explainlikeimfive
explainlikeimfive
358 Comments
ELI5: Why don't daily drive cars get their speed capped to 150km/h, for example, since you cannot drive that fast in most places anyway?
In my country it's almost impossible to drive past 120km/h since there's traffic jams everywhere, bad roads condition, and the regulations. The only place whe
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explainlikeimfive
182 Comments
ELI5: Why are decimeters so uncommonly used?
I’m an American so I generally use imperial units, but whenever I see SI units being used, you’ll see many measurements in meters, centimeters, and milimeters,
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explainlikeimfive
135 Comments
ELI5: Why can't most life on earth ingest, digest, and extract energy from things that aren't fats, carbs, or proteins? Why aren't there organisms that eat stuff like copper, diamond, rock, clay, etc.?
I did not get an exact answer when I looked this up myself. The best answer that was given was "because we're carbon-based lifeforms", which doesn't really help
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explainlikeimfive
8 Comments
ELI5 How does alkaline water work if your stomach is acidic?
Wouldn’t it neutralize in your tumtum?
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explainlikeimfive
93 Comments
ELI5: How much internet traffic *actually* passes through submarine cables?
I've been reading a lot about submarine cables (inspired by the novel Twist) and some say 99% of internet traffic is passed through 'em but, for example, if I'm
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explainlikeimfive
159 Comments
ELI5:Why don't car tires use innter tubes?
I'm sure there's a simple and reasonable explanation but it seems weird to me! Edit: Argh typo in the title, I'm a big dumb Edit again: Thankyou everyone for
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explainlikeimfive
26 Comments
ELI5: how do vinegar eels get into vinegar?
Never heard of them before a whatisit post which lead me down a rabbit hole. I get they are mostly harmless and people in the US probably have never seen/heard
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explainlikeimfive
18 Comments
ELI5 How do we feel the "wet" sensation?
It's summer, I've been in water quite a bit lately so Im curious, what is the process that the skin go through to tell whether its in contact with something wet
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explainlikeimfive
135 Comments
ELI5 How the first people to measure the circumference of earth do it?
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explainlikeimfive
21 Comments
ELI5 How does it benefit Google or OpenAI if people choose to use their respective LLM models?
I understand the pay to use model but so many companies are creating their own models and allowing limited free usage now. Is it just bragging rights and other
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explainlikeimfive
36 Comments
ELI5: If grip depends only on the perpendicular force and the coefficient of friction and not on the contact patch area, why are sport cars using slick and wide tyres? Doesn't larger contact area reduce the load on the tyre, reducing grip?
I've always heard that slick tyres are for more contact patch area, but why is that something desidered?
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explainlikeimfive
481 Comments
ELI5: Why do so many websites care that you're using a VPN?
Plenty of websites won't let browse them, if you're on a VPN. Why do they care? Many of them give generic login errors, if they're a site where you have an acco
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explainlikeimfive
65 Comments
ELI5: If you bend a metal stick a little bit, it springs back, but if you bend it more, it stays bent. Why?
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explainlikeimfive
14 Comments
ELI5. How can the speed that the universe is expanding be measured?
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explainlikeimfive
186 Comments
ELI5: Why do F1 cars look so different from normal cars, yet MotoGP bikes look very similar to normal bikes?
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explainlikeimfive
6 Comments
ELI5 In radio transmissions how are data/telemetry transmissions converted into sound?
Note I’m not talking about literal voice transmissions as those are apparently by a speaker capturing the sound and basically transmitting the instructions of h
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explainlikeimfive
13 Comments
ELI5 How does the temperature of a bullet affect the wound it causes?
Supposedly a flying bullet is very hot (supposedly it can be 100–300°C or 212–572°F on arrival) How does it affect the wound? Does it burn the skin it first
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explainlikeimfive
70 Comments
ELI5: What is "wet bulb temperature" and why does it matter?
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explainlikeimfive
18 Comments
ELI5 Why can't we put any metal in microwave?
Why can we put in microwave some materials, such as glass, some types of plastics, and what makes we can't put there somethings such as water and metal?
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explainlikeimfive
11 Comments
ELI5: If i choose to put my computer to sleep and not shut it down, even though there is an windows update. Why does it update anyway and restart my computer?
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explainlikeimfive
8 Comments
ELI5 The difference between Existentialism and Absurdism
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explainlikeimfive
21 Comments
ELI5: Why Do Rainbows Always Have the Same Colors in the Same Order?
I’ve seen rainbows a bunch of times, and they always have the same colors - red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet - in that exact order. Why does thi
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