Curiosity-Stoking: "What If?" has a way of sparking curiosity and encouraging readers to think critically about the world around them. It invites you to ponder absurd questions and contemplate the underlying scientific principles. There is a common myth, most likely spread by geeks, that what they do is somehow pretty important to Western civilization. If you're easily impressed by this kind of propaganda, you might expect that markets will crash as geek traders neglect their buy signals, nuclear experiments will explode as geek scientists look away from their control panels, and terrorists will strike with impunity as geek intelligence analysts fail to turn up for work. All that sounds pretty bad. After a fair share of assumptions and equations, it’s blatantly obvious that Yoda is a much better power source than Luke Skywalker. But a word of caution before we change our power grid to Yoda-based: ���So Yoda sounds like our best bet as an energy source. But with world electricity consumption pushing 2 terawatts, it would take a hundred million Yodas to meet our demands. All things considered, switching to Yoda power probably isn’t worth the trouble—though it would definitely be green.” 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 Allain, Rhett (2014-12-19). "Book Review: What If?: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions". Wired. Archived from the original on 2016-04-06.

stars for ending the book on a happy note, "Sometimes it's nice not to destroy the world for a change." Extreme astrophysics and indecipherable chemistry have rarely been this clearly explained or this consistently hilarious.”— Entertainment Weekly“10 Best Nonfiction Books of the Year” The book is easy to understand and studded with comics, which keeps things light, even though the subject matter frequently leads to the Earth being rapidly destroyed, most impressively in "what if the Earth was made completely of protons and the Moon was made completely of electrons?" but also in "what if Niagara Falls were sent through a straw?" and several others. 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

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a b Garber, Megan (2012-09-26). "A Conversation With Randall Munroe, the Creator of XKCD". The Atlantic. Archived from the original on 2016-04-06. So much of a fan that when I heard about this book, I went so far as to abuse my power as an author to get an Advance Reading Copy of the book, so that I could enjoy its deliciousness sooner. And... y'know... taunt people on the internet. Aside from the "Short Answers" and "Weird and Worrying" questions, what marks What If? 2 is Munroe's commitment to giving real answers -- answers that follow the scenario through to its logical consequences, with careful and well-explained reasoning.

Most of the fully answered questions fall into two categories, either "What would happen if...?" (obviously the sort of questions envisaged by the title "What If?"), and questions that ask for a number, "How much...?", "How many...", "How long...?" The "What If?" type questions are the most fun, because they allow Munroe to tell stories. However, the number questions are surprisingly fun, too -- they demonstrate a lot of ingenuity, which one has to admire.And it worked. I got an early copy. And I treasured it. I petted it. It was precious to me. Precious. Munroe, Randall (2014-03-12). "What if I wrote a book?". blog.xkcd.com. Archived from the original on 2016-04-06. That means that if an astronaut on the ISS listens to "I'm Gonna Be," in the time between the first beat of the song and the final lines . . . A magnitude 15 earthquake would involve the release of almost [100 quintillion] joules of energy, which is roughly the gravitational binding energy of the Earth. To put it another way, the Death Star caused a magnitude 15 earthquake on Alderaan. I find his book about one standard deviation better than similar attempts at similar things. I'm thinking of Leyner's books: Why Do Men Have Nipples?: Hundreds of Questions You'd Only Ask a Doctor After Your Third Martini and Why Do Men Fall Asleep After Sex? More Questions You'd Only Ask a Doctor After Your Third Whiskey Sour. Both are using humor and science and the strategy of funky questions. There are a couple differences, that matter. Mark Leyner isn't a scientist. He's a soft postmodernist author that is playing doctor explaining awkward questons. Monroe is a scientist that is using the scientific method and humor to explain absurd, and sometimes practically nonsense questions. While both of these books can be considered humor books, I tend to favor the one written by a scientist who can draw (kinda) dinosaurs and a pyramid of giraffes. Personal preference I guess.

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? - KennethOne of the things that's nice about goodreads is that it lets you embed pictures. ...And one of the nice things about xkcd is that it has lots of pictures licensed under CC Attribution/Non-Commerical - meaning I can post as many as I want to this review. How tall can a swing set be while still being powered by a human pumping their legs? Is it possible to build a swing set tall enough to launch the rider into space if they jump at the right time? (Assuming the human has enough energy, which my 5-year-old seems to have.)" It took me a while to get over this, undermining the whole book for a couple seconds. Seriously, if he had just said "but not before you infect, on average, on other person." I wouldn't have thought twice about it. 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.

Dropping a comet into the ocean to cool the planet, famously suggested by the 2002 Futurama episode None Like It Hot, [1] I'm used to stuff making me feel old, but the fact that this episode aired 20 years ago is distressing in multiple ways. wouldn't work for a few reasons. I took the book into work with me to show it around - you know - hipster-esque and what not. I'm reading this trendy, new book first. 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 This book is about the same length as the first volume, but there are more questions with slightly shorter answers, so the answers sometimes don't go as in depth, but I'm not complaining about that because sometimes usually don't understand the super deep parts/calculations anyways.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? Since 2012, Munroe has been answering unusual questions sent in by readers of xkcd on his blog What If?. The concept was inspired by a weekend program organized by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in which volunteers can teach classes to groups of high school students on any chosen subject. Munroe signed up after hearing about it from a friend and decided to teach a class on energy. Though the lecture felt "dry" at first, once Munroe started bringing up examples from Star Wars and The Lord of the Rings, the students became more excited. The entire second half of the class was eventually spent solving mathematical and physics problems. Munroe wrote the first entries a few years before the start of the blog, based on questions he was asked that day. [7] [8] Some simple models clearly give you the only plausible answer: Netherlands will become a supraplanetary entity. To see how, you need to read for yourself. “Supposing you did drain the oceans, and dumped the water on top of the Curiosity rover, how would Mars change as the water accumulated?” Again, the answer is clear — it’s a future that will be Netherlands-shaped: