Page 22 - Boca Club News - November '22

Page 22, Boca Club News Black & White Page

The Arts

Book Review...

“What if? 2: Additional Serious Scientific Answers

to Absurd Hypothetical Questions”

By Nils A. Shapiro energy? I’m imagining to the facts while making it clear that he sees the humor in
a rope...one end tied to the whole business, I can’t resist the temptation to tell you,
One of the most fascinating, the airplane, the other for example, that among the many surprises you will come
informative, enjoyable— tied to a large boulder across are: (a) Refrigerators don’t cool their surroundings;
and definitely weirdest— at the edge of a cliff. they heat them(!)...and (b) If you had a “planet peeler” that
books you will read this year Just push the boulder could remove 3,750 kilometers of rock (85% of the Earth’s
or any year! off the cliff! mass), you could lose 20 pounds, but it would have been
• I want to lose 20 much easier to just dig a tunnel. And meanwhile, after four
As soon as I saw the name pounds. How much of hours of tough digging away the Earth’s crust and getting
Randall Munroe as author of this book—which has the Earth’s mass would to the denser molten mass with its stronger gravity pull,
already hit the national bestseller lists immediately I have to “relocate” you would actually weigh a pound more!
upon publication—I purchased a copy, having loved to space in order to And as just a single example of the author’s sense of
and reviewed among his earlier works the incredible achieve my goal? humor, in illustrating the answer to one of the questions,
“Thing Explainer: Complicated Stuff in Simple Words” • If I pulled out my he notes: “I don’t want to draw someone throwing up a
in this column back in 2015. That book contained his eyeball and aimed it so gallon of blood, so here’s a squirrel instead”...and includes
own simplistic explanations and technical illustrations that it was looking into my other eyeball, what would I his cartoon drawing of a squirrel for no reason!
of “Boxes that make clothes smell better” (Washers and see (assuming the nerves and veins remain undamaged)? Remember, there are more than 60 such questions raised
Dryers); “Bags of stuff inside you” (The Body’s Internal • Could you get drunk from drinking a drunk person’s and answered in this book, enough to keep you engrossed,
Organs); “Stuff you touch to fly a sky boat” (The Controls blood? entertained and trying to decide which ones to share first
Cockpit of a Jetliner), and more. I don’t want to include any “spoilers” here to lessen with family and friends. So you might as well get your
Munroe, a brilliant former roboticist for NASA, left your enjoyment. However, since so much of the joy of copy as soon as possible, because you will want to take it
that agency to focus instead on a career of explaining to this book is the way in which the author answers these with you everywhere you go.
the general public, in books and a popular blog, the most questions in his clear, step-by-step writing style that sticks
complex scientific subjects in the simplest, easiest-to-
understand English, using his vast research skills when
needed, his delightful sense of humor throughout, and
deftly lightening it all with his own cartoonish stick-figure
drawings!
The result is a treasure that might alternatively
have been titled, “True-Fact Answers to Weird Science
Questions for Dummies.”
In this new 350-page volume, Munroe addresses 64
of the many questions received from his huge fan base,
and—as ludicrous as they appear to be—answers them
clearly based on diligent research and the latest scientific
knowledge, each in from a half-page to several pages,
illustrates them simply,...and sprinkles the answers with
his own wry, witty comments.
Here, for example, are just a few of the questions
covered, to give you a taste of what to expect in these
pages:
• Suppose everyone with a fridge or a freezer opened them
at the same time, outdoors. Would that amount of cooling
be able to noticeably change the temperature? If not, how
many fridges would it take to lower the temperature say,
5 degrees F? What about even lower?
• I read today that insects make at least $57 billion a
year for the US economy. If we were to pay every single
insect in the United States equally for their economic
contribution, how much would each insect get?
• My friend is a commercial airline pilot. She says that a The two-page spread above is from the answer to the question about saving fuel by having passenger jets take off by catapult.
significant amount of fuel is spent on takeoff. To save fuel, The author explains that, technically, dropping an object tied to the plane weighing 80,000 pounds—the weight of the Washington
why couldn’t we launch airplanes using catapult systems Monument—a few feet would do the trick, but is not a practical solution! The pages below are part of the answer to the “eyeball”
like on aircraft carriers (calibrated to normal human question. After explaining what the eye would actually see, a small box added by the author, “Medical Tip,” notes: “9 out of
accelerations)? Could significant amounts of fossil fuels 10 doctors agree that you shouldn’t remove your own eyeball and you shouldn’t get medical advice from doctor #10.”
be saved if the catapults could be run by some other clean

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