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AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER! An NPR Best Book of 2022 "The questions throughout What If? 2 are equal parts brilliant, gross, and wonderfully absurd and the answers are thorough, deeply researched, and great fun. . . . Science isn’t easy, but in Munroe’s capable hands, it surely can be fun." —TIME
The #1 New York Times bestselling author of What If? and How To answers more of the weirdest questions you never thought to ask
The millions of people around the world who read and loved What If? still have questions, and those questions are getting stranger. Thank goodness xkcd creator Randall Munroe is here to help. Planning to ride a fire pole from the Moon back to Earth? The hardest part is sticking the landing. Hoping to cool the atmosphere by opening everyone’s freezer door at the same time? Maybe it’s time for a brief introduction to thermodynamics. Want to know what would happen if you rode a helicopter blade, built a billion-story building, made a lava lamp out of lava, or jumped on a geyser as it erupted? Okay, if you insist. Before you go on a cosmic road trip, feed the residents of New York City to a T. rex, or fill every church with bananas, be sure to consult this practical guide for impractical ideas. Unfazed by absurdity, Munroe consults the latest research on everything from swing-set physics to airliner catapult–design to answer his readers’ questions, clearly and concisely, with illuminating and occasionally terrifying illustrations. As he consistently demonstrates, you can learn a lot from examining how the world might work in very specific extreme circumstances.
AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER! An NPR Best Book of 2022 "The questions throughout What If? 2 are equal parts brilliant, gross, and wonderfully absurd and the answers are thorough, deeply researched, and great fun. . . . Science isn’t easy, but in Munroe’s capable hands, it surely can be fun." —TIME
The #1 New York Times bestselling author of What If? and How To answers more of the weirdest questions you never thought to ask
The millions of people around the world who read and loved What If? still have questions, and those questions are getting stranger. Thank goodness xkcd creator Randall Munroe is here to help. Planning to ride a fire pole from the Moon back to Earth? The hardest part is sticking the landing. Hoping to cool the atmosphere by opening everyone’s freezer door at the same time? Maybe it’s time for a brief introduction to thermodynamics. Want to know what would happen if you rode a helicopter blade, built a billion-story building, made a lava lamp out of lava, or jumped on a geyser as it erupted? Okay, if you insist. Before you go on a cosmic road trip, feed the residents of New York City to a T. rex, or fill every church with bananas, be sure to consult this practical guide for impractical ideas. Unfazed by absurdity, Munroe consults the latest research on everything from swing-set physics to airliner catapult–design to answer his readers’ questions, clearly and concisely, with illuminating and occasionally terrifying illustrations. As he consistently demonstrates, you can learn a lot from examining how the world might work in very specific extreme circumstances.
Due to publisher restrictions the library cannot purchase additional copies of this title, and we apologize if there is a long waiting list. Be sure to check for other copies, because there may be other editions available.
Due to publisher restrictions the library cannot purchase additional copies of this title, and we apologize if there is a long waiting list. Be sure to check for other copies, because there may be other editions available.
Reviews-
July 15, 2022 Former NASA roboticist Munroe continues his quest to answer the world's unlikeliest questions. Assuming you had enough fuel, how long would it take you to drive to the edge of the observable universe? If you traveled at 65 mph, writes the author, "it will take you 480,000,000,000,000,000 years...to get there, or 35 million times the current age of the universe." How Munroe arrives at such calculations isn't always clear, and his math doesn't always show the work, but roll with it. He estimates that a hungry T. rex set loose on the streets of New York might be placated with 80 hamburgers--and if the dinosaur decides to devour a friend of yours instead of the proffered treat, "anyway, hey, you have 80 burgers." Speaking of eating, can a person eat a cloud? No, writes the author, not unless you can squeeze the air out of it, and never mind whether the water within the cloud is potable. Munroe takes clear delight in his odd investigations--e.g., whether a person--or a vampire, maybe--can get drunk drinking a drunk person's blood. The answer has to do with the dilution of ethanol, but Munroe pauses to counsel that it's a very bad idea to drink someone else's blood in the first instance: "I'm not a doctor, and I try not to give medical advice in my books. However, I will confidently say that you shouldn't drink the blood of someone with a viral hemorrhagic fever." You've got to like a book that blends deep dives into such matters as the nature of black holes and the mathematics of genealogy with handy pop-culture references--as when Munroe brightly likens the unfortunate Greek king Sisyphus to Hollywood stalwart Dwayne Johnson, because, of course, rocks are involved in both cases. A delight for science geeks with a penchant for oddball thought experiments.
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