What If? Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions

Not a book to read straight through.

Algunas preguntas y respuestas me parecieron mas interesantes que otras. Pero esta bien para agarrarlo y leerte un par para descansar de otras lecturas; algunas son muy entretenidas. Y en serio hay algunas cosas que se le ocurre a la gente.

My impression of this book is likely tainted by “reading” it as an audio book. It is an interesting premise for a book, but I didn't find the content compelling.

This book was awesome!!! I read both the print book and listened to the audiobook. The print book had cool little pictures in it and the audiobook was one of the best audiobooks I've ever listened to. This book was all “SCIENCE YEAHHH!!!” but written very humorously. I highly suggest reading AND listening to this book!

I am definitely dumber than I initially assumed: very few of these questions interested me at all. I saw myself struggling to read the answers, and knew I was finishing the book out of stuborness. I learned something about speed bumps and facebook users, but could very well have lived without it.

Fun book about science scenarios but a little tiring to read through.

This book is awesome. Randall Munroe does a really good job with explaining science to everyone (everyone who knows xkcd already knows this).

The topics are short but informative. You always get way more information than you thought, and with its on point humor it's just fun to read.

I really learned some new stuff, and even though most of the topics are really crazy, I already could shine with some knowledge or facts around my friends.

I really can recommend this to everyone. Fun!

This is probably the first audiobook narrated by Wil Wheaton where I think he is actually suited to the task, because this is short snippets of fun science rather than a dramatic production.

I enjoyed the short snippets of fun science, too. Short enough chapters to listen to a few while doing household chores. I pretty much treated it like a podcast. While the audio version lacks the fun of Randall Munroe's drawings to go alongside the text, the lack doesn't detract, and I found the science easier to follow by having it read to me rather than trying to read it myself.

(I also have the dead-tree version in the house, because my husband doesn't like audio books and I knew he'd like this, so I have the pictures anyway.)

XKCD in book form! Hilarious all the way through. Monroe takes questions that anyone could have asked and goes into them in extreme detail. If getting to the answer to a question doesn't prove to have a funny conclusion, Monroe continues upping the ante until things get interesting. I'd say it's a combination of Mythbusters and a comic – which is basically XKCD anyways. So what kind of questions? What would happen if the moon went away? If we hooked turbines to people exercising in gyms, how much power could we produce?

XKCD in book form! Hilarious all the way through. Monroe takes questions that anyone could have asked and goes into them in extreme detail. If getting to the answer to a question doesn't prove to have a funny conclusion, Monroe continues upping the ante until things get interesting. I'd say it's a combination of Mythbusters and a comic – which is basically XKCD anyways. So what kind of questions? What would happen if the moon went away? If we hooked turbines to people exercising in gyms, how much power could we produce?

Look closely at the adjectives in the title:

Absurd. Yes, truly absurd. The questions posed in this book are truly absurd.

Here's one: How quickly would the oceans drain if a portal was made at the deepest spot in the ocean?

Another: How many Lego blocks would it take to build a bridge able to carry traffic from London to New York?

Oh, just one more: From what height would you need to drop a steak for it to be cooked when it hit the ground?

Serious. Yes, these are seriously scientific answers.
Scientific jargon. Mathematical formulas. And clever cartoons.

You need to read this book. Trust me. It's fantastic.

Short Review: I picked this up because it was included in the Kindle Unlimited collection. I love the xcdc comic, but I might not have paid for it otherwise. It is a bathroom book type of read. Each chapter is a question that was submitted to the xcdc what if blog and then Munroe takes that question to an absurd scientific conclusion. This explores everything from using machine guns as jet packs to putting submarines in space. It is fascinating, funny and educational. I didn't finish it because I lost my subscription to Kindle Unlimited before I was done, but I did read about 70% of the book.

My full review is on my blog at http://bookwi.se/what-if/

This book is the ur-nerd tome. There is no pretending: you either are the sort of person who is mathy enough, physics and astronomy-obsessed enough and all around nerdy enough to find this fun...or you aren't.

To give an example, most days, because I'm busy being a doctor, I spend a lot of time pretending that I'm not a nerd. But recently, I joined a lab where my boss is about as nerdy as I am. So comparing weekend notes, he says: I spent the weekend solving a Rubik's cross. And I said: I spent the weekend reading the new What If XKCD book. I won that competition.

To be honest, I'm not particularly motivated to write much of a review: if you're that nerdy of a person, you've read the webpage version of what-if xkcd and understand the joy that is Fermi Problems (and probably the annoyance that happens after you do a Fermi problem and you spend the rest of the day unable to stop doing Fermi problems), absurd questions about nuclear physics, random statistics and clever stick-figure illustrations.

The key points are these: I religiously read What If XKCD every week, and have read every single one published on the web. The book still had plenty of new things that I had never seen before. There are some extras in the book: one line answers to particularly weird questions. I was anticipating a major drawback of the book to be the loss of hover text and footnotes that appear in the online version; this is replaced by captions and the old-school form of footnotes (i.e. footnotes). However, this is not a great book to read far apart from the internet: it's impossible to get through the whole thing without having strong compulsions to google side questions.

P.S. The worst part of this book is in the acknowledgements when he says he already has an expert on genetics. Note to self: scheme to take out previous genetics expert and become Randall Munroe's personal brilliant geneticist...

Al een tijdje onbestwiste bestseller bij Amazon.com, en terecht. Randall Munroe van XKCD is een fijne mens, die fijne dingen maakt, ergens in het brandpunt van wetenschap, humor en ontroering.

(Wie XKCD niet kent: klik voor een aantal van zijn meer uitgebreide dingen. En volg anders gewoon xkcd.com elke dag.En XKCD Explain voor als het niet meteen duidelijk is.)

What If? geeft, zoals de titel zegt, serieuze antwoorden op absurde vragen. Vragen zoals: van hoe hoog moet ik een biefstuk naar beneden gooien om het gebakken op de vloer te zien terechtkomen? Wat zou er gebeuren als één mol (de maateeinheid) mollen (het beest) op één hoop zouden gesmeten worden? Is het mogelijk een jetpack te maken met de weerslag van machinegeweren? Wat zou er gebeuren op een planeet zoals beschreven in Le Petit Prince? Wat gebeurt er als al mijn DNA in één keer verdwijnt? Welke mens was ooit het verst van alle andere mensen verwijderd, en was hij/zij eenzaam?

Een heel boek vol, maar ongeveer twee derde verscheen al vroeger op het internet, en er verschijnen er nog regelmatig bij. Ik heb het boek meer gekocht omdat ik Randall een sympathieke kerel vind, dan om die bijkomende inhoud. En om hem iets terug te geven voor al die fantastische jaren XKCD.

Niet dat het niet aangeraden is, maar de bijkomende inhoud op zich is wat te licht om de prijs van het boek te verrechtvaardigen, voor wie de rest al gelezen had. Voor wie de rest nog niet gelezen had, en al was het een beetje interesse voor wetenschap heeft: niet nadenken, en kopen.

As brilliant as his famous xkcd comic strip. Rich in scientific detail as he takes on insanely absurd hypotheticals. You may need basic knowledge about physics, chemistry, and biology to fully appreciate it but hey, if you completed high school and enjoy delving into “what ifs”, this is the book for you. I hope to read many more volumes of his work. Keep those questions flowing, people!