Review: What If? Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions by Randall Munroe

Title: What If? Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions

Series: What If? #1

Author: Randall Munroe

Genre: Adult, nonfiction, science

Publication date: September 2014

Published by: Mariner Books

Source: Borrowed from library

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Synopsis: In the New York Times best-selling book from the creator of the wildly popular webcomic xkcd, Randall Munroe gives hilarious and informative answers to important questions you probably never thought to ask.

Fans of xkcd ask Munroe a lot of strange questions. What if you tried to hit a baseball pitched at 90 percent the speed of light? How fast can you hit a speed bump while driving and live? If there was a robot apocalypse, how long would humanity last? What if everyone only had one soulmate? What would happen if the moon went away?

In pursuit of answers, Munroe ran computer simulations, pored over stacks of declassified military research memos, solved differential equations, and consulted with nuclear reactor operators. His responses are masterpieces of clarity and hilarity, complemented by signature xkcd comics. (They often predict the complete annihilation of humankind, or at least a really big explosion.)

Far more than a book for geeks, What If? explains the laws of science in operation in a way that every intelligent reader will enjoy and feel much smarter for having read.

My rating: ★★★★★

I came across this book at the beginning of the year when I was scrolling through my feed on Goodreads and saw that one of my friends was reading it. The title immediately caught my attention: What If? Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions. I was all in! I love science, so this was very intriguing to me... especially the part about answering absurd questions. Lol.

I didn't know I needed the following questions answered:

What if everyone had a soulmate? Answer:

If we were all paired up at random, 90 percent of our soul mates would be long dead.

Oh, that's depressing. Lol.

What if you made a periodic table out of the actual elements? Answer: Really bad things! Each row would get progressively worse! This was probably one of my favorite questions. I loved how the reactions were described per row, and how the author referred to the elements as dangerous, radioactive, short-lived Pokémon 🤣

It was interesting though—I learned some cool things about the elements.

What would happen if all the water was drained from the oceans and then that water was dropped on Mars? This two part question was another of my favorites.

What would happen if the sun switched off? Answer: Bad, bad things. Lol.

But the author did in fact answer these absurd questions and more! It was great! I had not heard of this author before, but he's a pretty popular cartoonist... now. He's actually a physicist who used to work in robotics at freaking NASA! Now he does comics. Lol. And the comics in this book was one of my favorite things about this! It was just really funny and I enjoyed all the fun drawings.

This book was just full of really interesting stuff. We got everything from space, to physics, to biology and DNA. And it was all pretty easy to understand. I mean sometimes the formulas would get too complicated and my eyes would glaze, but it was all pretty easy to follow overall.

But I really enjoyed this! It was funny but informative, and it balanced the two really well. I loved that the chapters were short, so we got a bunch of ridiculous questions answered. Lol. But there's still more questions to be answered! I'm really looking forward to the sequel and more serious, scientific answers to ridiculous questions 😆

Have you read this book? If so, what did you think about it? If not, what do you think? Does it sound like something you might want to read? Leave me a link to your review or comment below! 😊