askscience

Title	Upvotes	Mark as read	Favorited	Rating	Add to a list
What does grease do in ball bearings? Someone told me it acts like little ball bearings between the ball bearings, wtf?	1
Am I correct that the phrase "X oxidizes" is ambiguous? (As in: "the gas oxidizes the metal" vs. "the metal oxidizes when exposed to the gas")? Is there a convention so that this ambiguity is avoided?	1
What's the difference between covalent bonds (atoms sharing electron pairs) and oxidation states (one atom has donated an electron to the other)? I have trouble reconciling these two ideas in my head.	1
Once you know your Myers Briggs type, what can you actually do with that information? (and are any of these things backed by data?)	1
Is iron carbide the same thing as carbon steel alloy? (Is tungsten carbide the same thing as tungsten carbon alloy?)	1
Galvanic cell question. Assume a Zn anode, Cu cathode. Would it still work if the cathode were ALSO zinc? (as long as it is still immersed in copper cations)?	1
Why must we not add water to sulfuric acid, but the reverse is OK? I get that the reaction is very exothermic -- but for a given stoichiometric amount of acid & water, isn't it the same amount of heat, regardless of which way you mix it?	1
If the curvature of the earth were steeper than believed (I.e. earth is smaller than believed), how would that impact the results of a large scale survey? (I happen to be thinking of the Great Trigonometrical Survey of India)	1
Seeing how the price of Bitcoin or similar "currencies" can fluctuate wildly, would it make more sense not to think of it as a currency but as some sort of liquid asset? Do economists have a definition for this?	1
When we refer to precision in terms of the number of significant digits, why is it that we're always moving up or down by a power of ten (i.e. exactly one digit)? If you merely doubled the precision, could you speak of a significant fifth-of-a-digit?	1

« < > »