Question: How did this guy manage to glide across the whole pool?

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 did this guy manage to glide across the whole pool?

Buoyancy isn't necessary when you have lift. The way he is angling his legs means he is more or less forcing the water under him down, which of course means the water pushes him up because of Newton. His entire body is acting sort of like a wing, lifting him up out of the water. If he slowed down too much, he would sink. But the pool is just narrow enough for him to reach the other side before losing all forward momentum.


Question: How can people with metal braces, screws, plates in their body go into MRI machines?

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Depth and Insight: The answer should provide thoughtful analysis or context, going beyond superficial details.
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 How can people with metal braces, screws, plates in their body go into MRI machines?

Source: was an MRI-operator and researcher for years. A lot of metals, such as iron, are "ferromagnetic". This means they can 1) form permanent magnets, and 2) are drawn towards magnets. Most body implants are however made out of metals that are *paramagnetic* such as titatium. This means that while they are not drawn into a magnet (or only very weakly), they still have some kind of interaction with a magnetic field. For this reason, many body implants are safe for an MRI scanner. Pins, plates, screws, etc, which are strongly affixed to for example your bones, have no risk of moving. They *will* distort the magnetic field because of their paramagnetism, and it can be problematic to make scans of an area with metal (for example, making an MRI of the head when someone has braces will lead to huge distortions on the image). The reason that some implants made out of titanium or surgical steel are NOT safe to go in, is 1) objects may still want to align to the magnetic field, so if it's not affixed to something, it can rotate and damage the tissue around it, or 2) especially in larger implants, the magnetic field can induce a "standing wave" in the metal and heat it up very rapidly. Sort of like induction cooking. It can be really dangerous as it can fry you from the inside and lead to severe burns, but this typically only can happen at strong magnetic fields and very large implants ( > 30cm). --- Edit: [An example of the sort of distortions that metal (in this case, braces) can give to an MRI scan]( URL_1 ). For those of you who are wondering what happens with "ferromagnetic" objects in/near an MRI scanner: URL_0


Question: Why is there a chip shortage? Can't they just make more chip factories?

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 Why is there a chip shortage? Can't they just make more chip factories?

Demand increased too fast and unexpectedly. Building new chip production lines takes **at least** 2 years, so unless demand goes down again (unlikely) the shortage will last for a while until they can catch up. Chip production is a highly complex process with many substeps that all need very specialized equipment. You propably won't find that many companies that build silicon crystal crucibles so everyone trying to expand at once further slows it.


Question: How do the Queen of England / The Royal Family make their money?

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 How do the Queen of England / The Royal Family make their money?

It's a bit complicated, but basically the royal family are career investors - they own real estate and investment businesses which give them money regularly without them having to do any work or anything. Basically, once you get rich enough, just owning wealth (in the form of land and properties) is enough to get more money as people will pay for temporary access to those places, and that extra money that gets made is what the royal family live off.


Question: How Do Waterfalls Freeze Even When Moving Rapidly?

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 How Do Waterfalls Freeze Even When Moving Rapidly?

By being REALLY cold. But more generally, they freeze at the bottom first, and if temperatures remain constantly below freezing the water contacting the ice at the bottom will freeze, tiny layer by tiny layer in much the same way a stalagmite forms, but much more quickly. Eventually it’ll reach the top and the source, too, will freeze up, conditions allowing.


Question: Why can gas prices be so different between two stations?

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 Why can gas prices be so different between two stations?

Well, the price can be whatever they want it to be... why might it be different, maybe shell has a cheaper source of fuel, maybe shell does a better concession business to subsidize the gas price, maybe shell or xtra is slow to match and you caught them in that window. Or maybe xtra is on the better side of the road and people will pay $.15 not to go across traffic. could be anything really


Question: If the Russians kept beating the US in the early space race, what kept them from reaching the moon first?

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 If the Russians kept beating the US in the early space race, what kept them from reaching the moon first?

The US saw it as matter of national pride. They were worried that if Russia beat them to the moon (the last "easy" space challenge), they'd forever claim superiority. So America pulled out its chequebook. It spent $25bn on the Apollo programme (a massive amount for the time). It managed to mobilise resources and expertise faster than the Russians at this.


Question: Why is it that only one nostril ever runs or bleeds?

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</answer>
 Why is it that only one nostril ever runs or bleeds?

The septum ( the bit of bone, cartilage, and flesh the separates the nasal passage) goes quite a ways back into the skull ( 5 to 7 inches on an adult and is connected to your mouth). Blood and mucus usally follow the pathway of least resistance with gravity so what does not run out of the one side mostly is swallowed.


Question: Why do many things, e.g. students grades in a class each year, follow the distribution of Bell Curve? Shouldn't they follow a random distribution each time?

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 Why do many things, e.g. students grades in a class each year, follow the distribution of Bell Curve? Shouldn't they follow a random distribution each time?

This is due to the central limit theorem. Basically, if you have a random variable, the *sample averages* will tend towards a random distribution. This really cool, because it says *NOTHING* about the random variable! It could be uniform, it could be skewed, it could be anything; as long as you take samples, average their values, and plot them, it'll become a bell curve. So for tests, you can say that whether or not a student answers a question correctly is a random variable. And their test is basically a sample.


Question: how did we document time before Christ?

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</answer>
 how did we document time before Christ?

The same way we do now. The invention of AD and BC was popularized by scholars to make the birth of Christ an important part of history however how we actually track time (24 hours in a day, 30(ish) days in a month, 12 months and a year) did not change. Different cultures used different starting points as their "beginning" but they just counted up years. This happens every so often in different cultures. Something they deem super important happens and they make it the new start of the calendar. Like in North Korea they start the calendar in 1912 because that is when Kim Il-sung was born. It is currently year 106 in North Korea.


Question: How were movies edited, processed and beautified with effects and text before computers were common?

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[Your final detailed answer goes here]
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 How were movies edited, processed and beautified with effects and text before computers were common?

Movies were edited by physically cutting and arranging film with blades and adhesive tape. The amount of "processing" and effects were very limited, but might include frame by frame airbrushing or practical effects. Text would be added by painting the words on a clear overlay on the film. The composite image would then be photographed to form the final product.


Question: Why do things have colours?

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 Why do things have colours?

I'm no expert here, but it has something to do with the configuration of electrons. Depending on energy between energy levels of electrons the wavelength changes. This is also why elements in the same group have some similarities and transition metals have multiple colors depending on oxidation state - different electron shells have different number of free spaces.


Question: This is gross but would a human egg taste like a chicken egg if it was scaled up in size?

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 This is gross but would a human egg taste like a chicken egg if it was scaled up in size?

Nope A chicken egg contains all the nutrients that the embryo will need to form into a baby chicken, there is no resupply so it has to have all of the food within it A human egg is just a single cell that gets fertilized, it has no nutrients in it because it will implant on the uterine wall and be fed by the placenta until a baby person is ready. With no nutrients you would find a large human egg would give you a very watery and bland omelette with none of the delicious fats, proteins, and other flavors you get from a chicken egg


Question: How does a multivitamin work? Where does all the huge amount of supplement actually come from, and why isn't it considered as reliable as getting the same nutrients from food?

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 How does a multivitamin work? Where does all the huge amount of supplement actually come from, and why isn't it considered as reliable as getting the same nutrients from food?

The vitamins are created artificially and mixed with each other and the ingredients required to form it into pills (or gummies). When ingested, it's broken down and absorbed into your body like anything else. It's less effective than getting vitamins with your food for a few reasons, not least of which is that your body has a lot of mechanisms to process nutrients that aren't activated when you're not eating a meal. Processing nutrients takes calories that normally come with the vitamins, and without them your body doesn't try to process them. Mostly, it's just a weird combination of nutrients that your body has no experience dealing with in that way, so it doesn't do a good job of it. Also, some vitamins are toxic in large amounts and some aren't. Multivitamins are packed with the ones that aren't toxic in ridiculous amounts that your body can't possibly use. So the vast majority of them are just peed out.


Question: Why and how are we (humans) able to predict where a object will land (after thrown) and thus catch it?

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 Why and how are we (humans) able to predict where a object will land (after thrown) and thus catch it?

We evolved to do this. Humans have very unusual shoulder architecture compared to the other apes that gives us a unique leverage to throw things with great force and accuracy. Once an object is airborne, the human brain is (with practice) extremely good at calculating the expected trajectory. The physics involved is predictable and repeatable - gravity and air density do not change significantly, only wind. We presumably evolved to be very good at this so that our spears and javelins could be lethal from great range when hunting. You don't really want to get within kickin' distance of a water buffalo if you don't have to.


Question: If Amazon doesn’t turn a profit, how is Jeff Bezos so wealthy?

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 If Amazon doesn’t turn a profit, how is Jeff Bezos so wealthy?

Amazon spends all the money it earns on expanding its buisiness currently, which does mean no actual profit on the recordbooks, thus no profit going to the owners of the company (bezos and shareholders). But this does have the habit of boosting up stock price because this action boosts potential future profits. Bezos owns a lot of stock as the original owner of the company, so thats how all this works.


Question: Do big brand stores such as Walmart pay their workers with money that people spent at that store or is it money from elsewhere, if so, where?

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 Do big brand stores such as Walmart pay their workers with money that people spent at that store or is it money from elsewhere, if so, where?

Corporate stores pay via check. In mom and pop sole proprietorship type stores you will often be paid from the register. but any big concern is going to run something through some sort of payroll service. The question of whether or not Walmart or a similar organization will let you cash your paycheck on site is separate. Usually I would suspect they would not since that would lead to potential abuses by local management. The corporations wouldn't want to expose themselves to that sort of thing.


Question: How does water intoxication work?

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[Your final detailed answer goes here]
</answer>
 How does water intoxication work?

Drinking too much water causes an excess of water outside your cells. Because you’re increasing the amount of water but not increasing the amount of salts/solutes, the concentration of those salts decreases and osmotic pressure forces water into your cells. This causes them to swell, and notably also forces more water into your cerebrospinal fluid, increasing your intercranial pressure (pressure on the brain). A swelling of cells in the brain, combined with high ICP, can cut off circulation in small cranial vessels and the problems just keep adding up until your brain starts to experience loss of function.


Question: How do you calculate irrational powers?

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[Your final detailed answer goes here]
</answer>
 How do you calculate irrational powers?

You do it by extending the definition of exponentiation. We know that 15^2 < 15^e < 15^(3). Similarly, we know 15^(27/10) < 15^e < 15^(28/10). If we wanted to, we could mess around with limits and figure out a value that 15^e converges to. Instead of doing that each time, we redefine what it means to take a power. a^b = e^(ln a * b), and now it doesn't matter if b is rational or not.


Question: why does hot water feel so good on poison ivy?

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 why does hot water feel so good on poison ivy?

Heat overloads the nerve network so effectively that the urge to scratch is abolished for hours. Usually you stimulate the nerves through scratching, although that isn't as intense and is more localized than hot water all over your skin. The reason scratching is bad for you is because the friction tears your skin and can damage it more. Hot water has the same effect but no tear damage.


Question: Why is the chemical GenX considered safe in Telflon pans despite having the similar carcinogenic implications as it’s precursor?

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 is the chemical GenX considered safe in Telflon pans despite having the similar carcinogenic implications as it’s precursor?

Well, tldr: because it is safe, in the form of Teflon (which is a solid polymer), but as a monomer, it is dangerous to humans. By itself, it is dangerous, but that hasn't stopped the use of dangerous chemicals, just increased safety standards during the manufacture. Once you change the chemical bonds inside the molecule, the properties are changed. Chemistry works in a weird ways, for example, the same molecule can be either deadly or an effective drug to combat severe desease (enantiomers). Now, to explain why it is still used and how it is safe (kinda) think about table salt and gold production. Table salt (NaCl) is made of sodium (explosive when exposed to oxygen) and chlorine (deadly as pure gas). Together they make a lattice (cage-like structure) through bonds (almost polymer like), and salt is produced, which is safe to consume. Polyethylene is made of ethylene, which is toxic. And the same story goes for plastic bottles made from PFTE that carry water, milk, soft drinks, etc. Gold uses cyanide heap leaching. Cyanide is a very potent poison. Release of gaseous cyanide in a factory guarantees almost no survivors. BUT the safety precautions associated with this process are very high. Therefore it is still used today. And many produces use dangerous chemicals as a starting material. So at the end of the day, Teflon is safe to use, and it's production is controlled to ensure noone gets harmed (obviously depends on the country safety standards). Edit: before people say that Teflon is still carcinogenic, yes it might be, if you eat it in large amounts over years. Smoking (and even bacon, according to some sources) are carcinogens, but that doesn't stop people from consuming such. And if we get down the line of conspiracy theories, then well, I don't know what else to say.


Question: When a company is sold or part-sold, how does that result in the company itself having more money to invest? Doesn't the money just to go the old owners? I'm thinking of early stage start-ups and "series A financing" or "seed funding".

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 When a company is sold or part-sold, how does that result in the company itself having more money to invest? Doesn't the money just to go the old owners? I'm thinking of early stage start-ups and "series A financing" or "seed funding".

There is generally two ways of selling a company. It can be a private deal between the old and new owners to transfer the ownership in return for some cash or shares. But it is also possible that the owners orders an emmision where the company will print new shares for the new owners to buy. The money will then go to the company to invest in things to improve their profit. The old owners still retain their shares but it is now a much smaller part of the ownership because the new owners also gets to own shares. It is also possible to see a combination of this where some new owners will first buy the shares from the old owners and then in the same motion issue new shares for themselves to buy so that the company will get more cash on hand.


Question: What is the purpose of a decanter and how does it work?

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 What is the purpose of a decanter and how does it work?

Decanting is just a way of pouring a liquid in such a way that any denser material remains in the original vessel. The glass itself is typically not that remarkable, aside from usually looking pretty. It can be done quite easily in a wine bottle, if you slowly pour liquid out of the bottle, the densest bits (in this case, likely sediment, although immiscible liquids like an organic solvent behaves the same way) will hang around in the round bit below the neck as the lighter fluid flows over top. It might be important to note that a decanter often refers to the receiving flask, so the term itself is a bit of a misnomer.


Question: Why does including numbers and special characters in a password make it stronger if a hypothetical brute force hacker has no prior information about the composition of the password?

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 Why does including numbers and special characters in a password make it stronger if a hypothetical brute force hacker has no prior information about the composition of the password?

Imagine you have a password lock, but it is only one character and can only be a 1 or a 0. Pretty easy to crack isn't it? There are only two possible combinations, you've got a 50/50 chance of guessing it on the first try. Now imagine the same one character password can be any number between 0 and 9. Guessing the password just got five times harder. If instead it can only be a letter between a and z, including capital letters, guessing becomes almost 50 times harder. Experts call the number of possible combinations a password could be the "key space" and the larger the key space is, the harder it is to crack. Computers can guess tens of thousands of passwords per second, so making things hard for a computer involves using the biggest possible key space you can. By using numbers 0-9, letters between aA and zZ and all the special characters found on most keyboards you have roughly 90 possible one character answers. Every additional character used multiplies the number of combinations. Example, with every character having 90 possible answers and two characters required is 90x90 or 8100 possible combinations. A three letter password would have 729,000 possible combinations. A 12 character password has BILLIONS of possible combinations. All of this assumes a user will use a random selection of passwords. In the real world though people prefer to use very simple passwords, often easily remembered phrases. Many hacking attempts start by running through the 100 or so very commonly used passwords. (As a former I.T. pro, the number of people using "password123" or "LetMeIn" is depressing) Forcing users to use at least one capital letter, one number and one special character is something of a compromise between the best practice and what actually works for humans.


Question: Fruits or vegetables which are high in certain vitamins. Are they of actual use to the plant or just a by product or both?

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 Fruits or vegetables which are high in certain vitamins. Are they of actual use to the plant or just a by product or both?

I mean, the vitamins are produced for some function in the plant vitamin E for example is an antioxidant, which is used to counter some of the effects of oxidizing agents which can cause protein and DNA damage. One large factor in the production of oxidizing agents is UV radiation from the sun, so plants grown in areas with a lot of sunlight probably produce a lot of vitamin E (almonds, swiss chard, avocado, etc.) vitamin B2 is important in energy production. And one of the biggest uses of energy in plants is plant growth. So plants that grow a lot or grow quickly probably are using a lot of energy, so they probably need higher amounts of vitamin B2. It's rare that any organism would have a lot of anything that it isn't using, because it takes energy to make a lot of molecules. So if it were just some product of a reaction, the plant would likely have some way to break it down into something functional, or dispose of it. It wouldn't just hold onto an excessive amount of random junk that it won't use.


Question: Since US coins were originally made of valuable metals, why are nickels worth less than dimes despite being larger?

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 Since US coins were originally made of valuable metals, why are nickels worth less than dimes despite being larger?

Contrary to other answers here, it's *not* to make the value of the metal in the nickel equal to five cents! The real answer is apparently government pork. The first nickels were minted at the end of the Civil War, when gold and silver were being hoarded. The US government introduced copper+nickel coins whose value as metal was much less than the value printed on them. The first was a 3-cent piece, and the 5-cent nickel came soon after. The director of the US Mint at the time wanted to make a nickel weighing less than 3.9 grams, but a congressional committee upped that to 5 grams. The congressmen said this was to make it a nice round number in the metric system, but it just so happens they were good friends with wealthy industrialist Joseph Wharton, who had a near-monopoly on nickel mining in the US. Wharton's congressmen were also the folks who suggested the 3-cent nickel piece in the first place. So it seems that the nickel is big because congress was in the pocket of a guy who wanted to sell more nickel. URL_0


Question: Why do you sometimes forget/misjudge everyday mundane things?

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 Why do you sometimes forget/misjudge everyday mundane things?

So this is actually a pretty well documented phenomenon, it even has a name: Wordnesia. Unfortunately, there just isn't a good way to reproduce it in a lab setting because it happens so randomly, so studying it is difficult and experts can really only guess. A possible explanation: Usually reading and writing these sorts of words is automated, and when you try to do it manually you find that the path you usually use to get to that information hasn't been documented for the manual part of your brain to use. You can't switch from manual to automated on command, so now you're stuck not knowing where to look for the information in your brain library. The info is still there, you just don't know where right now.


Question: What is Compartmentalization in psychology?

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 What is Compartmentalization in psychology?

Pretend your brain is a library- You dont want all of the work problem books mixed in with the childhood memory books! So, you make sure to organize your library and keep all the books where they belong- that way they dont cause a mess or problem and you can keep enjoying your library. Basically you keep your emotions and feelings in certain areas, that are usually less "well traveled " so that they dont interfere with your daily life stuff.


Question: how do computers calculate pi?

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 how do computers calculate pi?

Unless somebody is doing something silly, computers don't calculate pi. They already know what it is (just like you know it's at least 3.14, and lots of people know it's 3.14159 and a some people know it's 3.1415927 and a very few people know the next few hundred digits). Intel computer chips have an instruction to load the CPU's memorized value of pi.


Question: How does currency change its ‘price’ when it’s going to be converted to another currency?

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 How does currency change its ‘price’ when it’s going to be converted to another currency?

Not sure if this is the answer you’re looking for... Converting currency is basically buying the currency you want and selling the one you have. Anytime you convert currency, someone needs to sell the one you have and buy the one you want in the open market. As demand for a currency goes up and down throughout the day, the particular price you will get will vary. The variation in price is because each “currency conversion” is an individual trade being executed on the open market.


Question: how can elements combine into molecules to become completely different substances? IE: hydrogen and oxygen becomes water.

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[Your final detailed answer goes here]
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 how can elements combine into molecules to become completely different substances? IE: hydrogen and oxygen becomes water.

Water is merely hydrogen and oxygen stuck together. Because they are bonded to one another, they are; sticker to one another as well as other things, less reactive as the system that they use to react is mostly tied up holding them together, and because they are stuck together they vibrate at different frequencies which changes how they interact with light. Their extra stickiness to one another makes them more likely to be a liquid, and their stickiness to other things makes them able to dissolve other things like salt.


Question: Why was the plant used to brew beer switched from blue lotus to hops?

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 Why was the plant used to brew beer switched from blue lotus to hops?

Beer made with only fermented cereal grain ends up tasting very sweet and people found it unpalatable. Throughout history, many things were used to flavor beer to try to balance this sweetness. Before hops it was common to add a combination of herbs and roots called gruit. Kings and goverments also found taxing beer, specifically taxing the gruit flavorings, a reliable income source. Eventually it was discovered that the oils in the Hops plants would turn bitter with heat, and not long after that it was noticed that beer flavored with hops lasted longer. This is because the acids in hops have some anitmicrobial effects and therefore delayed the beer spoiling in the times before refrigeration. The bitter taste, preservative effects, and cheaper taxes eventually made flavoring beer with hops a favorite choice. The practice started in what's now Germany and over time spread to the rest of the world, ultimately becoming the only beer flavoring still in common use.


Question: What is a wave in science?

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 What is a wave in science?

In science a wave is an oscilating disturbance through a medium. There ya go.. but really wtf does that mean. A medium is a collection of individual things. These things could be anything your heart desires. Air, water(made of individual molocules). A slinky, or string are made up molocules to.. For this lets use a chain. But each individual thing in a medium is in some way affect by its neighbor. Lets use a chain for example. The chain as a whole is the medium Each link in the chain is tied to the other. Imagine a chain laying on the floor if you pick up one single link in the chain and hold it your going to pull a few others up too. You have disturbed one link directly. But because each pulls its neighbor up you actually caused a disturbance in many. Put the chain back on the ground and bam all links are again undisturbed. But what if you lift the chain up and down really fast. Like whip it. Well you caused the same kind of disturbance as picking it up, but with higher energy. You put the energy into the first link. And then thant energy when to The next link. And every link passes a bit of that energy to the next, and that causes each link to "jump". This is a Pulse. But each link only moves up and down. Its because no link can move without its neighbor, the "jump" moves through the chain. The disturbance moves through the medium. Now you do this, whip the chain up and down twice. You see 2 of these pulses go down the chain. That is a wave the start of a wave. If you do it again and again and again you are "oscilating" the first link. This continues to cause the chain to jump over and over as long as you keep whipping it. You are continuing to put energy into the chain and that energy transfer causes a disturbance of each link and its neighbor and its neighbor and so on. Now there you have it a wave.


Question: why and how do money transfer scams work?

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 why and how do money transfer scams work?

These scams work because people don't understand what part of the money transfer system is reversible. So, they send you a check for $1500, tell you to deposit in your own account, and then wire transfer $1000 to them. You think you're making $500, but you find out the check is reversible and that the wire transfer is not. They end up with $1000 of your money, and you can't get it back. AKA Scam. They say "The $1500 is gone" because they didn't know that the transaction was reversible.


Question: Why aren't letters on keyboards in alphabetical order?

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</answer>
 Why aren't letters on keyboards in alphabetical order?

This dates back to 1868. Newspaper publisher Christopher Latham Sholes ordered the letters on the keyboard to qwerty or qwertz layout that we know now because otherwise type levers of a type writer would get caught in each other while typing, so he thought. The layout puts the letters that followed each other the most as far away from each other as possible so that the type levers would not get caught in each other while using (typing). Qwerty has solely mechanical reasons or as one would say it has a statistical background, but it only came through since the 1920s


Question: Why are great workers often poor bosses?

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 Why are great workers often poor bosses?

Managing other people is not the same as managing yourself. Many people enjoy the work they do and managing someone else removes them from that. You lose direct control over the final product. You need to rely on other people. You need deal with their personal and professional problems. Many end up becoming tyrants, becoming micromanagers , or disengaging. It is a completely different set of skills which many people haven’t been trained for. That being said, people who have never been workers are worse managers typically because they don’t understand the demands of the job.


Question: Is it possible for a country to buy another country?

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 Is it possible for a country to buy another country?

Theoretically yes, a nation could agree to be peacefully annexed with a transfer of wealth as a prerequisite. This was once fairly common, as small nations occasionally sought protection and wealth by yielding sovereignty to imperial nations. It hasn't happened in recent memory, but there's no UN "rule" (If UN rules really meant anything anyway) preventing two nations from merging.


Question: If osteoclasts and osteoblasts restructure bone density while wearing braces, why do teeth shift back to their original positions if a retainer isn't regularly worn? Why isn't the change in bone density permanent?

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 If osteoclasts and osteoblasts restructure bone density while wearing braces, why do teeth shift back to their original positions if a retainer isn't regularly worn? Why isn't the change in bone density permanent?

Sometimes the configuration of our teeth is affected by other things like the way our jaw structure affects our bite, the way we swallow, tongue habits, and things like that. Those don't change after you have braces. So, for example, a retainer might help keep your teeth in place even though all night long you are unconsciously pushing out on them with your tongue.


Question: How does sound follow the path of least resistance?

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 How does sound follow the path of least resistance?

This isnt really about the path of least resistance, its really more of a weakest link in the chain thing. If you have really shitty windows most of the sound you hear from outside will come from there. If you have really good windows most of the sound from outside you here will come from where ever the least insulated part of your house is. If the walls are decent(as well as doors) you wont hear any additional noise.


Question: With all the colors in shampoo, Why is the foam always white?

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 With all the colors in shampoo, Why is the foam always white?

The bubbles are very thin and most shampoos don't have strong enough pigment that would be noticeable in that thin layers. The individual bubbles turn effectively mostly transparent with only small amounts of each color being reflected from them. When there's lots of the bubbles, those small amounts of each color add up and that results in white. There are some shampoos which have colored foam tho. (stronger pigment) I recently bought a random shampoo and was kinda surprised when I had blue foam on my head for probably the first time in my life instead of the regular white.


Question: Why can you put rusty tools in an acid to dissolve the rust, when acid rain speeds up the (oxidation) process?

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 Why can you put rusty tools in an acid to dissolve the rust, when acid rain speeds up the (oxidation) process?

Depends what acid you are using. Some acids etch the metal under the rust, so the top layer of rust falls off. Some other acids convert Iron (III) Oxide (Rust) to iron ions which dissolve in water, eating away at the rust. Acids cause rust by providing ions. Because the rusting reaction is an electrochemical effect, the higher conductivity speeds it up. You can do the same thing with salty water, it’s not something unique to acids.


Question: How are downloads and storage mediums so accurate, such as keeping billions of bytes without a shred of noticeable corruption?

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 How are downloads and storage mediums so accurate, such as keeping billions of bytes without a shred of noticeable corruption?

The drives themselves have on-board error checking that can remap bad spots out of "spare" space on the drive. Your 200GB drive may actually have about 205GB space on it, but that other 5G is reserved for remapping those kind of bad spots (those numbers may not be exactly accurate, just an estimate). The network transport protocols used to move the data between servers also have error detection and correction in them. Your game download is made up of billions and billions of data packets getting transported to your computer. Every one of those data packets is checked for an error via a checksum. If the checksum fails, then the packet is flagged as bad, discarded, and your network card asks for a retry. And finally, when you install your game, the installer itself verifies the integrity of the files you've downloaded via a hash or checksum. This allows you to verify the file wasn't corrupted *and* sometimes it's validated against a cryptographically signed hash to verify that it wasn't tampered with somewhere between point A & B.


Question: What's that feeling before eating something sour?

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 What's that feeling before eating something sour?

You feel your salivary glands working. Saliva has many uses and you are producing it day. If your body decides you need a lot of saliva right now - for example if you haven't eaten in hours and really crave that sandwich in your hand - you can feel your salivary glands squeezing out all the saliva they can muster. A lemon works especially well because another use for saliva is diluting damaging substances, like acidic lemon juice. So when you are about to bite into a lemon, you subconciously know your mouth will get flooded in citric acid, so you drench it in saliva first to lessen the damage done to teeth and tissues.


Question: Why does it feel like I read about "major advancement in cancer treatment" every other year ? It's always something about a breakthrough and a possible treatment "in the next 5 years", but then it's repeat. What's the state of cancer treatment ?

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 Why does it feel like I read about "major advancement in cancer treatment" every other year ? It's always something about a breakthrough and a possible treatment "in the next 5 years", but then it's repeat. What's the state of cancer treatment ?

"Cancer" is not just one disease. It's an umbrella term that encompasses all kinds of uncontrolled cell replication. Every kind of cancer is a different disease with their own possible causes and treatments. Journalism often fails to make that distinction clearly. When new treatments come around, they are usually relevant to only some cancers, and it takes a long time to go through clinical trials to pin down exactly which cancers it is effective for. So, lots of treatments for lots of cancers, and they take a long time to develop and test. Edit: Some people feel I didn't answer the question well enough. So, the current state of cancer treatment varies a lot depending on the kind of cancer. Overall, the trend is strongly in favour of better survival rates because the march of progress is going as quickly as it can. For example, prostate cancer survival rates are actually really good nowadays as long as it's found early. On the other hand, pancreatic cancer is still usually a death sentence; that one is still a bigger challenge than most because you don't know you have it until it's too late. Since every kind of cancer is different, it's hard to generalize. Suffice it to say that all of the seemingly fleeting reports about new treatments definitely do bear fruit in the statistical big picture.


Question: How do they date cave paintings with the materials used, such as ochre, when the materials within the ochre likely date back long before they were mixed into ochre?

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 How do they date cave paintings with the materials used, such as ochre, when the materials within the ochre likely date back long before they were mixed into ochre?

They mostly do it by dating other human artifacts found nearby. Sometimes they use carbon or thorium dating but that's difficult because it's hard to get enough sample. One way I heard of is radioisotope dating of deposits laid down *over* cave paintings but again I think that's rare because it relies on a stalactite or something dripping onto the painting and being able to get a usable sample of those deposits.


Question: Why can’t you combine a telescope and microscope?

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 Why can’t you combine a telescope and microscope?

Telescopes are generally limited by the size and perfection of their optics rather than what you can see. You could tack on some optics to look at a narrower portion of the telescope, but the narrow portion wouldn’t contain any more detail. Kinda like how digital zoom doesn’t increase the number of pixels, it just crops away the outside of the image and stretches the center to fill that space.


Question: How can we tell how many light years away something is?

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 How can we tell how many light years away something is?

They use parallax measurements. As the Earth moves around the Sun, it causes our angle to distant objects to change. My tracking that change in angle, we can use trigonometry to figure out how far away the thing that we're looking at is. Try it yourself, look at a nearby object and walk around the room a bit while keeping your eyes on it. You see how you have to move your head to keep track of it. Now go outside, and look at a distant object. Walk around a little bit, and you'll see that you have to change the way your looking a lot less to keep it in sight. If you know exactly how the angle changed, and exactly how you moved, you could calculate exactly how far away the object is.


Question: How exactly do control rods in a nuclear reactor capture neutrons and slow down the fission occurring?

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 How exactly do control rods in a nuclear reactor capture neutrons and slow down the fission occurring?

It doesn't really have much to do with Boron or cadmium being non-metal, they work to slow the reaction because they are good neutron absorbers. They happen to be isotopes that will readily grab a free neutron into their nucleus without much complaint. The amount of neutrons you have flying around is directly related to the reaction rate, so absorbing more of them is a good way to slow things down.


Question: Why do some USB cable's not allow a connection with a PC for file sharing, whilst some do?

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 Why do some USB cable's not allow a connection with a PC for file sharing, whilst some do?

It's not the same type of cable. USB is a four-wire cable standard. Two wires for power feeding and two for data transfer. The cable you have that is not working is probably shipped with a charger for your phone. It only has the two power feed wires, because it's cheaper to produce that way. You can plug it into the computer, the computer will detect that something is plugged in. But because whatever it is is not responding to communications (and no wonder, there are not data wires!) it just assumes that it's not needed for anything and stop trying.