along the shaft (no sniggering), so that it didn't shatter when I hit it with a hammer.


Question: How does a cruise missile know where to go?

The user asks a question, and the Assistant answers it. The assistant provides the user with the answer that strictly follows the following guidelines. The answer should be enclosed within <answer> </answer> tags, respectively, i.e., <answer> ANSWER HERE </answer>.
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[Your final detailed answer goes here]
</answer>
 How does a cruise missile know where to go?

Maps and cameras! Depends on the particular missile, but it probably has GPS, an inertial guidance system and a terrain matching camera. It has a microprocessor onboard with a flight plan, waypoints and a map of the area and it flies the programmed route. It might also have some other back-up systems or be steerable remotely.


Question: how do bank accounts gain interest? Do all banks do that?

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 how do bank accounts gain interest? Do all banks do that?

The banks do not keep your money. Most of the money you deposit in the bank will be loaned out to others. It can be loaned out as mortgages, to businesses or governments. So whenever you hear that the government are 20 trillion dollars in debt you are likely one of the debtors. And when the government have to pay interest on that debt part of it is going to you.


Question: Why is there no road connecting North and South America?

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 Why is there no road connecting North and South America?

The Darien Gap is an ecologically sensitive war zone. Building a road there would be dangerous and bad for the planet. Consider that the purpose of the road would be to connect Panama to Colombia, yet both the Pacific and the Caribbean offer means for shipping and ferry service without the hazards of a new road.


Question: Is image quality capped by the resolution of a screen?

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</answer>
 Is image quality capped by the resolution of a screen?

If we're just talking pixels, then yes. A 1080p screen will only display a max 2.07 Megapixel. However, with higher Megapixel cameras you can take a picture and zoom in. (post processing) without the image becoming blurry. If we disregard focus, lighting etc. So for example, you take a picture of an elephant in the savanna. But you want to have the elephant fill the whole frame. Then you can digitally zoom in and crop and still have a crisp image. Although it will be lower resolution than the original image. I think the biggest reason people use high resolution cameras is so that they can print and display the image on a large canvas. There are canvases that are massive and then you need every Pixel you can get.


Question: Why do cars look like they are going faster the closer they get to you?

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[Your final detailed answer goes here]
</answer>
 Why do cars look like they are going faster the closer they get to you?

Your eyes do not measure linear velocity. They measure angular velocity. Lets take an example of a car moving 100 km/h in one second of time. At a long distance, it will look like it's moving slowly because the angle between where it was and where it is now, relative to you, is small. Now put the same car in front of you. It just crossed your whole 180 degree field of vision, and thus looks like it moved really fast.


Question: Why do certain people have sexual fetishes?

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 Why do certain people have sexual fetishes?

Scientists seem to disagree between themselves on the answer. I know of 4 main theories (but there could very well be others). 1: Brain overlap theory. Basically, the parts of the brain that control the sex organs are located near the parts of the brain that control other areas of the body like the feet. These adjacent areas can communicate with each other. 2:Pavlovian theory: In simple terms, if a group of men were shown images of naked women alongside images of boots, the men eventually became aroused simply by the image of the boots. 3:The grossed out theory: Your disgust impulse weakens when sexually aroused so you may be more likely to incorporate certain 'activities' into sex. 4: The pain theory: Interestingly, pain and pleasure seem to release many of the same brain chemicals and neurotransmitters. The brain can connect the two and lead to the development of certain fetishes.


Question: In layman's terms, what does P=NP mean?

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[Your final detailed answer goes here]
</answer>
 In layman's terms, what does P=NP mean?

P and NP are two classes of problems. P means that the problem can be solved in "polynomial time" by a computer. That means that the amount of time it takes to solve the problem grows in some sort of polynomial relationship with the size of the input. To give an example, multiplying two numbers. If you have two n digit numbers, and you're using the multiplication process that you learned in school, then you need to do roughly n^2 operations - that is, multiplying each of the n digits of one number by each of the n digits of the other (plus then some addition to sum up all the individual results). So P is the class of problems that a computer can solve in an amount of time representable by a polynomial function of the input size. NP is more complicated. It refers to problems that can be solved in "non-deterministic polynomial time". The actual definition of this is too complicated for layman's terms, I think, but it effectively means problems where you can verify a solution in polynomial time. I guess you can sort of imagine that you might solve a problem by checking all potential solutions simultaneously. So like in the multiplication problem, taking every possible integer, and at the same time, checking whether or not each integer is the correct solution. That's not the best example though, since it wouldn't be any faster than solving the problem normally. So let's look at something more complicated - the travelling salesman problem. Given a set of towns, and roads between the towns does there exist a route from some starting location such that the salesman can visit every town once (but no more than once), and travel a total distance of less than X kilometers (for some arbitrary X). This is a hard problem to solve. It can't be done in polynomial time, so far as we know - that is, as you add towns and roads, it gets a lot harder, really quickly. However, if you had all *possible* routes, and could check them all at the same time, you could quickly find out if any of them are shorter than X kilometers - it's very easy to check how long a particular route is. So, the question of whether P=NP is essentially, are these two classes of problems the same? For every problem where we can verify a solution quickly, can we also *find* the solution quickly. Or to go back to our example, does the fact that we can quickly verify a route for the salesman mean that there exists some way that we haven't yet discovered of quickly *finding* said route in the first place - without having to imagine some magical ability to check all solutions at once. It's suspected that the answer is "no", but it hasn't been proven.


Question: Why all the companies are now investing in the United States; for example, Fiat?

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 Why all the companies are now investing in the United States; for example, Fiat?

Trump proposed that if companies leave the US he will create a strong border tax. If companies start investing in the US it means they will not have to pay this Tax or maybe they will be exempt from it. Hence why ford just backed out of Mexico and a 1.something billion dollar plant. Border tax and how it would work as explained to a 5 year old. Ford makes a car in US, car sells for 30,000 Ford moves to Mexico, Car is now TAXED and now has to sell for 40,000. (they need to make up for the tax they where just charged, so to off settle it they need to increase the cars sales price) well who's going to by a ford when they can buy a car that is = in performance and 10,000 cheaper cause its here in the US. By keeping companies in the US it would keep Jobs here as well as people would continue to keep buying vehicles. But Tax and locations are not what will kill the car industry, it will be automation.


Question: What does having an extra exhaust pipe (2 in total) do for a car’s performance?

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 What does having an extra exhaust pipe (2 in total) do for a car’s performance?

In most modern cars, engines come in what is called either an "inline" package or a "v" package, and this has to do with how many banks of cylinders there are, one bank or two. Each cylinder is going to have an intake and exhaust port, which lets fuel and air (the "charge") in and the exhaust gasses out. These exhaust ports are plumbed together, each their own pipe into a single pipe, by what is called a "header". This piece of exhaust plumbing is a single piece that bolts up against the engine along the exhaust ports. You need one per bank. That means an inline engine package is going to have one header, and a v package is going to have 2. Now, for the inline package, it makes the most sense to continue piping this one exhaust line past the O2 sensor, part of the feedback loop that tells the computer how much fuel to add to the charge, past the catalytic converter, that uses a honey comb of platinum to convert some of the smog producing oxides into carbon dioxide and water when it gets hot and these gasses come into contact, through the muffler, because if you think your tiny little lawn mower engine is loud... and out the back, away from the passengers and windows so exhaust gasses can't accidentally vent back into the car. The only reason you'd see two tail pipes in this arrangement is for aesthetics. A v package has the same need x2, so it would make sense to see two tailpipes. But of course, it's not that simple. For low end, economically priced vehicles, the two headers would be combined into a single line out the back - this saves on material cost. This configuration is called a "Y pipe". Enter "exhaust scavenging". You see, when that exhaust port opens and the piston pushes the exhaust gasses out, those gasses are still at ~100 psi, and they travel down the pipe as a pulse. Behind the pulse, the gasses actually pull a little, tiny vacuum. THIS IS A PHENOMENAL THING, because once that pulse gets past the header, that vacuum will actually help clear the next cylinder that exhausts in that bank, because that tiny vacuum will help to pull the next pulse out. This means the cylinder is clearer of exhaust gasses than if the piston just squeezed it all out, meaning that cylinder has more volume available for the next cycle. It's all about fuel and thermal efficiency. And this applies to our inline package as well as the banks of the v package. But hey! If we can scavenge the other cylinders of our own bank, why can't we scavenge the cylinders of the other bank, too? Enter the "H pipe" and the "X pipe". The H pipe is two exhaust lines with a pipe that comes across and connects them. This improves scavenging and thus efficiency. It's an older design, but it is still common to see because it's most efficient at low RPM, which helps with your engine producing torque at low RPM, and that's important because most of your driving experience is at low RPM. The X pipe is two exhaust lines where they cut into the tubing about half way and welded the two lines together. The lines effectively become one and then split again, as opposed to the H pipe which is more like a bridge. This also has a scavenging effect, but at higher RPM, which makes it popular on sports cars. You can also buy aftermarket scavenging exhaust systems tuned for whatever you would like. Efficiency increases the closer to the headers the cross connection gets, but there are transmissions and driveshafts in the way, and that needs to be taken into account. And the diameter of the pipe is important, too - a large diameter pipe makes for big, slow pulses of gas, which isn't good for scavenging, whereas small diameter pipes make for small, but long, fast pulses, which increases scavenging efficiency, but there is a bottom end to that where there is too much gas and not enough room. Supercharged and turbocharged engines are dealing with so much volume of charge gasses and exhaust gasses that scavenging goes right out the door - just bolt on the biggest pipes you can afford, scavenging isn't going to help you here. This is why diesels have gigantic, straight pipes - they're all turbocharged these days. And in the end, you'll see H pipes and Y pipes and whatever you call those single pipes from inline packages come to the end of the exhaust. A lot of aesthetics are applied here. I've seen H pipes feed into a single muffler, and that single muffler exit two pipes. There's no need for that but for looks. I've seen a single pipe split into a Y after the muffler so it can exit out two pipes. And it's actually very common that cars will have a fake exhaust tip.


Question: How can European companies like Zara afford to produce their clothes in places like Portugal and Spain, while American companies rely on sweatshop labour to sell at the same price?

The user asks a question, and the Assistant answers it. The assistant provides the user with the answer that strictly follows the following guidelines. The answer should be enclosed within <answer> </answer> tags, respectively, i.e., <answer> ANSWER HERE </answer>.
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 How can European companies like Zara afford to produce their clothes in places like Portugal and Spain, while American companies rely on sweatshop labour to sell at the same price?

Zara is somewhat unique in the fashion industry in that it owns its entire supply chain. Most clothing companies will hire factories to make their clothes according to patterns, and then have a distribution and logistics company handle the process of getting the actual clothes to the country they're going to be sold in, and sometimes also to the individual retail outlets. This allows economies of scale to come in, for example, a factory making t-shirts for fifty different companies in Bangladesh can make those shirts much cheaper because they can order fabric in more bulk. So what advantage does owning the factories convey? Well, there's an element of cost saving in full ownership, the factory and the distributor aren't taking a cut for profit, but the main advantage is quicker turnaround. If all the factories in your supply chain are set up to supply you and only you, you can set them up exactly how you want them, you can set the rules in the factory you can set the distribution network to prioritise getting you merchandise *fast* instead of *cheap*. Which means that unlike some companies who have to design their Summer 17 range about a year out guessing based on trends what will be popular in time to get their stuff made and shipped from Asia, a company like Zara can wait til the start of summer, see the trends, design clothes based on those those trends, and have their designs manufactured and in store within a week or two. What about non-fashion items, though? Plain t-shirts don't change much at all year to year. If you buy a red t-shirt, you'll probably be wearing it still in 2 years time. For those items you don't need speed at all. You also don't need to be unique. So for that stuff there's no reason not to order from Asia, and sure enough even Zara will order their bulk non-fashion clothing from those factories. For stores which specialise in offering cheap clothing (e.g. Primark here in Europe), all their stuff will be made in places like bangladesh because it doesn't need to be fast and it doesn't need to be good, so you can just focus on as cheap as possible.