What If?: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions

Have you ever asked “why this happens and why that happened” when you were a child? Well imagine if you’re now an adult and you’re still curious but the questions are deeper abs answers are way longer and scientifically explained. That’s this book. It tends to overkill the explanation for me to the point if not caring.

Not my cup of tea. Next...

Love this! Educational, enlightening, terrifying, funny. Geek out and laugh out loud.

I actually wasn't an avid reader of XKCD before I read this book. I found out about this through a coworker, and then I happened to see it at a bookstore, so I flipped through it and decided that it seemed interesting enough for me to read. I really liked all the strange, random, and crazy questions that were answered with SCIENCE. Of course, most of the answers were "then the Earth will be destroyed and everyone will die," but it was still fun to see a step-by-step process of how the Earth would be destroyed. The scientific reasoning was sound and showed how knowledgable the author really was on various topics while staying entertaining the whole way through.

I also love the idea of ~fun science, and this was definitely a fun science book. It serves to get people interested in subjects that many people hate and only see as stepping stones in a pre-med track (mostly physics, but also chemistry), and the author wrote in an accessible, humorous manner. The funny footnotes made the book brought the reader out of the purely scientific and made it feel like the author was explaining things to the readers personally, like he was standing right there in person. And of course, the illustrations that XKCD are known for serve to round the book out into a great exercise in the practice of answering absurd questions WITH SCIENCE!

I’ll admit it now, I’ve never read xkcd and science was my weakest subject in school. Okay, now that that’s out of the way…

I listened to the audiobook read by Wil Wheaton because I thought it would be fun, and it definitely delivered on that front with Wil’s delivery just adding to the enjoyment of this book.

Each chapter poses an absurd (and sometimes terrifying - I’m still thinking about the teeth) hypothetical question, complete with a serious scientific answer, as the title implies. These answers are complete with calculations and metrics that mean absolutely nothing to me, but which I greatly admire and am sure some people will appreciate.

Munroe does a great job of explaining complex concepts and calculations in ways that even I can understand, and we’re occasionally treated to him going above and beyond with answers that spiral into incomprehensible ridiculousness that make me glad that these are all hypothetical.

I know that this was so popular that there’s a second book, and I know I’ll go listen to it at some point too because this was wildly entertaining, and I’d recommend to anyone who needs a brief ??wtf?? moment in their day.

I wish I had this whilst I was still working in a school, it would’ve been great to encourage reading for pleasure!