What If?: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions
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| Author | Randall Munroe |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Subject | Science miscellanea |
| Published | September 2, 2014 |
| Publisher | Houghton Mifflin Harcourt |
| Pages | 320 pages |
| ISBN | |
| 500 | |
| LC Class | Q173.M965 2014 |
| Website | whatif |
What If?: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions is a non-fiction book by Randall Munroe in which he answers hypothetical science questions sent to him by readers of his webcomic, xkcd. The book contains a selection of questions and answers originally published on his blog What If?, along with several new ones. The book is divided into several dozen chapters, most of which are devoted to answering a unique question.What If? was released in September 2, 2014 and was received positively by critics.
In the introduction section of the book, Randall Munroe recounts wondering as a child whether "there were more hard things or soft things in the world", concluding that "the world contained about three billion soft things and five billion hard things". The conversation that was produced by this question impressed Munroe's mother to such a degree that she wrote it down. Though Munroe later stated that his question was rather meaningless, he used it as an example of how "thoroughly answer[ing] a stupid question can take you to some pretty interesting places".
Since 2012, Munroe has been answering unusual questions sent in by readers of xkcd on his blog What If?. The concept was inspired by a weekend program organized by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in which volunteers can teach classes to groups of high school students on any chosen subject. Munroe signed up after hearing about it from a friend and decided to teach a class on energy. Though the lecture felt "dry" at first, once Munroe started bringing up examples from Star Wars and The Lord of the Rings, the students became more excited. The entire second half of the class was eventually spent solving mathematical and physics problems. Munroe wrote the first entries a few years before the start of the blog, based on questions he was asked that day.
Because he was delayed in getting the website online, Munroe had a lot of time thinking about the design of the blog. He eventually chose to display his entries as individual pages rather than using an infinite scrolling page, as he considers the latter more difficult to digest. Munroe usually chooses questions he already knows something interesting about, or after reading a scientific paper, he keeps an eye out for questions in which he can bring it up. Munroe has said that the volume of questions has been high enough that it is impossible to read all of them. Answering a question and writing a post takes him about a day of solid work.
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