Despite all the hard facts and gigantic numbers, it never feels like a textbook-and you don't have to be a rocket scientist to enjoy it ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY The best bathroom book you'll ever buy.Munroe takes inane, useless and often quite pointless questions asked by real humans (mostly sent to him through his website), and turns them into beautiful expositions on the impossible that illuminate the furthest reaches, almost to the limits, of the modern sciences. required reading for grown-ups, it's just fun to remember that science is really, really cool REGISTER Smart answers to silly questions: Randall Munroe reveals all GUARDIAN What If? maintains a delightfully free-wheeling tone throughout, especially when complicated calculations lead to whimsical results. enthusiasm for all things scientific is infectious. With this book and with XKCD, you're a kid with a chemistry set all over again. What If? is an informative feast for xkcd fans and anyone who loves to ponder the hypothetical. The book features new and never-before-answered questions, along with the most popular answers from the xkcd website. Are fire tornadoes possible? His responses are masterpieces of clarity and wit, gleefully and accurately explaining everything from the relativistic effects of a baseball pitched at near the speed of light to the many horrible ways you could die while building a periodic table out of all the actual elements.

What if a Richter 15 earthquake hit New York City?.Could you build a jetpack using downward-firing machine guns?.What if I took a swim in a spent-nuclear-fuel pool?.The queries he receives range from merely odd to downright diabolical: His stick-figure drawings about science, technology, language, and love have an enormous, dedicated following, as do his deeply researched answers to his fans’ strangest questions. Print What If? Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questionsįrom the creator of the wildly popular webcomic xkcd, hilarious and informative answers to important questions you probably never thought to ask Millions of people visit each week to read Randall Munroe’s iconic webcomic.

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