How To: Absurd Scientific Advice for Common Real-World Problems

by Randall Munroe

Some ideas that sound ridiculous turn out to be revolutionary. Smearing mold on an infected cut sounds like a terrible idea, but the discovery of penicillin showed that it could be a miracle cure. On the other hand, the world is full of disgusting stuff that you could smear on a wound, and most of them won’t make it better. Not all ridiculous ideas are good.

Maybe an idea is bad, but figuring out exactly why it’s a bad idea can teach you a lot—and might help you think of a better approach.

The great thing about physics is that you can run these numbers for any material you want, even if it’s something ridiculous. Physics doesn’t care if your question is weird. It just gives you the answer, without judging.

If you want to raise sea level near where you live, check whether there’s an ice sheet on the other side of the planet. If so, that’s the one you should melt.

There was one time that a pirate buried treasure somewhere. One time. And the entire idea of buried pirate treasure comes from that one incident.

People who dig a lot of holes, from treasure hunters to archaeologists to construction workers, certainly find valuable stuff from time to time.

in a sense, a long jumper is just a sprinter who’s good at briefly going up instead of forward.

The bad news is that you probably don’t live in a frictionless vacuum. Most people don’t, despite the clear advantages one would offer when moving.

This idea sounds ridiculous, so, unsurprisingly, the US military studied it during the Cold War.

Aluminum’s low melting point makes it an appealing moat material, but it melts at a low enough temperature that it doesn’t really glow—and it’s not really a lava moat if it’s not glowing ominously.

There are lots of players on the field, but generally only one of them can have the ball at a time, so there are plenty of opportunities for you to just run around on the field without ever having to deal with the ball.

You can try running around them, but it’s harder than it looks—football players are pretty fast, and they know sometimes people try tricky stuff like that, so they’re ready for it.

Fast neutron reactors are much more efficient, but they’re also much more expensive to operate, and they involve enriching uranium closer to the level where it might be useful for nuclear weapons, so they can make international regulatory agencies nervous.

But files linger on, and will probably continue to do so for decades to come. And as long as we have files, we’ll need to send them to people.