How To: Absurd Scientific Advice for Common Real-World Problems by Randall Munroe (PDF)

Description

AN INSTANT #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER “How To will make you laugh as you learn…With How To, you can’t help but appreciate the glorious complexity of our universe and the amazing breadth of humanity’s effort to comprehend it. If you want some lightweight edification, you won’t go wrong with How To.” —CNET “[How To] has science and jokes in it, so 10/10 can recommend.” —Simone Giertz The world’s most entertaining and useless self-help guide from the brilliant mind behind the wildly popular webcomic xkcd, the bestsellers What If? and Thing Explainer, and What If? 2, coming September 13, 2022For any task you might want to do, there’s a right way, a wrong way, and a way so monumentally complex, excessive, and inadvisable that no one would ever try it. How To is a guide to the third kind of approach. It’s full of highly impractical advice for everything from landing a plane to digging a hole. Bestselling author and cartoonist Randall Munroe explains how to predict the weather by analyzing the pixels of your Facebook photos. He teaches you how to tell if you’re a baby boomer or a 90’s kid by measuring the radioactivity of your teeth. He offers tips for taking a selfie with a telescope, crossing a river by boiling it, and powering your house by destroying the fabric of space-time. And if you want to get rid of the book once you’re done with it, he walks you through your options for proper disposal, including dissolving it in the ocean, converting it to a vapor, using tectonic plates to subduct it into the Earth’s mantle, or launching it into the Sun. By exploring the most complicated ways to do simple tasks, Munroe doesn’t just make things difficult for himself and his readers. As he did so brilliantly in What If?, Munroe invites us to explore the most absurd reaches of the possible. Full of clever infographics and fun illustrations, How To is a delightfully mind-bending way to better understand the science and technology underlying the things we do every day.

User’s Reviews

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

⭐I’m so glad that Randall Munroe, xkcd author, has shared his wonderful curiosity for our world and how it works. “how to” is complemented by the two “what if” guides, as masterpieces of form over function.

⭐A great read for all ages. Good for explaining those things adults do not know. Should be in libraries.

⭐You could just click on the “Create Review” and just start writing about anything.I’m not sure anyone really validates the contents. For instance, if you look at the 1-star review, it complains about failing to share the audio version of this book in portugal.It is obvious that when one writes a review, you can give any number of stars for any reason:”5 stars – Wonderfully informative! I’ve been held hostage by a mad hermit for the past 20 years and managed to get this book by someone who disposed it in my prison (a very deep well on some salt plains). Didn’t know half this stuff existed. This ‘web’ thing sounds really cool. Can’t wait to try some of this out when I get out.””4 stars – cuz I really like numbers that are squares (and ‘1’ does not count)””3 stars – Great book but the people drawings lack faces thereby hiding the true and raw emotions of the characters.”2 stars – The book fails as a door stop because of the slick cover””1 star – The book lacks clear instructions for most of the projects. For instance, I live on a fault line and wanted to try out the Tectonic Plate electrical generator. After a convincing argument in the book), I was expecting a shopping list and directions. But nooo… rather than put some work into it, the book just dismisses it as “ridiculous and technically infeasible”. If I could give zero stars for this gross omission and author laziness I would.”Thanks for another great book, Randall!

⭐how to is described by the author, Randall Munroe, as “absurd scientific advice for common real-world problems,” and it really can’t be said any better than that. It’s the most useless set of tutorials you can find, but Munrow’s sense of comedy through comics, as well as his scientific knowledge, make the book extremely intriguing regardless.One of the biggest concepts throughout out For example, he takes a concept such as producing energy, which many of us often take for granted, and spends the entire chapter discussing different solutions that, in theory, make sense, such as using escalators or tectonic plates. However, in reality, the repercussions behind them heavily outweigh the positive factors. In this way, it really puts the world into perspective, making you realize how complex our world is, no matter the task. This is also shown by Munroe’s use of scientific formulas to prove his insane ideas true or false. My personal favorite example of this is in the chapter “How to Ski,” where he demonstrates how you can find how steep you need your slope to be to ski on it, based on friction of the specific ski material. To do this, the equation coefficient of friction equals tan(slope angle) (pg.146) is used, and I loved this chapter because it combined two of my favorite things, skiing and science. In fact, Munrow covers so many various topics, that anyone can really find a chapter that involves their personal interests.To sum it up, Munroe hits the perfect balance of displaying scientific concepts that relate back to his advice, as well as sprinkling in comics, sarcasm, and traditional jokes to supplement the deep thinking behind the rest of the book. However, if you’re coming into how to with a very literature or art devised mind, this is most likely not the book for you.

⭐This may help you enjoy thinking about things that, til now, seemed obvious. Never assume the obvious! You can never think too deeply.

⭐My son got the book when he was 9. Since then, he has read the book multiple times and enjoyed reading it very much.

⭐Various scientific topics on every day things. Liked learning about how different types of math are used to calculate findings.

⭐How do you make a book that contains physics, math, and other obscure scientific equations enjoyable? I don’t know, but Randall Munroe does.Munroe has this inexplicable ability to wondrously weave together comic absurdity and applicable science. If you are familiar with his site ‘xkcd’ then you totally understand what I am trying to say. I wish his work was around when I was in high school; his creativity and imagery can explain large scientific concepts better than any textbook I have read.Now, don’t get me wrong, this book is created to entertain. It is not a science book or a teaching manual. It is a silly book that happens to address science. It is one of those rare books that makes we laugh out loud while thinking deeply.This is a must buy book and easily one of my favorites this year.

⭐I showed this book to my 9 yr-old, hoping he would be enticed by the pictures. He has so far read four chapters, and gave me the following review: “I understand next to nothing but I read everything and I love it.” I don’t think it is possible to give a stronger endorsement of the writing style.

⭐It was an impulse buy due to a low price offer it had for the hardcover…I regret spending that money, or any money at all…This book content is something you would watch on an imgur/9gag website or something and thumb up but its a totally waste of money and time otherwise.When buying it I was under the impression it would have some actual brake down on how things work, like real world complex projects explained in a way for average people to understand the basic concept of it… like e.g “how a cpu is manufactured”or “how you get power from the grid” kind of topics or in the relevant nature of those where in my mind when purchasing this book, but instead you get some ridiculous ideas e.g how to change between airplanes while in mid air or drive an airplane while outside on the cockpit and on top of the craft…Which is ridiculous and useless and on top of that it doesn’t do a good job even at that…The book’s explanations even to these ridiculous matters are just HA “”””explained”””” in a few lines missing a lot of facts… in other words it doesn’t even seriously tackle those ridiculous scenarios only presents a seemingly working workaround.Its like if you join a group at somebody’s home and you are college students and then you start a bonk and everybody says some stupid idea and briefly talks about how it would work..THAT’s this book!Did not like it at all and it is not even worth to spend time and effort to return it.. just gonna stash it somewhere in my house..

⭐First, think of something humerous to call your review and some key points to get across. Items such as:Does not contain any bobcatsCan be used as kindling for fire (unless you bought the kindle version)Should not be relied upon for real-world adviceThis is a brilliant book, yet again, from Randall. It’s hilarious and thought-provoking in places…and it’s amazing how far Col. Hadfield was willing to be questioned! You’ll love it! Don’t put off buying it any further – do it! Do it now!

⭐This book is hilarious! I have read his XKCD online comic for many years and this is an extension of the smary, crazy, slightly nerdy comic. Loved it!

⭐The ideal find for ‘someone who already has what he needs’; we’ve already been told -in some detail- about the contents of the first chapters! Definitely a good choice for a reader who enjoys dipping into books on varied topics. Will buy again for others…

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