"What If? 2" by Randall Munroe

I liked the first What If? better, I think. My favorite hypotheticals from this one are:

"How many pigeons would it require in order to lift the average person and a launch chair to the height of Australia's Q1 skyscraper?" (|A few tens of thousands, or more than the mass of the galaxy, depending on how clever you get with your pigeon stacking.|)

"Can all the world's bananas fit inside all of the world's churches? My friends have had this argument for a little over 10 years now." (|Yes, they would fit.|)

"Dear Randall, what would happen if you shrunk Jupiter down to the size of a house and placed it in a neighborhood, say, replacing a house?" (|Jupiter is very hot and would violently explode.|)

"Why don't compasses point toward the nearest hospital because of the magnetic fields created by MRI machines?" (|They do, but you have to get pretty close.|)

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: T for swearing, I think. Again, this would be a pretty fun videogame.

 

4 stars. I know I said I didn't like this one as much as the first, but that just means it's a less enthusiastic four stars.

Favorite lines:

    Decorating Tip

    The air in your house should be in gas form

    Page 14, from "Would there be any danger from standing next to a large object that was 0 Kelvin?"

    Q. What if your blood became liquid uranium? Would you die from radiation, lack of oxygen, or something else?

    A. [said by a stick figure in a lab coat] "You would die from what we in the medical profession call not-having-any-blood-and-being-full-of-molten-uranium syndrome. Or 'Jeff's disease' for short. Man, poor Jeff."

    Page 30. This is from one of the "short answer" sections.

    Q. What would happen if you microwaved a smaller microwave, while the smaller one was on as well?

    A. You would no longer be welcome in that IKEA.

    Page 91, from another short answer section. There's no "A." in the original text; I added it to forestall confusion.

    Congratulations to Australia, new rulers of the galaxy.

    Page 124, from "If every country's airspace extended up forever, which country would own the largest percentage of the galaxy at any given time?"

    "Can whoever is building these aqueducts everywhere please stop? We have enough!"

    "NEVER!"

    Page 158, from "How many people would it take to build Rome in a day?"

(Endnote: There's also one about "what if Nascar didn't have any rules and the only purpose was to get a car around the track as fast as possible", which ended up with building a particle accelerator the size and shape of the Nascar track.)