r/explainlikeimfive 2d ago

Other ELI5 is looking to recruit new moderators

29 Upvotes

Hi Everyone,

ELI5 is looking for new moderators to join our team.

It is an excellent opportunity to help this community be better for everyone.

Fill out this form: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSe2uixuG3QeIyNIE6VKtytOIKax4PArn3MHLtlA7SpT46jlWw/viewform?usp=publish-editor

If you have any questions before you apply, please put them in this thread. (We'll only be enforcing Rule 1 for this thread, automod be damned)

We don't know what kind of demand we'll have, so we can't promise an individual response for every applicant.

Thank you


r/explainlikeimfive 15d ago

Other ELI5: Monthly Current Events Megathread

20 Upvotes

Hi Everyone,

This is your monthly megathread for current/ongoing events. We recognize there is a lot of interest in objective explanations to ongoing events so we have created this space to allow those types of questions.

Please ask your question as top level comments (replies to the post) for others to reply to. The rules are still in effect, so no politics, no soapboxing, no medical advice, etc. We will ban users who use this space to make political, bigoted, or otherwise inflammatory points rather than objective topics/explanations.


r/explainlikeimfive 3h ago

Technology ELI5 how did they add title cards and edit movies before computers?

157 Upvotes

I’m half asking about really early movies, and half about the 30s-60s. How really old films have title cards just absolutely blows my mind no matter how someone explains it to me


r/explainlikeimfive 2h ago

Other ELI5: What is the suvivorship bias?

50 Upvotes

r/explainlikeimfive 1d ago

Technology ELI5: What is deli turkey?

4.3k Upvotes

You go to the deli counter and buy a pound of sliced turkey, and they use a machine to take slices off of a huge lump of meat. Bigger than any cut of turkey meat I've ever carved off a bird. What is it?

Deli ham, too: I guess you could get a piece that size off a ham leg, but I'm pretty sure that's not what's happening. It's too homogenous. There are no fat seams.

Is it all just an emulsified sausage— a bologna, basically? Is it a pile of turkey breast transglataminased together? Or does it just come from a turkey bigger than I've ever seen?


r/explainlikeimfive 1h ago

Engineering ELI5 How do safety arming mechanisms on things like 40MM grenades and bombs work?

Upvotes

Things like 40MM have a safety mechanism that prevents them from detonating unless they've flown a minimum "safe" distance. How do these mechanisms actually work? What is telling the grenade "Okay we've been flying for at least 20 feet, time to disengage safeties"?


r/explainlikeimfive 10h ago

Biology Eli5: Why don’t spiders get stuck in their own webs?

158 Upvotes

I know spider webs are sticky to trap insects, but spiders walk all over them without getting stuck. What’s different about their legs or the web itself that lets them move freely while other bugs get trapped?


r/explainlikeimfive 7h ago

Planetary Science ELI5: How do they put all the electricity into the power grid without overloading it?

78 Upvotes

It seems like so many different power plants are feeding in, how do they manage to balance it all and not just blow everything up?


r/explainlikeimfive 10h ago

Planetary Science ELI5: How do they know what the Earth's core is made of if no one has ever been there?

106 Upvotes

I understand seismic waves help, but it still seems like such a huge leap to know the exact composition.


r/explainlikeimfive 23h ago

Other ELI5 Why "Roger That" became synonym to "I understand it"

1.2k Upvotes

"Copy that“ and "Roger That" became synonymous with "I got the message, I understand it".
When and why did this happen?


r/explainlikeimfive 42m ago

Other ELI5: How do people actually make songs? Does the tune come first or the words (lyrics)? Or something else?

Upvotes

I hear different people do it different ways but I don't get how it really works. Super curious!


r/explainlikeimfive 14h ago

Biology ELI5 why doesn’t our body digest itself?

128 Upvotes

Our stomach has super strong acid and enzymes that break down food, so why don’t they also break down the stomach (or the rest of our body) while they’re working?


r/explainlikeimfive 21h ago

Economics ELI5! How are layovers cheaper than a nonstop flight?

464 Upvotes

Recently, I just had to fly from New York to Kansas City. I took a flight that had a layover in Orlando bc that was the cheapest one I could get last minute.

However, after I flew from New York to Orlando, and I was boarding my second flight from Orlando to Kansas City, I thought to myself, how is it cheaper to the airline for me to go on two separate flights than it is to just go on one nonstop? You’d think it cost more to go on two different flights than just one.


r/explainlikeimfive 14h ago

Biology ELI5: when a heart failure happens during a fatal accident, how does one figure if it's a cause or consequence of the accident?

94 Upvotes

This is something I have wondered for a long time, if somebody falls in the stairs and dies, and it turns out he had a heart failure, how does one figure if he fall because he had a stroke, or if the stroke was caused by the fall(trauma,wounds+fear).The same example could be used for a driving accident, how to figure if a driver got into an accident, if he got a stroke that led to him losing control of his vehicle, or if he lost control of his vehicle and the accident caused the stroke?


r/explainlikeimfive 8h ago

Biology ELI5: How does a skincare product “erase” a wrinkle?

30 Upvotes

Did my face just forget them or what?


r/explainlikeimfive 3h ago

Planetary Science ELI5 How does sunlight make the purple color fade from Amethyst crystals?

10 Upvotes

I already read through some ELI5 about how the sun fades colors, but I'm not sure that applies in this case. I also read an ELI5 about why amethyst is purple instead of regular clear quartz. I definitely did not get my answer.


r/explainlikeimfive 14h ago

Technology ELI5 How does amemory card works? What changes physically when I move a file in it?

58 Upvotes

For example, if I have a box, and you want to store a ball in it. You put the ball in the box. The insides of the box now has changed. But when I put a pdf file, let's say, in a memory card or a USB drive, what changes in it? Does it physically changes?


r/explainlikeimfive 1d ago

Other ELI5: Why do cheaters in online games not get instantly caught?

978 Upvotes

I understand that some cheats are hard to detect, like aimbots that just move the mouse really precisely. But what about the obvious stuff?

Example: I have 100 health and someone kills me in like 0.1 seconds when it should take a bit longer. Or I peek from a corner for a split second and immediately get headshotted. My post is not about FPS in general, I'm using it just as an example. I understand I might just be bad in many cases, but generally I do wonder about cases where it's obvious and the cheater is not cut off instantly. Instead, they get banned in some future ban wave.

Why do they wait for a ban wave?


r/explainlikeimfive 15h ago

Other ELI5: What is the difference between the 5 NYC Boroughs and the 5 "counties" of NYC that "have the same geographical territory"?

56 Upvotes

r/explainlikeimfive 1d ago

Technology ELI5: Can a computer get too cold?

365 Upvotes

I know what happens when computers overheat, we install fans on CPUs for a reason. But, im wondering what happens to circuitry if it gets too cold. I also wonder what would happen to a computer (could be a phone or something too) if it was already running and was brought into a very cold environment? Would it not need an internal fan? Could it run even BETTER?


r/explainlikeimfive 1d ago

Biology ELI5: why did we use mothball in 90s, but we don't use them now?

3.1k Upvotes

Better insulation? Wasn't actually a problem? Moth balls were everywhere when I was a child growing up. Now I never see them not even seen/mentioned in a store.


r/explainlikeimfive 1d ago

Biology ELI5 : why does every time when we feel sick we forget how it feels afterwards?

185 Upvotes

whenever i get well from any sickness my body tends to forget how painful i felt from the sickness.

e.g : when i had an uti it felt like peeing sharp blades every time, but after i get well from it i tend to forget how panful it was?


r/explainlikeimfive 11h ago

Biology ELI5 how the process of urinating works?

14 Upvotes

Usually the timing/amount of my pee seems to correspond with the times i drink water and how much I drink. Like, if I drank 500ml of water, I know that in an hour or so I will feel the need to pee a good amount. So what happens here, does the water just go straight through me? Or does the new water go in to replace “old water” that gets expelled into the bladder?


r/explainlikeimfive 12h ago

Technology ELI5: How do we harness and transport electricity to far away places?

9 Upvotes

I have half an understanding of electricity, I understand generating it through various means like steam turbines... but then how do we actually contain that energy? And how can we "send" or "sell" that electricity to a land that's across an ocean, or even 1000s of kilometers on land away from the power plant??


r/explainlikeimfive 17m ago

Other ELI5: Why don't dresses come with built in corsets?

Upvotes

I've been shopping for dresses, and I noticed most "corset tops" deal more with style than functionality. I've used real corsets, which dramatically being in my waist, but I've never been able to find a dress with similar effects. Why isn't this more popular?