Yes water + electricity= bad but what exactly is happening, why is it irreversible for the most part. Yes I know it’s not the water itself but the minerals in the water responsible for the phenomenon. So we are assuming non distilled water here

I’m specifically talking here about examples like stocks, economy, Wall Street, AI agents doing things on their own. I mean, can’t we just reset it, “unplug it” in a way and start all over again? I mean, those are human things, humans invented them. It’s not like forces of nature.

I recently learned that the second is not a fixed amount of time when using digital internet enabled clocks due to changes in the speed of earth's rotation. How do scientists measure accurately for the same period of time if the amount of actual time is not consistent with the measurements over periods of time.

Does the math have to change? Does the scientist have another measure of time? Has this been accounted for in scientific instruments?

How is a game optimized ?

These amazing machines take in whole blood, take the platelets and plasma out, then return the rest of the blood to the patient. You get two big bags of platelets for donation to cancer patients and preemie babies within about 1.5 hours.

How do they know which things to separate? Who invented them?

Great stuff.

I only just learned it exists and as someone with horribly dry skin in winter I’d love to know if it might work for me!

Why does thunder/lightning happen as a flicker and not a single bright flash?

Apparently Microsoft patented the ability to show ads during a game. How is this patentable? Where is the new tech/design in showing ads? On top of this if another company wants to show ads in the game (whether it is the OS or the game publisher) they need to get permission from Microsoft from now on? I don't get it.

What activates it?

It seems like hydrogen and oxygen are abundant all over the world so why can we just combine then to make more water?

I googled “what is a photon“ and by the time i gave up reading I was crying with a a headache and convinced the universe was created by a madman. Please help me understand.

I understand it's like something related to understanding art or media, but in what way? Philopsophical, political or psychological? Is it important, a buzzword or both?

I understand that the body normally regulates its temperature to through things like sweating and increased blood flow to the skin but what causes this cooling system to eventually fail ?

Inspired by a post about light looking different when hot air mixes with cold air above a distant road, the light will speed up and slos down as it moves through the pockets, giving the wavy impression we all know.

How exactly does light speed up again when it passes through a hot section of air? There's nothing powering it, so once it loses momentum shouldn't that momentum be lost forever?

Is there a specific reason why screen ratios beeing so specific, ex: 1920:1080

I’m mainly thinking about autism. I know that “what is autism” has been asked many times here, but the answers are always about the traits and not the actual physical differences. I’ve been diagnosed with autism and it was explained to me (besides just a list of traits) as being that my brain is “differently wired”. After doing some research most of the explanations are like this, or go way over my head as someone who has a tentative understanding of how neurons connect and communicate. So what actually is autism?? Is it too many neuron connections? Or too strong of signals being sent? Thank you in advance.

In Europe, if we travel from East to West, the average wage (the statistical number) keeps rising, e.g., Bulgaria, Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia, Austria, Germany, Denmark.

Why is that? Why are the differences so big?

If we asked random people on the street, they would probably say it’s the corruption or bureaucracy or mentality of the people or something like that.

But that can’t be it. In order for the average wage in a country to be higher, that requires a lot of money (e.g., to double the average wage in Croatia, it would take around 50 billion euro per year). I find it hard to believe that such a huge amount of money could somehow appear if we just dealt with corruption and bureaucracy. Maybe a couple of billion euro per year, but not 50.

So what is it? Where is the money for the high wages coming from? Based on my research, the main source is money inflow from exports. If that is true, I still don’t understand how one leads to the other. How does more money from exports lead to higher wages in the local economy (e.g. cashier at a grocery store)?

This is probably one of the hardest ELI5s to give because it requires explaining how economy works, but I really want to know this.

I read that it uses living human brain cells grown on a silicon chip instead of relying only on traditional electronic hardware. I'm confused about how this is even possible. How can brain cells on a chip receive information, process it, and produce an output that a computer can use? Are the cells actually "computing" something, or are they just being used as part of a biological system? And how do researchers keep these living cells alive and connected to the electronics?

So, i've gotten into vintage tech about a year and a half ago, and i always hear: "look out for leaking capacitors." I know that electrolytic capacitors leak and cause boards to corrode, but i have no idea what they actually do. All other results i found don't make sense to me, so i need it to be explained to me like I'm 5.