Your one stop book summary, audiobook and book review spot for:
What If? Summary
About What If? Book
From the creator of the wildly popular webcomic xkcd, hilarious and informative answers to important questions you probably never thought to ask
Millions of people visit xkcd.com each week to read Randall Munroe's iconic webcomic. His stick-figure drawings about science, technology, language, and love have an enormous, dedicated following, as do his deeply researched answers to his fans' strangest questions. The queries he receives range from merely odd to downright diabolical: - What if I took a swim in a spent-nuclear-fuel pool? - Could you build a jetpack using downward-firing machine guns? - What if a Richter 15 earthquake hit New York City? - Are fire tornadoes possible? His responses are masterpieces of clarity and wit, gleefully and accurately explaining everything from the relativistic effects of a baseball pitched at near the speed of light to the many horrible ways you could die while building a periodic table out of all the actual elements. The book features new and never-before-answered questions, along with the most popular answers from the xkcd website. What If? is an informative feast for xkcd fans and anyone who loves to ponder the hypothetical.See More
4.9/5 (2996 reviews)
Audio and text
Download free PDF
Global Windstorm
Q. What would happen if the Earth and all terrestrial objects suddenly stopped spinning, but the atmosphere retained its velocity?
- Nearly everyone would die.
- At the equator, the Earth’s surface is moving at about 470 meters per second—relative to its axis. If the Earth stopped and the air didn’t, the result would be a sudden thousand-mile-per-hour wind.
- Day and night would each be six months long.
262
Relativistic Baseball
Q. What would happen if you tried to hit a baseball pitched at 90 percent the speed of light?
- It would, however, start to eat away at the surface, blasting tiny fragments of the ball in all directions. These fragments would be going so fast that when they hit air molecules, they would trigger two or three more rounds of fusion.And with a great roar, the blast wave would arrive, tearing up trees and shredding houses.
245
Spent Fuel Pool
Q. What if I took a swim in a typical spent nuclear fuel pool? Would I need to dive to actually experience a fatal amount of radiation? How long could I stay safely at the surface?
- You could probably survive treading water anywhere from 10 to 40 hours.
- Spent fuel from nuclear reactors is highly radioactive. Water is good for both radiation shielding and cooling, so fuel is stored at the bottom of pools for a couple of decades until it’s inert enough to be moved into dry casks.
237
It is a marvel part
What if....?Kilmonger Saved the Ironman
The killmonger saved the ironman. Killmonger came tony's company. Tony ans killmonger made a vibranium robot killmonger defeat the rowdy, tony , ollius crow
3
It is a marvel part
What If....Thor Were On Only Child
Odin give the loki back his father and Thor was an only child. Thor was a party thor . He like to make parties and his alien friends was help them for party. Thor beat the captain marvel. Thor and loki was not brother in tjis series.
3
It is a marvel part
What if...... Ultron Won
There are six infinity stones are ultron .Ultron are more than powerful. Ultron defeat the Avengers. Ultron beat the watcher. Ultron defeat the Universe.
3
Supercharge your mind with one idea per day
Enter your email and spend 1 minute every day to learn something new.
I agree to receive email updates