What If?: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions

by Randall Munroe

The explosion would be just the right size to maximize the amount of paperwork your lab would face. If the explosion were smaller, you could potentially cover it up. If it were larger, there would be no one left in the city to submit paperwork to.

In the Clarendon Laboratory at Oxford University sits a battery-powered bell that has been ringing since the year 1840. The bell “rings” so quietly it’s almost inaudible, using only a tiny amount of charge with every motion of the clapper. Nobody knows exactly what kind of batteries it uses because nobody wants to take it apart to figure it out.

Jeff Potter’s excellent book Cooking for Geeks provides a great introduction to the science of cooking meat, and explains what ranges of heat produce what effects in steak and why. Cook’s The Science of Good Cooking was also helpful.

information is fundamentally tied to the recipient’s uncertainty about the message’s content and his or her ability to predict it in advance.

Introverts understand; the loneliest human in history was just happy to have a few minutes of peace and quiet.