Thing Explainer: Complicated Stuff in Simple Words by Randall Munroe (PDF)

Description

Have you ever tried to learn more about some incredible thing, only to be frustrated by incomprehensible jargon? Randall Munroe is here to help. In Thing Explainer, he uses line drawings and only the thousand (or, rather, “ten hundred”) most common words to provide simple explanations for some of the most interesting stuff there is, including: food-heating radio boxes (microwaves)tall roads (bridges)computer buildings (datacenters)the shared space house (the International Space Station)the other worlds around the sun (the solar system)the big flat rocks we live on (tectonic plates)the pieces everything is made of (the periodic table)planes with turning wings (helicopters)boxes that make clothes smell better (washers and dryers)the bags of stuff inside you (cells) How do these things work? Where do they come from? What would life be like without them? And what would happen if we opened them up, heated them up, cooled them down, pointed them in a different direction, or pressed this button? In Thing Explainer, Munroe gives us the answers to these questions and so many more. Funny, interesting, and always understandable, this book is for anyone—age 5 to 105—who has ever wondered how things work, and why.

User’s Reviews

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐Please read the other 1-star reviews before buying this book. I bought the book hoping it would help my kids learn about complicated things explained in ways that are easy to understand. This book is NOT that.It’s difficult to express how bad this book is. The drawings look informative and they pull you in, but the associated text is infuriatingly difficult to decipher. For example (describing a feature in a cross section of the earth’s surface): “This is white stuff, like what we put on food to make it better”. JUST SAY SALT! EVERYONE KNOWS WHAT SALT IS!”Fire Water” on the same picture is oil I guess? I don’t know because it’s unnecessarily cryptic and I don’t care enough to decipher it from context clues.Just say oil and maybe we’ll all learn something.(Describing volcanoes, I think) “HOT ROCK MOUNTAIN The rocks that get pushed into the Earth get hot and watery, and some of them come up through holes in the rock above them.” WT*? Does watery mean melted into lava? Just say lava.This book would be fun if you want to guess what the author is describing by using simple words like “MOVIE MAKER DEEP GOER” (maybe some kind of submarine?) but I find it exhausting and the least useful book for my kids.I hope i can return it. Total waste of money and time.

⭐This book shows you that understanding how something works and knowing its name are different. In doing so, it makes you consider when and why it’s actually important to use a special name for some things, and think harder about what your words are really telling people. The point of this book is not to explain things as well and as quickly as possible. It’s to help you use your thinking bag in a different way than you do every day. That’s why it’s so much fun to read.I’m a teacher at a school for people who already know a lot, and who are very good at what they do. (I teach them about power for our lights and machines.) We use big words and special names all the time. But I sometimes ask my students to try explaining complicated stuff using only simple words, because when you do that, you find out whether you really understand it. It forces you to ask, what is the most important idea here? I wish more teachers did this.Putting ideas into simple words can also help you recognize how different words carry meaning other than just telling you what something is. This is especially true for things that people often have strong feelings about, like the laws of the land, or our body parts for making new people, or machines for burning cities. Special words can quietly suggest if something is a good or a bad idea, or cover up bad feelings. Playing the game of using only simple words can help you see things more clearly for what they actually are, and say just what you mean. So, this book shows us a way to pay special attention to how our own thinking bag works. And I think that’s really, really cool.

⭐This is such a fantastic book! I was a bit worried after reading some of the reviews which said that it was hard to understand, but I am glad that I bought it because it is, for the most part, very easy to understand. There were only a few times where I was a bit confused, and then had the “aha!” moment where I realized what the book was trying to convey.The diagrams are fascinating and well drawn, and cover a large range of items such as parts of the body, nuclear power plants, the Earth, household appliances, the US Constitution (both the document and the ship), and various flying machines. I’m glad I bought the actual book rather than the Kindle version, because the writing is very small and also there are some pages that pull out to show extra large diagrams. The Kindle version simply couldn’t compare. The book itself is pretty big, contains a large number of diagrams, and would make a great coffee table book or a gift.

⭐When I was very young I had an astronomy book full of pictures and lots of words. It was a childrens book written for someone three or four years older than me. I read that book for many many years. As I aged the book taught me more and more. Every visit to the book taught me something new about the heavens and the stars and the planets as they were known in the 50’s before Alan Shepard and John Glenn. Mr. Munroe’s book takes me back to that exciting time. The book is a jewell of discovery. Every page and every picture is annotated with rich descriptions and a growing description of what thing it is about. I bought this book for my grandson. He and I will have many hours of fun exploring the things here and I hope someday he too will remember all that this book taught him. “Oh the things he will see and the worlds he will explore” comes to mind as I browse this book. I cannot recommend it enough.

⭐This book combines 2 amazing elements. One being information and the other being a humorous attempt at explaining said information. Whether you already know how these things function or barely know of their existence, this book gives detail on the inner-workings of some of the most advanced scientific and engineering feats of our day, and all explained using the 1,000 most commonly used words in the English language. This book is meant for humorous (and informational) entertainment.I give kudos to Randal Munroe for sticking to the plan of 1,000 words. Some items in the book need more detail to understand the actual concept (like organelles or mitochondria) but the author stuck to his 1,000 word plan giving him limited abilities, but at the same time a more creative and artistic way to convey a detail or function.Don’t expect the limited vocabulary to provide accurate detail. This is a work of creative expression.

⭐I’m a High School Physics teacher, before you buy this book realise that the author uses the 1000 most common words to describe difficult scientific objects/concepts. This is why i love it, my job is literally explaining difficult concepts in an many possible ways and in as simple as possible language. The illustrations are fantastic and carefully constructed so as to include as much detail as possible. I have a very inquisitive 6 year old and he adores this book., it creates hours of fun/discussion showing him how a things from a Car Engine to a Dishwasher works. I often now use some of these descriptions in the classroom and you can see some of the kids eyes react to the funny terminology such as “Blood Pusher” for the Human Heart or Space Boat for a “Rocket”….. So far i have bought 10 copies which i routinely give out as prizes for various science competitions/projects in school, also this is my first time writing a review as i feel i must for this particular book.If you have an inquisitive child who asks questions about things from Black Holes to Human Cells or wonders which country has the most trees to where did the Dinosaurs go this is an essential addition to your home library….. also if you’re a Science teacher please give out prizes like this.

⭐First off this book was quite a bit bigger than I was expecting – all my own fault, I should have read the description more carefully. Just be warned, this is a coffee table book, not a paperback size!It’s a clever idea, to explain things simply, but I find that the language that is used distracts from the ‘understanding’. I accept that maybe I’m not the intended audience, but I was suckered in by the ‘complex things explained simply’ idea. A better description would be ‘complex things explained using language a 7 year old would be able to follow’, but I suppose that isn’t such a catchy subtitle.A great idea, brilliant illustrations, but a bit frustrating.

⭐Disappointing book. In some ways as simple things are not given their real names. A battery in a car was called a ‘ power box’ instead of a battery. A helicopter is a ‘sky boat with wings’ ?? Things are explained but this of silly simple terms for well known objects is unnecessary

⭐This is quite possibly the worst book you can buy today. The book fails in that the author refuses to use correct names and terminology and generally treats the reader like new born babies. Avoid the book at all costs.

⭐I have this on my ipad and it is almost impossible to read. I read the first two pages and gave up, the typeface is microscopic. You can of course expand the page but then the sense of where you are on the page goes west.I’ve noticed in some of the reviews that some are complaining about the simplistic text. It does say clearly in the blurb for the book that he only uses the thousand most common words in the English language. It can’t have been easy.This is a great idea let down by the formatting, I feel a bit miffed that if was a pretty expensive kindle book that is of little use.

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