Nature
Exploring "Why" questions about Nature
487 articles
Why Oklahoma and Kansas get so many intense tornadoes
Apparently it's because of how they are situated in relation to the Rocky Mountains and the Gulf of Mexico. The way cold air from the north meets moist warm air coming off the Gulf and the way the mou
Why isn’t there more focus on adapting to Climate Change?
Because there isn't any "adapting" to a runaway greenhouse effect feedback loop. Without care, we could turn Earth into another Venus. Most of the "finger pointing" is being done because *some* people
Why doesn’t lightning striking lakes/ocean fry all the fish, yet swimming during a lightning storm is a terrible idea?
When lightning hits the ocean, the discharge spreads over the surface of the water. Any fish/human near the surface will be electrocuted. Edit: humans are also better conductors than fish so the damag
Why does my brand new, all singing, all dancing windows 8.1 equipped laptop not have the ability to play some of my old favourite pc games?
Because they weren't written for it. Though they appear similar, computers can be as different as consoles as time moves on. What you're asking is akin to "Why can't I play Playstation 1 games on my P
Why not construct concrete homes in the tornado alley instead of rebuilding every time?
Cost, odds, and aesthetics. The odds of being hit by a tornado are very small - they aren't that wide and only touch down for a few miles, usually. So odds are a house isn't going to get a direct hit
why when a lake freezes over, some rocks are just under the surface of the lake
Because when the lake is not frozen those rocks are still right under the surface... are you seeing new rocks or...?
Why don’t rivers run out?
They get refilled by rain and sometimes by underground springs. If it doesn't rain then yes rivers can run dry.
Why isn’t the shortest day of the year the middle of winter? Or the longest day the middle of summer? Rather than the first day of each.
Because the seasons are based mostly on the temperatures. The coldest day of the year isn't actually the shortest day of the year, because it takes time for the sun to start heating things up again. L
Why CAN’T we have the characters ”, ‘/’, ‘:’, ‘*’, ‘?’, ‘ < ', ' > ‘, ‘|’ in a file’s name in Windows?
Each of them has a special meaning on the command line, so if they showed up in filenames they would lead to ambiguity. \ is the path element separator on Windows and / is both the path separator on U
Why do banks make people fill out a deposit slip at the teller’s window, then make them use the ATM card reader, when customers don’t have to fill out anything at the ATM to deposit checks?
Where it's used, it's accountability for the teller. Essentially you fill out the slip with $XXX dollars on it, then when they process the document the receipt is printed on the same sheet and should