Nature
Exploring "Why" questions about Nature
487 articles
why does the sound of thunder come in successive booms?
The average lightning bolt is five miles long. That means that for any given bolt you are unlikely to be equidistant from every part of it, meaning we would expect the sound to be drawn out to some ex
Why is it that Windows needs drivers and installations, but most accessories automatically work on Linux?
There could be 2 things going on here: A) linux has a way to know which webcam you are using just by plugging it, it will look around and find the driver for you. (in my experience its very rare when
Why is it that I often see in for example horror movies, that it is thunderstorms and strong windstorms simoultanously, but I have never seen that in real life?
You probably live somewhere with more mild weather. Most horror movies generally don't take place in cities, because the proximity with other people and civilization is comforting. You ever been to Mi
Why do we have to press ctrl + alt + del to log into a locked Windows account?
The Ctrl + Alt + Del key combination is known as the [Secure Attention Sequence](_URL_0_) on Windows. This is not overridable by software outside the operating system. Pressing the SAS means you are g
Why is Japan, a country spread across multiple Islands so much more united than the UK, a country spread across multiple Islands.
They both *did* have regional identities. The difference is that the UK said "Ok, you can be Scottish, whatever, as long as you help with the Empire and whatnot", but the Japanese said "No. You are Ja
Why are Mountains triangular in shape (or at least similar to a triangle
It's the result of gravity and erosion. Mountains are shaped over millenia, and in that much time the force of wind and rain wears down and breaks apart the rock that makes up the mountain. As the mou
why is consumption of meat bad for our climate/environment?
The transfer of energy between trophic levels is only about 10% efficient, so we could save tremendous amounts of energy, land, water, time, etc. by eating plants instead of feeding plants to animals
Why does the door close so loud when I have a window open?
When you close the door, a bunch of air is displaced, and it has to go somewhere. If you don't have a window open, the only place the air can go is to rush out the door gap as you're closing it. This
Why can’t we use cloud seeding to fight the current droughts in the west?
Cloud Seeding only works on already existing rain clouds, encouraging them to rain on command. It can't make new ones from scratch. The drought means that there isn't enough water in the air to make r
Why aren’t there any major enclosed bodies of water in the world like the size of the Gulf of Mexico or a small ocean?
There is one. The Mediterranean Sea was, long ago, a completely enclosed body of water. Even today, the opening (where it eventually broke open) is quite narrow.