I've been a reader of XKCD for ages. Not just a reader, a fan. A big goey, geeky fan. 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. And it worked. I got an early copy. And I treasured it. I petted it. It was precious to me. Precious. Then life got in the way. Conventions. Promotion for my own book launch.

An apple fell on Newton's head."Why didn't this fall up instead of down?" Asked the scientist......And lo, the theory of gravitation was born. - Well, not really. The story is apocryphal in all probability, like George Washington and the cherry tree. But it does illustrate an important fact.Scientific enquiry starts with seemingly absurd questions.-----------------------------------Randall Munroe is a physics graduate who briefly worked for NASA: but his claim to fame is as the creator of the we...

This review and other non-spoilery reviews can be found @The Book PrescriptionWhat if is a non-fiction book that -as the name implies- gives answer to some absurd hypothetical questions. The book was fun to read until at some points it wasn’t. The author is apparently a genius, I don’t know how can he think in that way. And the dedication and time that he puts to answer these questions is amazing.I imagine the author as that student who used to sit at the front seat and answer all the questions

What if … every Goodreads review had to be written in a randomly determined time? What per cent of submitted reviews would end with a completed sentence?Well, this amounts to the question of, what per cent of reviewers would simply stop typing when the time ran out, instead of finishing up what they were saying and ignoring the stupid rule.But there could be a correlation (or inverse correlation?) between how reviewers reacted to such a rule, and the day job they had – or the “purity” of the fie...

One 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.I'm pretty sure that if you're here, you already know about xkcd. But hey, why the heck not? Right? XKCD is why this Randall Munroe character is famous.The book comes from his "what if" blog, which is also very good.I took the book into work with...

My evil plan of reading this book in small doses aloud to my students during math class has worked. Several of them have bought their own copies, and they are, I believe, planning to use their math skills for good, and not for world domination.

This is one of the most entertaining books I have ever read. And I have read over 10 books.

AMAZING BOOK! I love love love it and frankly, there's no better book to read on the toilet. Off the toilet too, but I learned so much and the writing is so engaging and entertaining and just MARVELOUS. Of course in the style of xkcd, this and Atlas Obscura would be my go-to book gifts this year.

Change.Org Petition: Despicable MunroeThe International Astronomical Union recently named an asteroid after Randall Munroe; asteroid 4942 Munroe is big enough to cause a mass extinction if it ever hits Earth.Not that he needs an asteroid to do that. He has his minions devising millions of ways to do it, on a subversive site they call xkcd.com. This book is a set of leaked manuals. It should be clear to all how dangerous this guy (and his site) really is. But all Government agencies fail to heed

I don't think I've ever laughed this much and hard from a science or non-fiction book-wait, I take that back, I haven't laughed this much from a book period. I mean periodic tables and radioactive decay doesn't normally warrant laughter-well at least when I read about it. The questions being presented is stuff that would have never crossed my mind, but the instant I read them I was like -oh wow-what the funk if that really happened? I loved the illustrations throughout- and how the scientific in...

Q: What would happen if every geek in the world received a copy of What If tomorrow morning?A: Actually, less than you'd think.First, a little background about this book. If you're a geek, it's unputdownable, a word that, if you think carefully, means "cannot be put down". (You may not be aware of this fact, since the word is nearly always misused). So the geek who receives it is going to carry on reading through breakfast, through lunch, while he's supposed to be working, and on through dinner,...

Every nerd knows Randall Munroe from his wildly humourous and insightful xkcd.com comics right? You don't? What the hell are you doing here listening to me blab on? xkcd.comFor all those people still here, and who obviously know Randall's work, let's just bask in the mixture of intelligence, cleverness, hilarity and properly labelled axes. All the nerd girls want to sleep with him and all nerd boys want to sleep with him too...be him.So it seems like he has been running a column on his website w...

This book opens with the best disclaimer I have ever seen:"Do not try any of this at home. The author of this book is an Internet cartoonist, not a health or safety expert. He likes it when things catch fire or explode, which means he does not have your best interests in mind. The publisher and the author disclaim responsibility for any adverse effects resulting, directly or indirectly, from information contained in this book."That disclaimer really sets the tone for this fun book about science:...

Randall Munroe is a dangerous guy. Seriously dangerous. He is the author of the online comic strip xkcd. It's about math, science, hacking, logic, and a host of wonderfully nerdy subjects. But in this book, Munroe answers a stack of absurd hypothetical questions. Some of the questions are really crazy, like "What would happen if everyone on Earth stood as close to each other as they could and jumped, everyone landing on the ground at the same instant?" Munroe explains that the "thud" as everyone...

I highly recommend taking the audiobook route for this one unless you absolutely love very technical science. Wil Wheaton's narration was excellent and he delivered Munroe's humor perfectly! I loved this so much I bought a hard copy for my coffee table.

It was okay, after several "stories" it got boring. For me, it would be better just as a blog, to read "story" or two per week, not all at once. My favourite part was the Weird (and Worrying) Questions From the What If? Inbox.Sometimes I even felt like it had to be me who posted those questions - I believed no one had as crazy ideas/question as I do... It turns out I got a lot of soulmates out there. :D

Trying to thoroughly answer a stupid question can take you to some pretty interesting places. Randall Munroe, ex-NASA employee and author of the wildly popular webcomic XKCD, decides to look at several, undoubtedly, absurd questions and find scientific answers to them.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 limitatio

Mr Munroe includes some “weird and worrying” questions from his website’s inbox which he presents without attempting to answer – one favourite was:If you saved a whole life’s worth of kissing and used all that suction power on one single kiss, how much suction force would that single kiss have?I guess the answer might be “what pharmaceutical products have you ingested during the last four hours?” or “May I speak to your parents?”Another person named Jon Merrill askedHow fast would a human have t...

“But it turns out that trying to thoroughly answer a stupid question can take you to some pretty interesting places.”Randall Munroe of xkcd.com fame (a former physicist and NASA robotics employee turned brilliant comics artist) can come to my house for tea and in-depth discussion of hypothetical scenarios based on the world’s dumbest questions (while showing me his back-of-the-napkin math which I will blindly believe as it will just whoosh over my head like a jet plane) any time. Dear Mr. Munroe...

Two years after reading this for the first time, I now own two copies and re-read it monthly. ******It started with a Kindle! Well, kind of. A long time ago, I bought a Kindle Fire. If you have bought a kindle Fire, then you know that Amazon fills the box with little 'tutorials'. *cough* ads in a pretty package*cough* Anyway, What If was on the pamphlet of books to read. It looked at it and thought interesting. I later read a book called 'Know it all', a book that asked and answered scientific q...