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How To
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How To: Absurd Scientific Advice for Common Real-World Problems is the third book by Randall Munroe, the author of What If? and the creator of xkcd. Released in September 2019, the book features 28 chapters that go in-depth on extremely bad solutions to common, everyday problems, such as how to power your house, cross a river, or dispose of the very book you're reading. How bad, you ask? Think making a hydroelectric dam with an airport water fountain to charge your phone, sending files with butterflies, and measuring teeth radioactivity to find your age; things all gone into extreme detail and explained as simply as possible, and all with Randall's special sense of humor. | |
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Dropped link to CallBack: Not a Feature - ITEM | |
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Dropped link to LordOfTheRings: Not a Feature - ITEM | |
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Dropped link to TheCore: Not a Feature - ITEM | |
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As the Good Book Says... | |
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As the Good Book Says...: The saying "Red sky at night, sailor's delight. Red sky at morning, sailors take warning." is mentioned in a footnote in Chapter 12: How to Predict the Weather as even being mentioned in the Bible. More specifically: | |
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Mythology Gag | |
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Mythology Gag: Chapter 7: How to Move mentions that a frictionless vacuum would make moving much, much easier, but you unfortunately don't live in one. The image to go along with it is Cueball and Megan talking to Ponytail about purchasing an airless, frictionless dome. Chapter 22: How to Catch a Drone makes mention of using a boomerang to take down a drone, referencing a certain comic that's also used as the featured image for Brick Joke. | |
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Awesome, but Impractical | |
| How To / int_2bdae2ae | comment |
Lava moats, in theory, are a very effective way to keep undesirable things away from your property (as long as you don't count lava crickets as "undesirable"), but poses as much of a risk itself as the things you're trying to keep out. For one, lava radiates an immense amount of heat, meaning that you have to use some sort of heat source to actually keep it molten. You could do this just by using a crucible, but this generates more problems — for one, it'll cost around $10 per hour for each square meter of moat, which quickly adds up when you're trying to cover an actually decent amount of land. Additionally, the immense heat that lava radiates is enough to cause skin pain within 10 seconds just from standing a few meters away from it... and standing very close to it can lead to second-degree burns in less than a second. In fact, standing in front of a window 10 meters from the moat will still be hot enough to cause pain. You can mitigate this by making the moat deeper in the ground, so more heat goes up rather than out, but then a new issue arises - no matter what way the wind blows, it'll always be blowing the heat from the lava towards your house, meaning you'll have to install some sort of water cooling system inside your walls. You'd also want to consider ventilation, especially if the lava gives off toxic fumes, but now you have to worry about jellyfish blocking the drain and people crawling through your air ducts. Overall, the concept of a lava moat is Awesome, but Impractical. | |
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Natural Elements | |
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Natural Elements: Parodied in Chapter 20: How to Charge Your Phone (when you can't find an outlet): | |
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Lava Pit | |
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Lava Pit: Deconstructed as the premise of Chapter 10: How to Build a Lava Moat. Lava moats, in theory, are a very effective way to keep undesirable things away from your property (as long as you don't count lava crickets as "undesirable"), but poses as much of a risk itself as the things you're trying to keep out. For one, lava radiates an immense amount of heat, meaning that you have to use some sort of heat source to actually keep it molten. You could do this just by using a crucible, but this generates more problems — for one, it'll cost around $10 per hour for each square meter of moat, which quickly adds up when you're trying to cover an actually decent amount of land. Additionally, the immense heat that lava radiates is enough to cause skin pain within 10 seconds just from standing a few meters away from it... and standing very close to it can lead to second-degree burns in less than a second. In fact, standing in front of a window 10 meters from the moat will still be hot enough to cause pain. You can mitigate this by making the moat deeper in the ground, so more heat goes up rather than out, but then a new issue arises - no matter what way the wind blows, it'll always be blowing the heat from the lava towards your house, meaning you'll have to install some sort of water cooling system inside your walls. You'd also want to consider ventilation, especially if the lava gives off toxic fumes, but now you have to worry about jellyfish blocking the drain and people crawling through your air ducts. Overall, the concept of a lava moat is Awesome, but Impractical. | |
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The Air Not There | |
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The Air Not There: Averted, most directly in Chapter 15: How to Mail a Package (from space), and most humorously in Chapter 7: How to Move. | |
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Shockingly Expensive Bill | |
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Shockingly Expensive Bill: The electricity bill for heating a 1-acre lava moat, as per Chapter 10: How to Build a Lava Moat. A 1-meter, 600°C moat will cost $20,000 per day (at $0.10/kilowatt hour)... but a 10-meter wide moat at 1,200°C will cost $1,500,000 per day. | |
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Don't Try This at Home | |
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Don't Try This at Home: Right before the book's introduction, and a good word of caution for the entire book: | |
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Pirate Booty | |
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Pirate Booty: Defied in Chapter 2: How to Dig a Hole. | |
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Bombproof Appliance | |
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Bombproof Appliance: Proven as partially Truth in Television in Chapter 2: How to Throw a Pool Party. At one point, Randall considers the use of nuclear weapons to open a large amount of water bottles as quickly as possible in order to fill a pool, noting that "this is a completely ridiculous suggestion, so it should come as no surprise that it was studied by the US government during the Cold War." The tests proved that, if properly sealed, drinks and beverages inside of fridges can still be perfectly safe to consume in the event of nuclear fallout. | |
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Apocalypse How | |
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Apocalypse How: Not as common as the usual What If? article, but still occurs. In the epilogue of Chapter 16: How to Power Your House (on Earth), Randall mentions the "false vacuum" models, where space-time itself has a certain amount of tension that, if nudged in just the right way, could be released. Space is extremely big, so naturally the thought of harvesting that energy is going to be brought up. In short: triggering vacuum decay will create a bubble of true vacuum expanding at the speed of light until it engulfs the entire universe, and then proceeds to collapse it. | |
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Frictionless Reentry | |
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Frictionless Reentry: Completely averted in Chapter 15: How to Mail a Package (from space). | |
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What Could Possibly Go Wrong? | |
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What Could Possibly Go Wrong?: In Chapter 2: How to Throw a Pool Party: | |
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Deadpan Snarker | |
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Deadpan Snarker: Randall's personality in general, so this tends to pop up very often. | |
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Slow and Steady Wins the Race | |
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Chapter 13: How to Play Tag makes direct mention of the infamous Slow and Steady Wins the Race tale, Aesop's "The Tortoise and the Hare." | |
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Detonation Moon | |
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Detonation Moon: Chapter 17: How to Power Your House (on Mars) explores the concept of using the orbit of Phobos, one of Mars' moons, to generate energy. Doing so will accelerate the already-prevalent orbital decay of Phobos, ultimately leading to its destruction once it crosses the Roche Limit. | |
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Shout-Out | |
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Shout-Out: The Q&A with Chris Hadfield in Chapter 5: How to Make an Emergency Landing makes a direct mention of The Core and The Wizard of Oz. Chapter 11: How to Play Football deconstructs a scene from Lord of the Rings, determining whether a horse could really run through a sea of orcs without being slowed down. Simple answer: no, it cannot. The end of the chapter also features a comic involving Cueball taking a football and throwing it in a volcano, destroying it once and for all. Chapter 13: How to Play Tag makes direct mention of the infamous Slow and Steady Wins the Race tale, Aesop's "The Tortoise and the Hare." In a footnote in Chapter 23: How to Tell If You're a Nineties Kid: | |
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Footnote Fever | |
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Footnote Fever: As is characteristic for Randall, the book contains many, many examples of jokes and random nonsense stuffed into footnotes. | |
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World Tree | |
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World Tree: Yggdrasil the World Tree is present in Chapter 2: How to Throw a Pool Party. | |
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It's Been Done | |
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It's Been Done: Occurs a few times: Chapter 2: How to Throw a Pool Party: Chapter 7: How to Move reinvents the moving truck and the wheel. Chapter 14: How to Ski: Chapter 20: How to Charge Your Phone (when you can't find an outlet): | |
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Made of Explodium | |
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Made of Explodium: As Chapter 14: How to Ski shows, liquid oxygen is this. | |
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Call-Forward | |
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Call-Forward: Parodied in a footnote in Chapter 4: How to Play the Piano (the whole piano). | |
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Running Gag | |
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The [citation needed] Running Gag from What If? appears in Chapter 2: How to Throw a Pool Party. | |
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Comically Missing the Point | |
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Comically Missing the Point: In Chapter 6: How to Cross a River: | |
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Artistic License – Physics | |
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Artistic License – Physics: Averted, to a point where even the difference in gravity between Earth's equator and poles are accounted for. | |
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Shown Their Work | |
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Shown Their Work: Randall typically shows all the math and formulas used for the physics behind the methods in the book. | |
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The following is a list of statements referring to the current page from other pages.
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