Recent comments in /f/explainlikeimfive
Flair_Helper t1_iyddwpt wrote
Reply to ELI5: Why are pills those specific shapes and sizes? I've noticed ibuprofen is always smaller and tastes sweeter than paracetamol. Codeine is tiny and amoxiclav pills are huge. Is this to make it harder to confuse them, or is it because of the way the active ingredient is released in the stomach? by mwclarkson
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[deleted] t1_iyddsvn wrote
Reply to comment by [deleted] in ELI5: Why are pills those specific shapes and sizes? I've noticed ibuprofen is always smaller and tastes sweeter than paracetamol. Codeine is tiny and amoxiclav pills are huge. Is this to make it harder to confuse them, or is it because of the way the active ingredient is released in the stomach? by mwclarkson
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[deleted] t1_iyddod6 wrote
Reply to comment by [deleted] in ELI5: Why are pills those specific shapes and sizes? I've noticed ibuprofen is always smaller and tastes sweeter than paracetamol. Codeine is tiny and amoxiclav pills are huge. Is this to make it harder to confuse them, or is it because of the way the active ingredient is released in the stomach? by mwclarkson
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Thor527 t1_iyddf2w wrote
Reply to comment by sparklesandflies in ELI5: Why does stuff dissolve in hot water more? by samuelma
To add to this, unless the hand soap is anti microbial, hand washing generally doesn’t kill germs. As you said though it helps rinse them off your skin and temperature doesn’t make any difference beyond comfort unless it’s hot enough to really burn you.
Edit: I stand corrected, disrupting the membrane can kill some bacteria. I thought that was only true for some soaps and not all but I guess I was wrong.
xanthraxoid t1_iyddcmb wrote
Reply to comment by obiwanjacobyx7x in ELI5: Why are pills those specific shapes and sizes? I've noticed ibuprofen is always smaller and tastes sweeter than paracetamol. Codeine is tiny and amoxiclav pills are huge. Is this to make it harder to confuse them, or is it because of the way the active ingredient is released in the stomach? by mwclarkson
There are quite a few random things that get special additives to make them really bitter (e.g. Denatonium, a.k.a. "Bitrex")
It's put on button batteries (which are Bad News to swallow), used for special nail varnish to discourage nail biting, added to various toxic substances that people might otherwise be tempted to consume (such as "denatured alcohol" and antifreeze which is naturally quite sweet) and so on.
I'm not sure if this is what's used to discourage snorting of crushed pills (our noses don't "taste") and it's difficult to imagine something that would irritate your nose without also irritating any other mucous membrane (such as your entire digestive system from lips to lips)
I did a quick google and everything I found seemed to be focussed on making pills physically resistant to crushing, so maybe they haven't found anything that fits the bill here. I wonder if there's something they could use that would be inactivated by stomach acid quickly enough to not irritate your stomach, but you would definitely not want in your nose.
Of course, if you're addicted to something, then it would take some pretty persuasive deterrent to stop you getting your fix - smelling like shit probably wouldn't do it :-/
TyrconnellFL t1_iydda8f wrote
Reply to comment by saywherefore in ELI5 If money can come out of nowhere, can't it pop into somewhere? by TheKrillers
That doesn’t make money disappear. Governments levy taxes and issue bonds to have money that they spend. They could just disappear money, but they don’t, because there’s always something to spend on.
The government could issue bonds to cover all the outstanding student debt. It’s not cancellation, it’s shifting the debt. The government could then do whatever they want with it, but it’s money they’ve spent that has to come from somewhere. Printing money to arbitrarily make it cost less is an option, but it’s one that functional governments don’t use because using inflation to make your debts not matter is a disastrous policy.
Green_Average t1_iydcxuv wrote
Reply to comment by godsFavgirl in ELI5 how the illegal trade of human organs works? by C20_H26_N2O
Of course you've lived it. I totally believe that.
You went to Iran, saw an ad and got yourself a kidney.
And if you're claiming to have seen an ad in some other country - I still totally believe you. Of course. Both your kidneys must be from there, no?
As for regulation, two charities work with the Iranian Ministry of Health to regulate this. Since it's legal, it can easily be regulated.
Read up, before you BS on the Internet, Baby!
Nooneofsignificance2 t1_iydcw97 wrote
Reply to ELI5: How were a group of obscure companies the cause of the 2008 financial crisis? by WartimeHotTot
Bear Sterns and Lehman did not cause the crisis. Every bank was holding onto large amount of mortgage back securities that were toxic. Bear Sterns and Lehman while not famous in the commercial world we’re big in the investment world. So, when these two began to fail it became apparent to everyone on Wall Street just how serious the situation was and the banks began to panic. Several other banks had so many toxic assets that they would have easily failed if the U.S. government did not step in.
I research a little bit more about the financial crisis itself, and you’ll get a better understanding of what was going on. Heck, watching the big short is a good introduction.
WinBarr86 t1_iydcvxm wrote
Reply to comment by urzu_seven in ELI5: How is that space is “flat” yet we are able to look around the universe (up, down, left, right, etc.,) as if it were not flat? by nhabz
Trying to explain the concept of flat as to curved without using mathematical terms is hard. Flat is a concept, just means non curved. To explain in detail requires a fair bit of knowledge of things like diffent types of geometry and understanding fundamentals of curvatures and Euclidean geometry. Best way to explain flat is paper.
Liese1otte t1_iydcsvk wrote
Reply to comment by shompyblah in ELI5: How does machine learning work? by Nightmarewasta
Correct!
However, this is just an analogy. In reality programmers simulate "reward" and "punishment" using different techniques that effectively result in the same thing happening. In neural networks, those are represented in weights in biases, for example.
blipsman t1_iydclsr wrote
Reply to ELI5: If a company is public and a person owns 75% of the shares, can they be kicked out/fired by other board members? by OrdinarilyAliveHuman
Most likely not, because it'd be incredibly rare (impossible?) to see somebody with 75% of shares, but less than 50% of voting shares. If all shares aren't equal then you almost always see the opposite where some shares held by largest shareholder are worth more votes than others, ie. how Mark Zuckerberg has over 50% of voting rights on Meta stock despite owning way less than 50% of the company. But never less.
Chromotron t1_iydcjkw wrote
Reply to comment by ialsoagree in ELI5: Why does stuff dissolve in hot water more? by samuelma
> Something being dissolved can be endo or exothermic, there's no hard and fast rule about whether dissolving something will heat or cool a liquid. Saying it's one way or another just isn't accurate, it depends entirely on what you're dissolving.
Look, you get hinged on this again, yet the original post never said it is just one or another. It differentiated between the exothermic "reaction" of the formation of hydrogen bonds (or van-der-Waals forces or others, unmentioned ones) and the endothermic dissolution of the (often ionic, but also not explicitely mentioned) bonds in the solid. Those are two things, their sign is (almost always) pretty clear and opposite, and the heat/cold of dissolution comes from their (signed!) sum. Hence it can be either way, and this was mentioned in that post.
Yes, they left out some detail and might( have wrongly implied that the total is always negative, i.e. dissolution is endothermic, but this was not what you called out and this is ELI5, not a journal paper.
roberth_001 t1_iydccbz wrote
Reply to comment by ToxiClay in eli5. If Windows is an 11gb download, why do you need at least 65gbs free on your hard drive to run it? by graemo72
Wiztree uses the File Allocation Table where possible to massively speed up discovery. I don't believe Wiztree supports that, it certainly never used to
explainlikeimfive-ModTeam t1_iydc9c4 wrote
Reply to ELI5: Why do 26°C (78°F) feel colder in the water than 26°C (78°F) air temperature? by GrooveBeatz
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drafterman t1_iydc96g wrote
Reply to comment by Aurigae54 in ELI5: Why does stuff dissolve in hot water more? by samuelma
>Liquids have a fixed volume regardless of temperature
chicagotim1 t1_iydc5fy wrote
Reply to ELI5: If a company is public and a person owns 75% of the shares, can they be kicked out/fired by other board members? by OrdinarilyAliveHuman
Technically, but almost always (if not 100% of the time) the person with 75% of the shares will also have >50% of the board seats and that would never happen.
blipsman t1_iydc3di wrote
Reply to ELI5: How were a group of obscure companies the cause of the 2008 financial crisis? by WartimeHotTot
Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers were giant investment banks back in the day, but they weren't commercial banks so they didn't advertise to attract customers like the banks who might look for customers to open checking or savings accounts, or small retail brokerage accounts. Their clients/customers were corporations, large institutional investors (insurance companies, mutual funds, university endowments), other investment banks and private equity firms, high net worth investors (those with many millions to invest)... these aren't clients you advertise to on a billboard or magazine ad. Maybe you'd see ads in the Wall St. Journal or Forbes magazine. Certainly you'd see many mentions of them in such publications.
I grew up in an upper middle class area in the '80's-'90's, lawyer dad, lots of lawyer, doctor, trader types among my friends' parents and my parents' friends... I knew of Bear Stearns and Lehman even as a kid because we knew people who worked for them, my dad did work with them (he was an in-house attorney, often doing corporate acquisitions with investment bank involvement). I had friends who had internships with them during college (I myself worked at a portfolio management firm who often managed 7-8 figure accounts held by those firms), or even got jobs with them after college (one of my best friends growing up was an associate at Lehman when it went bust).
Flair_Helper t1_iydc1eq wrote
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Your submission has been removed for the following reason(s):
Straightforward or factual queries are not allowed on ELI5. ELI5 is meant for simplifying complex concepts.
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godsFavgirl t1_iydbz8y wrote
Reply to comment by Green_Average in ELI5 how the illegal trade of human organs works? by C20_H26_N2O
I'm not sure about the location but about "centralized matching system", there is no such thing. They usually write the blood type when they publish the advertisement.
And about "the price", because these people are most uneducated and poor, they just ask for the least amount of money and there is no justice in pricing.
And baby, I didn't read about it, I lived it;)
Inevitable_Thing_270 t1_iydbxdh wrote
Reply to ELI5: Why are pills those specific shapes and sizes? I've noticed ibuprofen is always smaller and tastes sweeter than paracetamol. Codeine is tiny and amoxiclav pills are huge. Is this to make it harder to confuse them, or is it because of the way the active ingredient is released in the stomach? by mwclarkson
It’s a bit of both and other things.
You’re supposed to be able to identify a pill from its appearance. This can be done by a combination of colour, shape, size and symbols imprinted on it or something printed on the side of a capsule. At an individual person level it means that if you’re taking more than one type of pill at a time and pop them into your hand, you can see that you have the number and type you expect. At a bigger level, random pills could potentially be identified from a database
You’ve then got other things like the active drug. 1g of paracetamol is a standard dose for an adult, so you can’t go smaller than the volume of that amount. But you then have to add in any preservatives, binders etc needed
Generally you want tasteless, but it’s not always possible, even with pills. There might be a constituent of that has a horrible flavour so a nicer flavour is put in to mask it (eg in liquid drugs for kids). Other times there will be something that tastes horrendous and there’s no chance of covering it (eg 5mg soluble prednisolone tablets taste horrendous even if swallowed whole and seems it can’t be covered). Then you have a coating that might be needed. Some pills will need to release their contents after they’ve left the stomach and are in the intestines, so need a different coating than a simple water soluble one, and it might have a butter or sweet taste.
Colour is another thing. There’s a fair amount of research about the placebo effect of the colour of the pill. Such as yellow or red pills seeming to have a stimulant effect and blue pills are sedatives. This is with placebos. So if you are making a pill, it makes a bit of sense to match its colour to this research. But many manufacturers don’t do this, so it’s not taken into consideration often
Mannequin_Fondler t1_iydbofd wrote
Reply to comment by nmxt in ELI5: How does electricity shock us in water? by thebiggestbirddd
Well water itself won’t conduct anything.
But yeah if you add NACL to the mix or soap…..ohhhhh baby watch out.
[deleted] t1_iydbczi wrote
Reply to comment by [deleted] in ELI5: Why are pills those specific shapes and sizes? I've noticed ibuprofen is always smaller and tastes sweeter than paracetamol. Codeine is tiny and amoxiclav pills are huge. Is this to make it harder to confuse them, or is it because of the way the active ingredient is released in the stomach? by mwclarkson
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Miraclefish t1_iydbcl6 wrote
Reply to comment by JeNiqueTaMere in eli5. If Windows is an 11gb download, why do you need at least 65gbs free on your hard drive to run it? by graemo72
🤔😂
Way2Foxy t1_iydbbgs wrote
Reply to comment by [deleted] in ELI5: Why do 26°C (78°F) feel colder in the water than 26°C (78°F) air temperature? by GrooveBeatz
To add on to your answer, we don't feel temperature, we just feel the heat transfer rate. That's one of the reasons we have a "feels like" temperature in our weather forecasts.
PofanWasTaken t1_iyde6cv wrote
Reply to comment by nmxt in ELI5: Why does stuff dissolve in hot water more? by samuelma
How great is the temperature rise from sugar?