What If? 2: Additional Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions

by Randall Munroe

Overview

Notes From Your Bookseller

Who hasn't experienced the joy of an out-of-the-blue daydream, what if question, one that pushes the bounds of possibility? Such must be the everyday norm for Randall Munroe, but who unlike most of us, has the science "chops" to craft an answer. From comix to books, Munroe has dazzled and intrigued with flights of inquiry and is back with more. Guaranteed, your inner child will shout "Yippee!"

AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER!

An NPR Best Book of 2022

"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

The #1 New York Times bestselling author of What If? and How To answers more of the weirdest questions you never thought to ask
 
The millions of people around the world who read and loved What If? still have questions, and those questions are getting stranger. Thank goodness xkcd creator Randall Munroe is here to help. Planning to ride a fire pole from the Moon back to Earth? The hardest part is sticking the landing. Hoping to cool the atmosphere by opening everyone’s freezer door at the same time? Maybe it’s time for a brief introduction to thermodynamics. Want to know what would happen if you rode a helicopter blade, built a billion-story building, made a lava lamp out of lava, or jumped on a geyser as it erupted? Okay, if you insist.

Before you go on a cosmic road trip, feed the residents of New York City to a T. rex, or fill every church with bananas, be sure to consult this practical guide for impractical ideas. Unfazed by absurdity, Munroe consults the latest research on everything from swing-set physics to airliner catapult–design to answer his readers’ questions, clearly and concisely, with illuminating and occasionally terrifying illustrations. As he consistently demonstrates, you can learn a lot from examining how the world might work in very specific extreme circumstances.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780525537113
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	09/13/2022
Pages:	368
Product dimensions:	7.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Randall Munroe is the author of the New York Times bestsellers What If? 2, How To, What If?, and Thing Explainer; the science question-and-answer blog What If?; and the popular web comic xkcd. A former NASA roboticist, he left the agency in 2006 to draw comics on the internet full time. He lives in Massachusetts.

Table of Contents

Introduction ix

1 Soupiter 1

2 Helicopter Ride 6

3 Dangerously Cold 11

4 Ironic Vaporization 16

5 Cosmic Road Trip 22

6 Pigeon Chair 26

S Short Answers #1 30

7 T. Rex Calories 37

8 Geyser 40

9 Pew, Pew, Pew 43

10 Reading Every Book 47

W Weird & Worrying #1 51

11 Banana Church 52

12 Catch! 55

13 Lose Weight the Slow and Incredibly Difficult Way 59

14 Paint the Earth 66

15 Jupiter Comes to Town 70

16 Star Sand 74

17 Swing Set 78

18 Airliner Catapult 83

S Short Answers #2 88

19 Slow Dinosaur Apocalypse 98

20 Elemental Worlds 103

21 One-Second Day 108

22 Billion-Story Building 111

23 $2 Undecillion Lawsuit 120

24 Star Ownership 124

25 Tire Rubber 128

26 Plastic Dinosaurs 131

S Short Answers #3 135

27 Suction Aquarium 143

28 Earth Eye 149

29 Build Rome in a Day 154

30 Mariana Trench Tube 159

31 Expensive Shoebox 164

32 MRI Compass 168

33 Ancestor Fraction 172

34 Bird Car 176

35 No-Rules NASCAR 180

W Weird & Worrying #2 185

36 Vacuum Tube Smartphone 186

37 Laser Umbrella 192

38 Eat a Cloud 195

39 Tall Sunsets 199

40 Lava Lamp 202

41 Sisyphean Refrigerators 206

42 Blood Alcohol 210

43 Basketball Earth 214

44 Spiders vs. the Sun 217

45 Inhale a Person 220

46 Candy Crush Lightning 223

S Short Answers #4 226

47 Toasty Warm 234

48 Proton Earth, Electron Moon 236

49 Eyeball 241

50 Japan Runs an Errand 244

51 Fire from Moonlight 249

52 Read All the Laws 255

W Weird & Worrying #3 262

53 Saliva Pool 263

54 Snowball 268

55 Niagara Straw 272

56 Walking Backward in Time 277

57 Ammonia Tube 284

58 Earth-Moon Fire Pole 287

S Short Answers #5 298

59 Global Snow 305

60 Dog Overload 308

61 Into the Sun 314

62 Sunscreen 318

63 Walking on the Sun 323

64 Lemon Drops and Gumdrops 329

Acknowledgments 335

References 337

Index 349

Editorial Reviews

Praise for What If? 2

“Delightful. . . Randall Munroe has made a career out of sharing his joy in science and engineering. . . . This book and its predecessor inspire us to believe that, even in a vast and mysterious universe, there’s a lot we can figure out with nothing but a sharp pencil, come basic scientific knowledge and a vivid imagination.” —The Wall Street Journal

"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

"Picking this book up now and then enlivens life by letting you briefly consider the effects of, say, putting an indestructible 20-meter-wide glass tube all the way down to the deepest part of the ocean. Plus, Munroe’s illustrations turn stick figures and flowcharts into the stuff of existential hilarity." —NPR 

"Entertaining. . . . combines Munroe’s true research and truly funny prose with his signature stick-figure illustrations." —The Washington Post

"Perfect if you enjoy it when stuffy figures of authority crack a smile. Or if you like it when black holes form. That happens a lot." —Newsweek

"One of my favorite books of the year." —Tim Harford, Financial Times

"It's an absolute delight! It's the coolest way to learn how the world actually works." —Hank Green (on the Dear Hank & John podcast) 

“A delight for science geeks with a penchant for oddball thought experiments.” —Kirkus

Praise for Randall Munroe and What If?

“Randall Munroe is a national treasure.” —Phil Plait
 
“Extreme astrophysics and indecipherable chemistry have rarely been this clearly explained or this consistently hilarious.” —Entertainment Weekly “10 Best Nonfiction Books of the Year”

“Consistently fascinating and entertaining...Munroe leavens the hard science with whimsical touches... An illuminating handbook of methods of reasoning.” —Wall Street Journal

“It’s fun to watch as Munroe tackles each question and examines every possible complication with nerdy and methodical aplomb.... The delightfully demented What If? is the most fun you can have with math and science, short of becoming your own evil genius.” —Boston Globe

From the Publisher

2022-06-17
Former NASA roboticist Munroe continues his quest to answer the world’s unlikeliest questions.

Assuming you had enough fuel, how long would it take you to drive to the edge of the observable universe? If you traveled at 65 mph, writes the author, “it will take you 480,000,000,000,000,000 years…to get there, or 35 million times the current age of the universe.” How Munroe arrives at such calculations isn’t always clear, and his math doesn’t always show the work, but roll with it. He estimates that a hungry T. rex set loose on the streets of New York might be placated with 80 hamburgers—and if the dinosaur decides to devour a friend of yours instead of the proffered treat, “anyway, hey, you have 80 burgers.” Speaking of eating, can a person eat a cloud? No, writes the author, not unless you can squeeze the air out of it, and never mind whether the water within the cloud is potable. Munroe takes clear delight in his odd investigations—e.g., whether a person—or a vampire, maybe—can get drunk drinking a drunk person’s blood. The answer has to do with the dilution of ethanol, but Munroe pauses to counsel that it’s a very bad idea to drink someone else’s blood in the first instance: “I’m not a doctor, and I try not to give medical advice in my books. However, I will confidently say that you shouldn’t drink the blood of someone with a viral hemorrhagic fever.” You’ve got to like a book that blends deep dives into such matters as the nature of black holes and the mathematics of genealogy with handy pop-culture references—as when Munroe brightly likens the unfortunate Greek king Sisyphus to Hollywood stalwart Dwayne Johnson, because, of course, rocks are involved in both cases.

A delight for science geeks with a penchant for oddball thought experiments.

Kirkus Reviews

Star Trek” alum and narrator Wil Wheaton perfectly matches his big and generous vocal style to the absurdly educational feel of this second installment by Randall Munroe. Once again, the cartoonist/author/roboticist/xkcd webmaster offers witty and amazingly well-researched ruminations on dozens of off-the-wall, out-of-this-universe topics. Infinitely huge numbers, complicated mathematical theories, and sizable chemical equations all sound accessible and downright entertaining when Wheaton delivers answers to questions posed by children and adults alike, such as: How tall would a billion-story building be? How many New Yorkers could a Tyrannosaurus rex eat? And what would happen if the solar system were filled with soup? Gleefully engaging and informative, this production has no hints of sarcasm, just delight for inquiring minds of all ages. B.P. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2022, Portland, Maine

NOVEMBER 2022 - AudioFile

Star Trek” alum and narrator Wil Wheaton perfectly matches his big and generous vocal style to the absurdly educational feel of this second installment by Randall Munroe. Once again, the cartoonist/author/roboticist/xkcd webmaster offers witty and amazingly well-researched ruminations on dozens of off-the-wall, out-of-this-universe topics. Infinitely huge numbers, complicated mathematical theories, and sizable chemical equations all sound accessible and downright entertaining when Wheaton delivers answers to questions posed by children and adults alike, such as: How tall would a billion-story building be? How many New Yorkers could a Tyrannosaurus rex eat? And what would happen if the solar system were filled with soup? Gleefully engaging and informative, this production has no hints of sarcasm, just delight for inquiring minds of all ages. B.P. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2022, Portland, Maine

NOVEMBER 2022 - AudioFile