| Can depression and other mood disorders decrease mental ability? Can it make you dumber? Posted: 09 Dec 2015 07:55 PM PST |
| If you drop your a phone or something else with a glass screen and the screen doesn't crack, does it have a higher chance of shattering the next time you drop it? Posted: 10 Dec 2015 07:40 AM PST If you drop glass and it doesn't crack, are there invisible changes to the glass that make it weaker? submitted by wtricht [link] [2 comments] |
| Do larger people require more sleep than smaller people? Posted: 09 Dec 2015 08:45 PM PST |
| Is drinking ice cold water any better/worse for your body than drinking room temperature water? Posted: 09 Dec 2015 10:53 AM PST I've heard that drinking very cold water helps you burn more calories since your body has to expend energy to heat the water. Is there any truth to this? If not, does ice cold water affect our bodies any differently than comparatively warm water? submitted by WeebleWobs [link] [22 comments] |
| [physics] When looking at pictures of atoms, what am I really seeing? Posted: 09 Dec 2015 08:25 PM PST |
| What exactly do superconductors do? Posted: 09 Dec 2015 05:31 PM PST Hi /r/askscience! I'm pretty familiar with what superconductors do in practice -- when you cool a really bizarre compound to a very low temperature, you can place the object a few inches over a magnet to produce quantum locking and thus the superconductor is fixed in space. I just don't understand why that is. I have a basic understanding of conductivity and a more ignorant understanding of electromagnetism, so when I read that superconductors have "zero electrical resistance," I had a very elementary understanding of what that meant. How does having zero electrical resistance work to counteract gravity? Why is it so easy to move the superconductor around above the magnets? What's actually going on within that system? Thanks! submitted by nicka_please [link] [10 comments] |
| Is there literally ZERO resistance in superconductors or is it just miniscule or neglectable (like stuff normally is in real-life as opposed to theory)? Posted: 10 Dec 2015 07:14 AM PST |
| What is an everyday process or phenomenon that is still poorly understood? Posted: 09 Dec 2015 09:45 PM PST |
| What causes land to be land, and oceans ocean? Why are some tectonic plates oceanic, and others continental? And why are some plates split roughly half and half? Posted: 10 Dec 2015 06:08 AM PST I admit, my interest in this topic is not entirely scientific. I've been thinking about algorithm-based terrain generation for computer games, specifically 4X strategy games like the Civilisation series, and I realised that I don't really understand what causes some bits of the globe to be land, and some ocean. Everyone knows that mountain ranges are created where two tectonic plates collide, but what I don't understand is what determines the shape of landmasses as a whole. Using this image as a reference, why is the Pacific plate almost entirely below sea level, excepting volcanic hotspot archipelagos, yet the Eurasian plate is almost entirely above sea level? And why are many plates, like the South American and African plates, split roughly half and half? I feel like I'm missing some key underlying mechanism here. Why are the land bits land, and the ocean bits ocean? submitted by StezzerLolz [link] [comment] |
| Why don't we have ceramic engines? Posted: 09 Dec 2015 09:54 AM PST Ceramics can be heated to higher tempratures than common engine materials without melting. By doing so increasing the efficiency of the engine. What's stopping us? submitted by Shotdownace [link] [43 comments] |
| Could one physically feel something touch their brain? Posted: 09 Dec 2015 08:58 PM PST Title. I was listening to a comedic autonomous sensory meridian response (ASMR) video when a character mentioned massaging someone's brain. If you were in the middle of an open brain surgery, and the surgeon began to "massage" your brain, could you physically feel it? submitted by JP20Boss [link] [5 comments] |
| Is there anything in the ocean mirroring the hydrological cycle above the ocean? (Evaporate - precipitate etc) Posted: 10 Dec 2015 06:14 AM PST |
| Why does a paper clip heat up when I bend it / twist it over and over? Posted: 09 Dec 2015 02:52 PM PST Am I somehow trapping energy in said paperclip by manipulating it, which is then bleeding out as heat? Thanks! Edit: I would love to flair this post into some category, but I am not nearly smart enough to know which tag it should have. Physics maybe? Probably not archaeology unless Egyptians also liked to fiddle with paper clips while avoiding building the pyramids. submitted by ADogNamedSpot [link] [10 comments] |
| When drinking beverages with caffeine, does the caffeine effect you more if you drink it all right away or if you slowly drink it? Posted: 09 Dec 2015 08:49 PM PST |
| Why are aryl flourides more reactive than aryl iodides? Posted: 10 Dec 2015 01:15 AM PST Iodine is a better leaving group than fluorine and so alkyl fluorides are less reactive than alkyl iodides. But why is the opposite true in aryl halides? submitted by pigeoncrap [link] [comment] |
| What is the Copenhagen Interpretation? Posted: 09 Dec 2015 10:56 PM PST I assume this is asked fairly frequently, so I did a search. After reading 4 or so posts, I felt I needed to make my own. So this is how I understand the situation: The Copenhagen Interpretation thinks that particles exists in multiple states. So for Schrodinger's Cat, the cat is both alive and dead. Then, when you observe reality, it stops at one state. What state it stops at is probabilistic. But the point is that since particles exist simultaneously in multiple states, they are innately probabilistic when they interact with humans. So I have two questions: 1) Is this school of thought the leading one? If so, why? 2) Can you explain to me this process. In particular, how do we know (or why do we think) that nature is probabilistic and that particles exist in different states unobserved, rather than believing that we don't have enough knowledge to understand how they operate. For instance, let's use the particle-wave example. The Copenhagen Interpretation says light is BOTH a photon and a wave until observed. That seems weird; why isn't it that light is a third thing that exhibits characteristics of photons and waves, but we just don't know what that thing is yet? Why is the universe probabilistic rather than just us not having enough knowledge? submitted by blueberry_crepe [link] [8 comments] |
| Can a black hole lose enough mass so that it's no longer collapsed under its own gravity? What does it become? Posted: 09 Dec 2015 07:15 PM PST As a young-ish astronomy enthusiast, my understanding is this: the concept of Hawking radiation allows a black hole to lose a small amount of mass over time. It is also my understanding that black holes are collapsed by their own gravity into a singularity. Assuming I'm correct so far, could a black hole, therefore, lose enough mass via Hawking radiation to no longer be able to maintain a singularity? If so, what does it become? submitted by czechmatey [link] [1 comment] |
| Is intelligence genetic? Posted: 09 Dec 2015 03:19 PM PST I was talking with a friend and intelligence came up. He said that Where you live and how you're raised has more to do with your intelligence than your genetics. Is he right? (Also sorry if the flair is wrong. I didn't know whether to put it under Biology, Neuroscience, or Psychology.) submitted by AGodzGamerz [link] [6 comments] |
| "Actually what would happen to the earth if it instantly shrunk down to the size of a basketball but kept its mass?" Posted: 09 Dec 2015 10:12 PM PST Asked over here in /r/Astronomy by /u/kaseijin64: "Anything getting close would be ripped to shreds by the tidal forces. Escape velocity wouldn't be light speed but would still be pretty high. No one is getting off. I guess the earth would become some kind of weird high density neutron star like thing? What would it be made of? Would it just explode due to the heat? Actually what would happen to the earth if it instantly shrunk down to the size of a basketball but kept its mass?" The Schwarzschild Radius is 9mm, as /u/zer0vital said in the parent comment, but at the size of a basketball, what would happen? Would anything particularly interesting happen, or would it just become a very densely-packed orb? submitted by GingerBreadNAM [link] [2 comments] |
| Do hydrogels that have been grown and shrunk look different from those that have not? Posted: 10 Dec 2015 01:53 AM PST |
| How many children each woman in every generation must have had in order to populate the world to the level it is now if god had created Adam and Eve ca 10 000 years ago (feel free to correct the time period)? Posted: 09 Dec 2015 03:50 PM PST The question came to me watching Ricky Gervais and his stand-up about bible. Would it even be possible or would it need some crazy number of children per woman? I tried to make some calculations, but it soon got impossible when I realised that I needed to consider the change of mortality rate amongst children and some other factors that demand some knowledge about population sciences. The "10 000 years ago" came from google as it seemed to be the most common opinion. I may be totally wrong about that. submitted by 6unauss [link] [8 comments] |
| What would happen if we took a giant vacuum and long hose, and sucked Jupiter's gasses into space, to reveal the inside? Posted: 09 Dec 2015 11:10 AM PST |
| Is depression linked to education level and/or IQ? Posted: 09 Dec 2015 12:07 PM PST I am in a doctoral program. As I become more educated, I become more and more depressed about the world, society, etc. I've discussed this with a few in my cohort. The phrase "ignorance is bliss" seems true. Many greats in history suffered from depression (e.g. Albert Einstein). Does having more knowledge lead to depression? submitted by doctorskeeter [link] [5 comments] |
