Then I looked at the book a little bit more closely, flipped through a little bit and thought, "Huh... that sounds about right. That's probably what I'm going to do..." If you suddenly began rising steadily at 1 foot per second, how exactly would you die? Would you freeze or suffocate first? Or something else?

Nothing is too absurd for him - whether it be the logistics of finding your soulmate to what happens if our moon suddenly disappears - Munroe answers it all. But I’ve never seen the Icarus story as a lesson about the limitations of humans. I see it as a lesson about the limitations of wax as an adhesive.I absolutely loved the tone of voice throughout the book. There’s no material safety data sheet for astatine. If there were, it would just be the word “NO” scrawled over and over in charred blood.His hilarious deadpan just absolutely cinched this book for me. It’s not the fall that kills you, it’s the sudden stop at the end. Who knew that physics could be so fun? The only thing that's thought-provoking about this book is the fact that it's sold millions of copies and is considered good by the vast majority. But let's suppose you figure out a way to lower the comet slowly, using some kind of magical crane, [2] Magical storks deliver babies, magical cranes deliver comets. and gently set the comet in the ocean.star for not having more ridiculous questions like that instead of ones where all your blood is drawn out of your finger by a ridiculously high density bullet, forming a giant blood bubble around said bullet and killing you Anyway, this book. This book is filled with drawings and explanations by Randall Munroe on topics as diverse as: Ars Technica: Somehow people got into the habit of asking you these really weird, silly, sometimes impossible, implausible questions. And you started answering them. How exactly did that happen? The book is a collection of questions he has answered as well as questions he did not answer for the good of society as a whole. Answered questions include "If every human somehow simply disappeared from the face of the Earth, how long would it be before the last artificial light source would go out?" and "How fast can you hit a speed bump while driving and live?". These are the questions that I always ask while out in the world but I tend to forget as soon as I'm home. Or out of the shower. Definitely shower thoughts.

Q. What would happen if you were to gather a mole (unit of measurement) of moles (the small furry critter) in one place?" Q. What if every day, every human had a 1 percent chance of being turned into a turkey, and every turkey had a 1 percent chance of being turned into a human? - Kenneth Extreme astrophysics and indecipherable chemistry have rarely been this clearly explained or this consistently hilarious.”— Entertainment Weekly“10 Best Nonfiction Books of the Year” All that is to say, I am most likely not this book's target audience, being a completely ridiculous ball of anxiety over things that nearly 100% will never, ever, ever happen. (I have been reading XKCD since college, though. It is a constant fixture in my life, and is not terrifying.) What would happen of everyone on Earth stood as close to each other as they could and jumped, everyone landing on the ground at the same time?

Need Help?

I think this book would be a great gift for kids who love to ask crazy questions about how the world works. I think I would have loved it when I was 10. You should definitely not use your arc welder as a defibrillator, and after reading your question, I honestly don’t think you should be allowed to use it as an arc welder, either. Want to know what would happen if you rode a helicopter blade, built a billion-storey building, made a lava lamp out of lava, or jumped on a geyser as it erupted? Okay, if you insist. a b " 'What If' There Were An Entire Book Devoted To Absurd Hypotheticals?". National Public Radio. NPR staff. 2014-09-07. Archived from the original on 2016-04-06.

The CO 2 released from the comet would raise the temperature of the Earth for centuries. It wouldn't just cancel out the cooling effect of the ice—over time, the comet's greenhouse effect would deliver as much heat as if you'd just let it slam into the planet and vaporize. [5] Although letting a comet slowly decay on the surface would definitely be preferable to a high-speed impact, as any dinosaur from the end of the Cretaceous can tell you. Remember that hypothetical crane that lets you lower comets to the surface? Well, if you hooked it up to a generator, you could use the slowly-descending comet to produce electricity. a b Chang, Kenneth (2014-11-03). "He's Glad You Asked". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 2014-11-08.Sometimes he would just "read" the comic as text, sometimes sort of "act it out"... but regardless it felt so seamless that I almost didn't feel like I was missing anything by not dusting off my decorative eyeballs and putting them to work for this one.