Piano

ELI5 - How does a piano work?

Though it might seem odd, pianos are actually considered percussion instruments, like drums. This is because, underneath a piano's lid, in addition to a tuned string for every piano key (230 in total), there're tiny wooden hammers covered in felt for each. When a key is pressed, the appropriate hammer strikes the corresponding string, causing it to vibrate and therefore sound as a musical note. A key's hammer stays suspended as long as the key is held down, so the string continues ringing out. When the key is released, the hammer returns to resting on the string, and the felt dampens, or stops, the sound.

By drollparadox7655 9 months ago

Humans (Intelligence)

ELI5 - Why has no other species on the planet, living or extinct managed to get anywhere near the intelligence level humans have in terms of building/talking/inventing etc.?

Our brains use a lot of energy, which is why babies are born small and need lots of care. Intelligence is good if it doesn't make life too hard. To use our brains well, we need to talk, work together, and use our hands to make things. Cooking food with fire helped too, and humans are the first to balance these to benefit from intelligence.

Other human-like beings who were smart disappeared long ago, and finding evidence of them is difficult. Smartness is only useful if it helps have more children who survive.

Our early ancestors had good eyesight and hands for picking fruit, and later adapted to hunt for food when the earth changed. These skills helped them use their brains to survive tough times, which is rare.

By drollparadox7655 11 months ago

Humans (Intelligence)

ELI5 - Why has no other species on the planet, living or extinct managed to get anywhere near the intelligence level humans have in terms of building/talking/inventing etc.?

Until not long ago, other human species lived on Earth; they used fire, made tools, and buried their dead. Modern humans outlived these species, but finding evidence of their existence is hard, leaving our family tree unclear. Intelligence develops when it helps beings have more offspring, but it needs the right conditions, like those after the dinosaurs when our ancestors ate fruit. Later, the African Savannah required humans to adapt, using intelligence to thrive in tougher conditions—apparently a unique and rare sequence of events.

By Alex 11 months ago

Adobe Flash

ELI5 - What exactly was Adobe Flash and why was it disabled?

Adobe Flash, introduced in 1996, enabled video playback, interactive website components, and animations. It spurred a digital renaissance, popularizing flash-based games and cartoons, such as those on Newgrounds.com and Homestar Runner, during the internet's early years. However, Flash has become obsolete, plagued by security vulnerabilities. Despite Adobe's efforts to patch these issues, the industry has evolved, with newer technologies like HTML5 offering superior functionality for tasks previously dominated by Flash. Continuing to use Flash not only poses security risks for websites and their users but also represents a technological step backward. Adobe, recognizing the shift, has discontinued Flash, focusing instead on more contemporary solutions. The discontinuation reflects a broader industry consensus that Flash is no longer necessary, with its maintenance deemed more troublesome than beneficial.

By drollparadox7655 8 months ago

Adobe Flash

ELI5 - What exactly was Adobe Flash and why was it disabled?

Flash was mainly used years ago to enable rich web content, such as video playback, to be placed into web pages when it couldn't be done using web standards at the time. It also was largely used to develop online web browser games, such as those found on Newgrounds. Many of its uses, such as video playback, were later superseded by modern web standards (such as HTML5 and its video element). As it has fallen out of common use and is prone to security flaws, Adobe has decided that it is no longer worth maintaining.

By Alex 8 months ago

Short Squeeze

ELI5 - What is a short squeeze and how does it work?

A short squeeze occurs when the price of a heavily shorted stock suddenly rises sharply. Short sellers, who have borrowed shares to sell them in hopes of buying them back in the future at a lower price, find themselves facing potentially infinite losses as the stock’s price climbs. To limit these losses, short sellers scramble to buy back shares to return to lenders, which further increases the stock’s demand and therefore its price.

By Alex 4 months ago

Curvature of Space

ELI5 - How do we measure the curvature of space?

If space is flat there are 180 degrees in the interior angles of a triangle. Just like if you drew a triangle on a flat sheet of paper.

If space is curved, there will be more or fewer degrees in it like if you drew a triangle on a globe (like two meridians and a line of latitude).

So we need to draw big triangles. We can do that with huge space based lasers. But we can do even better with natural points of light like the cosmic microwave background.

So far, we know the universe is flat to within 0.4%.

By Alex 1 year ago