What If? Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions
Ratings462
Average rating4.2
A fantastically fun series of thought experiments, only occasionally brought down by the somewhat cringey nerd humour you would expect of an American.
Randall Munroe’s “What If? Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions” certainly has a clever premise, and I recognise its appeal to the science-curious. Drawing from his background as a physicist and former NASA roboticist, Munroe sets out to tackle (mostly) nonsensical questions with rigorous scientific logic. While that might sound fun in theory, in practice I found the book trying far too hard to be clever, and as a result, it came off as more smug than smart.
Admittedly, some of the questions Munroe attempts to answer are genuinely imaginative, but his tone often feels too enamoured with its own geekiness. Rather than inviting the reader into a playful exploration, it too often felt like being caught in an endless lecture by someone who delights excessively in their own intellect. I couldn’t help but feel that the answers to these questions were taken far too seriously—so much so that any joy or playfulness quickly evaporated under the weight of equations and thought experiments.
But then, take my subjective opinion with a grain of salt: Despite its immense popularity, I don’t really enjoy Munroe’s XKCD either.
DNF at 78% and two stars out of five.
Ceterum censeo Putin esse delendam
Originally posted at turing.mailstation.de.
As individual scenarios/stories, they would be 4.5-5 of 5.
As a book, it's more like a 3.5.
The scenarios in the book are very different and I found it hard to sit down and read more than a couple of them at a time. So much context switching :) Plus it was not exactly easy to read for me, the book explains a lot of concepts & ideas that require concentration to fully understand.
So at times I found it tedious to sit down and read for 30-40 mins. This book probably should not be read like this.
I strongly recommend that you read it, but be prepared to read question by question, or max 2 questions at a time.
Książka na jedno popołudnie - o ile nie zacznie się grzebać w szczegółach. A tutaj już można solidnie się zakopać... Nie do końca podobało mi się celowo pominięcie niektórych naprawdę ciekawych pytań, uznanych za zbyt absurdalne - w kilku był potencjał na ciekawe rozdziały.
Pewnie gdybym był większym fanem XKCD to było by 5*.
Probably more of a 3.5.
I've known about this book for a while and I even contemplated buying it many times but just never did. So I was quite excited to pick it up now for one of my readathon prompts. And the audiobook was a lot of fun to listen to. The questions in this are bizarre, the answers even more weird but also in great detail and pretty thoughtful most of the times - and while I don't know how much of this I'll remember, the experience was enlightening and witty with some wtf moments interspersed in between.
This book is funny, clever and quirky, I love it!
This book answers to questions that can seem dumb with as much scientifical seriousness as possible.
The topics are (very) diverse, going from the power output of Master Yoda to swimming in a nuclear reactor pool without a proper suit.
Always interesting, always funny, Randall Munroe captivated me throughout the entire book.
Every chapter made me say “One last chapter and I'll have a break”.
This book made me understand how tiny we are in this huge universe.
Every chapter contains goofy gags portraying the absurd situations (with adorable stickmen!).
These sketches are perfect to take a break between two complex mathematical formulas.
Unfortunately, patterns start to emerge after the first half of the book.
It was rare, but some questions are similar in the way they have been answered.
In conclusion, this book is interesting and very funny.
I really love this book, it made me realize that knowledge can come from unexcepted places!
[Third rereading; more if you count having read it online for years before the book.]
This is not the sort of book I'd usually review, any more than I'd review gravity or living on a planet with a breathable atmosphere. Not that I'm saying xkcd is as fundamental or necessary to my life ... — all right, I guess that is what I'm saying, and I stand by it. xkcd has been a highlight of my weeks since 2008; Munroe is easily the sharpest, most insightful and on-key cartoonist I've ever read, and that includes Larson and Watterson. What If is a delightful collection of his non-xkcd work, laugh-out-loud funny even on third-plus rereading; nerdy and sweet and exciting and sensitive and timeless. (Except for “Common Cold”, p.114 - that one is quite timely as I write this in December 2020).
Why review it now? Because in the years since I bought the book my circle of friends, Goodreads and IRL, has expanded to include nontechnical people who might not be familiar with Munroe's work. This is my subtle way to encourage them to take a look.
When I worked an office job many (...many) years ago, I had a small group of two or three friends with whom I used to shoot the breeze with via email (in the beforetime before office-wide messaging apps became all the rage) all day. Inbetween mundane office gossip, I'd occasionally posit random hypothetical questions, and my friends were, well, friend enough to indulge me most of the time. The number of staples to fill a cubicle, how many staplers to stack to the ceiling, whether Spiderman or Batman would win in a fight, things like that. There never was any satisfactory/conclusive answer to any of them, but the resulting discussion was often rewarding in itself.
This book feeds that “I wonder...” voice in my head that never really shuts up. I'm a big science nerd, and I love all the math and science and logic used to come up with the solid conclusions to these random questions that I never knew I had. How much Force power can Yoda output? How high can a human throw something? How quickly would the oceans drain if a circular portal 10 meters in radius leading into space were created at the bottom of Challenger Deep? You know, reasonable questions like that. The answers are surprising in some cases, and I walked away with random factoids about Pangaea/Rodinia, the Oxford Bell, the Wow! signal, a dude who flew over Los Angeles using a lawn chair and weather balloons, and the Pitcairn Islands.
I also loved the inclusion of so many XKCD-style graphics within the chapters (you know, because the XKCD guy is the one who wrote this). All of them were fantastic and really drove the point home in most cases. Highly recommend picking up a print copy of this book instead of listening to the audiobook version, for the drawings alone.
Fun read for the scientific minded
A great selection of absurd hypothetical questions with in-depth literal answers. This was a fun read, and I even read some of the sections out loud to the family for a good laugh. My stepson, who hates reading, loved the Vignettes enough that he has picked this one up to read as well on his Kindle. Because this book has self-contained sections, it makes a great book for Intermittent reading just before bed work at other quick breaks.
Anyone who is familiar with Internet culture has either heard of xkcd, or either encountered one of the webtoon's inimitable comics. Randall Munroe's famous style has spawned a huge variety of comics on science, technology and philosophy, and has helped to make daily webcomics great again.
Right from its inception, xkcd and Munroe were asked to answer a variety of hypothetical scenarios by its readers - ranging from the curious (‘What would happen if a bullet as dense as a neutron star was fired into the Earth?') to the slightly macabre (‘What if the Earth was made entirely of protons and the moon entirely of electrons?'). Munroe started answering these absurd questions with a ton of Math and physics - that is, to say, seriously. The series of QnA was spun-off into a separate section of the site and was termed ‘What If' - this book is simply the entire section in print form, plus previously unseen questions.
Not everything in the book is about anarchy and destruction though - that is reserved for the second half of the book. The first half of the book is comprised of innocuous questions, mostly relating to lightning, time travel, and astronomy.
Even if you're not interested in computation and weird thought experiments, this book is a must-read, if only as a testimony to human imagination. Mind-blowing doesn't even begin to cover it. This is a work of art, and deserves to have space on every bookshelf.
I think I would've enjoyed it more if I had read one question a day, instead of reading it all in a few sittings, cause all the numbers and facts get jumbled after a while. However, I found it so inspiring for people who love sci-fi and want to write sci-fi. Science pushed to its limits is such an interesting premise. Each one of these questions would've worked beautifully for a prompt for a sci-fi film (or book) based on actual science facts.
(i spent a whole hour doing this gif, and it's worth it)
I don't know if someone not interested in physics would enjoy it, but it is written very humorously, and KXCD's stick figures will always bring a smile to anyone's face.
Very clever and interesting answers to hypothetical (and sometimes improbable) scientific questions! Munroe does a great job of explaining complex ideas in layman's terms, adding a twist of comedy along the way with his stick figures and mini comics.
A surprisingly interesting book on seemingly ridiculous topics. At first I thought it will be just a silly pseudo-scientific babble, but at the end I think the author managed to smuggle something precious: scientific method approach into everyday thinking. And it's a really easy read.
if you are the kind of person that would wonder what the Earth and Mars would look like after all the oceans were drained and the water was dumped on Mars, than this book is for you. it's a collection of a lot of short essays giving mostly serious answers to silly questions. It's a lot of fun and you will learn a bit about how scientists and engineers go about solving problems
While the questions are delightfully absurd most of them are also incredibly creative (and technical) which allows Randall to create such an entertaining, detailed and scientific answers. I cannot imagine how much work was put into crafting all the answers and accompanying comics.
I would advice to read it slow, couple questions at a time, because the amount of the facts can be overwhelming.
It was a really nice throwback to the university days and I hope that I will be able to remember at least some of the most unexpected and craziest details from the answers.
Science could be really funny and interesting if you know how to make your counts in order of magnitude.
Very insightful and witty. Fascinating concepts explored. The author is a clever guy!
