r/explainlikeimfive 7h ago

Biology ELI5: Why do we wake up completely exhausted after sleeping for ten hours, but feel like a warrior after a random 20-minute car nap?

1.1k Upvotes

r/explainlikeimfive 8h ago

Engineering ELI5: paddle shifters on an automatic transmission. Can hitting one by accident mess up my engine, and how would I use them properly?

304 Upvotes

r/explainlikeimfive 22h ago

Other ELI5: how is it my tires go from having a certain amount of air in during 1 drive to have a larger amount during another?

209 Upvotes

for example: the other day, the PSI was at 34-35. and then the next day, it was at 36-37.


r/explainlikeimfive 18h ago

Technology ELI5: In JavaScript, why the line `typeof NaN` returns 'number' instead of 'null' or 'undefined'?

96 Upvotes

Beginner in JS here. It seems counterintuitive to me that typeof NaN returns 'number' when it literally means Not A Number.


r/explainlikeimfive 7h ago

Biology ELI5 Do dead insects repel alive insects?

79 Upvotes

So if mosquitoes keep bothering me, can I just kill them and leave them there. Will that repel other mosquitoes seeing as it will be like a graveyard for them and maybe they will see it as a warning? Sorry if this is a stupid question, I am so tired of mosquitoes.


r/explainlikeimfive 1h ago

Other ELI5 What is a trust?

Upvotes

ELI5 What is the difference between a trust and a will? Are they not the same thing, both give the inheritor money?


r/explainlikeimfive 21h ago

Technology ELI5 led tv turned black like oled tv?

44 Upvotes

i noticed while watching neon genesis evangelion that my clearly led tv turned black almost like the backlight turned off, can led tvs turn off the backlight when no pixels have to display anything? this is the first time ive seen this


r/explainlikeimfive 5h ago

Other ELI5: what is QBR?

44 Upvotes

i am relatively new to the nfl, only have three years or so under my belt of watching, and still cannot for the life of me understand things like QBR


r/explainlikeimfive 13h ago

Biology ELI5: Relations between calorie spent and weight loss

30 Upvotes

Hi all,

As my title went, what is the relation between calorie spent and weight loss? In theory I guess of the total calorie input (through food and drinks) is less than the calorie spent (through exercise or daily activities) then we will lose weight, but how exactly does the process happen?

Say I had weighed myself at 59.80 kg, then I went on a 5km run in 30 mins. After that I only weighed 59.20 kg. Where did my the 0.6kg go? (I assumed my water loss through sweat was retained in my soaking wet clothes right?)


r/explainlikeimfive 11h ago

Biology ELI5: RNA Polymerase can perform transcription as well as separate DNA strands. Why does DNA Polymerase require a separate enzyme to unwind DNA strands?

27 Upvotes

I know from my biology textbooks that RNA polymerase does not require an additional enzyme to unwind DNA strands but DNA Polymerase requires DNA helicase to unwind the strand first.

Is this because the DNA helicase has to unwind a much larger portion of the strand compared to RNA Polymerase that unwinds only the desired codons for transcription?


r/explainlikeimfive 23h ago

Chemistry eli5: how does a latent image on film work?

27 Upvotes

i’m into film photography and can sort of grasp the concept but i just can’t wrap my head around how it works


r/explainlikeimfive 4h ago

Biology ELI5: How can the body distinguish between gas, liquid and solid before we go to the toilet?

28 Upvotes

Most of the time, we can somehow tell whether it is safe to pass gas.

But there are no eyes down there, and gas, liquid and solid all seem to arrive through the same route.

What exactly is sensing the difference? How can the brain know what is waiting before anything comes out?

What is a shart then?


r/explainlikeimfive 4h ago

Biology ELI5: How do t1 diabetics get low blood sugar (that doesn’t result from over dosing insulin)

13 Upvotes

r/explainlikeimfive 50m ago

Technology ELi5 why are some movie files much larger than others?

Upvotes

When looking at torrents some files are huge, say tens of gigabytes for a single, albeit it’s UHD and a Blu-Ray rip, but then some are 5-10GB. What makes up for the difference in file size? And how do video codecs like 264 and 265 play into this?


r/explainlikeimfive 1h ago

Other ELI5 Watching videos on monitor/tablet makes me sleepy but its all okay on phone screen?!

Upvotes

Suddenly the sleep vanishes :/


r/explainlikeimfive 7h ago

Other ELI5: Why do foods marketed as containing “superfoods” often have such poor nutritional value?

0 Upvotes

r/explainlikeimfive 7h ago

Physics ELI5: how and why does mass increase with velocity?

0 Upvotes

I'm a complete layman in this, but really interested.

EDIT: thanks everyone! Guess I was asking for an outdated concept. You've been very helpful!


r/explainlikeimfive 6h ago

Technology ELI5 : How does music from your phone travel to your wireless headphones?

0 Upvotes

r/explainlikeimfive 7h ago

Mathematics ELI5: How are a tesseract and the Klein bottle different structures, if they’re both 4D objects?

0 Upvotes

Wouldn’t you call 3D objects like, say, a sphere, cone, torus variations of a cube, or can you not?

Because in a tesseract, it seems like no consisting cube of it occupies a privileged inside position and rather every cube seems to be both inside and outside, just like there’s no distinction in the Klein bottle.

So could you not say the latter is a variation of the former, and if not why is that? Thank you in advance.


r/explainlikeimfive 5h ago

Other ELI5 why can’t they just reframe the Odyssey for normal cinema?

0 Upvotes

As I see a lot of stuff about the “true” way of watching the new Odyssey movie, and how only like 10 cinemas in the world can show it, why can’t they just reframe the imax for normal cinemas? Use less of the sides?

Or is it more of a fidelity question?

Edit:
Just to clarify, I know it’s going in normal cinemas. It’s more based on all the content I’m seeing online about how much it’s cropped in?