How does a building sprinkler system work? A building sprinkler system is a network of pipes and sprinkler heads that are activated by heat, not smoke. A sprinkler system is fairly straightforward. A network of water pipes is laid through the building, usually above the ceiling. At predetermined distances, a sprinkler head sticks through a […]
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What is Occam’s razor? Occam’s razor is a principle that says if you have two competing ideas to explain something, you should always prefer the simpler of the two. It is named after William of Ockham, but he never called it “Ockham’s razor” himself. The basic idea behind Occam’s razor is that if you have
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How does a vacuum cleaner create suction? A vacuum cleaner creates suction by making a pressure difference between the air in the vacuum cleaner and the air outside the vacuum cleaner. However, the dirt is not technically being sucked up into the vacuum cleaner but pushed up. There are two kinds of vacuum cleaners currently
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What causes cataracts? Cataracts are caused when proteins in the lens break down and clump together, making the lens cloudy. Cataracts form in the lens of the eye. As the lens becomes cloudy, it can look whitish, and vision can become hazy, blurred, or glary. If left untreated, the cloudiness can increase until the lens
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How do ants farm aphids? Ants farm aphids by herding them together, feeding them, and keeping them out of the sight of predators. Aphids are small insects that suck the sap out of plants. They are usually between one and three millimeters long, and they have specialized mouth parts for cutting into plants and drinking
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How does electricity get to my house? Electricity gets to my house in three stages. These are generation, transmission, and distribution. The first step is obviously to make the electricity. Most countries use either coal, natural gas, or nuclear power stations. They also use renewables such as solar, wind, and hydro power. These ratios break
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When did commercial aviation become common? Commercial aviation “took off” in the 1950s, but it wasn’t just changes in airplanes that made this possible, it was changes in society and the way people thought as well. And by common, I mean used by ordinary middle-class travelers. Commercial aviation started not long after the Wright brothers
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How does an email filter detect spam? Email filters detect spam by looking at the sender’s information, certain words in the email content, the structure of the email, and user engagement. Thanks to machine learning, they are much more accurate than they used to be. Spam filters have been around since the mid 1990s, which
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Are there any unpickable locks? There are probably no unpickable physical locks, but some modern high-security locks are very difficult to disable. If given the right tools and enough time, pretty much any physical lock can be picked. And, if picking it is not possible, it can probably be drilled through, or even removed from
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Why does the Venus de Milo have no arms? They could have been knocked off after the statue was found, but they were most likely lost before the Venus de Milo was buried. The Venus de Milo is probably one of the most famous statues in the world. The whole statue is about 2 meters
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