I have never done
this, but I am going to quote verbatim the author’s biography on the dust
jacket of this weird, wild, wonderfully funny book, What If? “Randall Munroe, a
former NASA roboticist, is the creator of the webcomic xkcd and the author of xkcd:
volume 0. The International
Astronomical Union recently named an asteroid after him; asteroid 4942 Munroe
is big enough to cause a mass extinction if it ever hits a planet like
Earth. He lives in Cambridge,
Massachusetts.”
The subtitle, oddly
enough placed above the main title,
is “Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions.” I laughed on almost every page, while
remembering some of the absurd questions I asked as a youngster. Sadly, my most absurd question is not here:
“What would happen to a ball dropped into a hole which went clear through the
planet?” It was at a Boy Scout Summer
Camp, and the recipient of this question, rolled his eyes and said, “Wait,
stop, we are way off target here, we are talking about eclipses of the moon!” I often cut off my students who begin with,
“This might be a dumb question…” by telling them “there are no dumb questions,
only dumb answers.” I guess now I will
have to add No dumb questions, only some pretty funny absurd ones.”
Here are some
examples of Munroe’s wit and humor.
“What would happen if the Earth and all terrestrial objects suddenly
stopped spinning, but the atmosphere retained its velocity?” Answer: nearly everyone would die. Then things would get interesting. At the equator, the Earth’s surface is moving
… a little over a thousand miles an hour,” resulting in “a sudden
thousand-mile-per-hour wind. […] everyone and everything between 42 degrees
north and 42 degrees south …about 85 percent of the world’s population – would
suddenly experience supersonic winds.
The highest winds would only last for a few minutes near the surface;
friction from the ground would slow them down.
However, those few minutes would be long enough to reduce virtually all
human structures to ruins” (1).
Some of my favorite
questions include, “If an asteroid was very small but supermassive, could you
really live on it like the Little Prince [from Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s
novel, The Little Prince” (102). I wondered about this the first time I read
this wonderful ostensibly children’s story.
Here’s another, “What if I jumped out of an airplane with a couple of
tanks of helium and one huge balloon?
Then, while falling, I release the helium and fill the balloon. How long of a fall would I need in order to
slow me enough that I could land safely?” (150). Some people obviously have way too much time
on their hands! And finally, “If two
immortal people were placed on opposite sides of an Earthlike Planet, how long
would it take them to find each other?”
He did say absurd questions!
Spoiler alert: 3,000 years. Other
questions involve draining the oceans (204), and guessing on every SAT multiple
Choice question (278).
For lots of fun and
laughter – and some serious questions – pick up a copy of Randall Munroe’s book,
What If? Serious Scientific Questions to
Absurd Hypothetical Questions. 5
stars.
--Chiron, 10/12/14
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