What if?

Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions

Millions of people visit xkcd.com each week to read Randall Munroe's iconic webcomic. His stick-figure drawings about science, technology, language, and love have a large and passionate following. Fans of xkcd ask Munroe a lot of strange questions. What if you tried to hit a baseball pitched at 90 percent the speed of light? How fast can you hit a speed bump while driving and live? If there was a robot apocalypse, how long would humanity last? In pursuit of answers, Munroe runs computer simulations, pores over stacks of declassified …

303 pages

English language

Published Aug. 7, 2014 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

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ISBN:
978-0-544-27299-6
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OCLC Number:
872620028
Goodreads:
21413662

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Subjects
  • Mathematics
  • Statistics
  • Miscellanea
  • Science
  • Questions and answers
  • Physics

Reviews

Review of 'What if?' on 'Goodreads'

Monroe's book answers that old question, "Is there such a thing as a stupid question?" It turns out the answer is "yes." But that doesn't lessen the enjoyment of the book!

It also is a book that graphically (!) shows that it's not always obvious what happens to something if it is taken to a physical extreme. The results are fascinating!

Monroe is writing "what if? Two: Science Boogaloo." And that's a good thing