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How To: Absurd Scientific Advice for Common Real-World Problems from Randall Munroe of xkcd by [Randall Munroe]

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Randall Munroe

How To: Absurd Scientific Advice for Common Real-World Problems from Randall Munroe of xkcd Kindle Edition

by Randall Munroe (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

2,633 ratings

in Physical & Theoretical Chemistry

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Randall Munroe is . . .'Nerd royalty' Ben Goldacre

'Totally brilliant' Tim Harford

'Laugh-out-loud funny' Bill Gates

'Wonderful' Neil Gaiman

AN INSTANT #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

The world's most entertaining and useless self-help guide, from the brilliant mind behind the wildly popular webcomic xkcd and the million-selling What If? and Thing Explainer

For any task you might want to do, there's a right way, a wrong way, and a way so monumentally bad that no one would ever try it. How To is a guide to the third kind of approach. It's full of highly impractical advice for everything from landing a plane to digging a hole.

'How strange science can fix everyday problems' New Scientist

'A brilliant book: clamber in for a wild ride' Nature

Length: 322 pages	Word Wise: Enabled	Enhanced Typesetting: Enabled
Page Flip: Enabled	Audible Narration: Audible Narration Switch back and forth between reading the Kindle book and listening to the Audible narration. Add narration for a reduced price of $9.99 after you buy the Kindle book. Ready	Language: English

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Review

Ridiculous, delightful and, damn it, educational ― Sunday Times (Culture)

A pure delight, a salty-sweet mixture of hard science and bonkers whimsy ― Boing Boing

Extremely accurate and often amusing answers to everyday issues ― Daily Mail

Consistently fascinating and entertaining ― Wall Street Journal

The creator of the popular, extremely excellent webcomic xkcd cleverly illustrates a guide of complicated solutions to simple tasks as common as digging a hole ― USA Today

[How To] tackles problems from the mundane-such as how to move to a new house-to those that may trouble a mad scientist building her first lava moat. The solutions are often hilariously, and purposefully, absurd. Embedded in these solutions, however, is solid scientific, engineering, and experimental understanding . . . [for] anyone who appreciates science-based solutions to life's problems ― Science Magazine

A witty, educational examination of 'unusual approaches to common tasks' . . . generously laced with dry humor . . . Munroe's comic stick-figure art is an added bonus. . . . Apart from generating laughter, the book also manages to achieve his serious objective: to get his audience thinking ― Publishers Weekly, starred review

A gleefully nerdy hypothetical instruction book for armchair scientists of all ages ― Booklist

An enjoyable treat for fans of logic puzzles, brain hacking, kaizen, mad science, and other forms of mental stimulation ― Kirkus Reviews

Required reading across the world ― New York Times --This text refers to the paperback edition.

Review

Munroe is the perfect guy to take on a project like this... a wonderful guide for curious minds - BILL GATES

Ridiculous, delightful and, damn it, educational - Sunday Times (Culture)

A pure delight, a salty-sweet mixture of hard science and bonkers whimsy - Boing Boing

Extremely accurate and often amusing answers to everyday issues - Daily Mail

Consistently fascinating and entertaining - Wall Street Journal

The creator of the popular, extremely excellent webcomic xkcd cleverly illustrates a guide of complicated solutions to simple tasks as common as digging a hole - USA Today

[How To] tackles problems from the mundane-such as how to move to a new house-to those that may trouble a mad scientist building her first lava moat. The solutions are often hilariously, and purposefully, absurd. Embedded in these solutions, however, is solid scientific, engineering, and experimental understanding . . . [for] anyone who appreciates science-based solutions to life's problems - Science Magazine --This text refers to the paperback edition.

File size : 6204 KB
Print length : 322 pages
Word Wise : Enabled
Publisher : John Murray; 1st edition (3 September 2019)
Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
Text-to-Speech : Enabled
X-Ray : Not Enabled
ASIN : B07N68XFDP
Language: : English

Best Sellers Rank: 71,120 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- 1 in Physical & Theoretical Chemistry (Kindle Store)
- 9 in Science & Scientists Humour
- 11 in Cartooning in Graphic Design

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2,633 ratings

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5 star		83%
4 star		12%
3 star		3%
2 star		1%
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Dumb but Good

Reviewed in Australia on 5 July 2020

Verified Purchase

How to…

Firstly I think this book is too dumb because in this book there is a question like how cross a river and how to change a lightbulp, and the answer to those question is so dumb that you can’t do in realife (except if you are billionaire and has a money to buy a expensive stuff)

The worst question in this book is “How to cross the river” because all the answers to this question are useless and impossible like, build a machine that turns whole water into ice which is impossible for a normal boy. Most of the question in this book is about the situation we are unlikely to get into like how to land a plane.

Even though this book has useless questions l enjoyed this book because I didn’t know that you can do easy stuff in thousands of different ways. This book uses a UK metric measurement like fabric, mile and feet so I recommend using a computer to equalize the measurement if you live in Australia, US or somewhere else.

Overall I will give this book 3 out of 5 because I like this book but it is not as good as the book “What if”.

Thank you for reading

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Andrew Pontes

Funny way to learn complicated things

Reviewed in Australia on 3 January 2020

Verified Purchase

The casual and funny way the author poses complicated theories, formulas and other nerd stuff.
The book is recommended to anyone curious about multiple aspects of day to day and not so usual situations.

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Comment

Useful for awkward dinner parties

Reviewed in Australia on 8 June 2020

Verified Purchase

Lots of useful, yet useless facts in here which may make you appear intelligent at your next social gathering.

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Bella

Satirical and mathematical

Reviewed in Australia on 29 January 2020

Verified Purchase

My two favorite things combined, satire and maths! Humourous but also thought provoking. Would be great for kids and maths nerds like myself.

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Prompt delivery and the book was in excellent condition

Reviewed in Australia on 2 December 2020

Verified Purchase

The book is a gift, prompt delivery was appreciated

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Gaz

XKCD

Reviewed in Australia on 10 May 2020

Verified Purchase

Brilliant

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CuTM

Fun read, some nice little projects in here

Reviewed in Australia on 3 March 2020

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Top reviews from other countries

Julien Basch

Review from a 9 yr old

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 5 September 2019

Verified Purchase

I showed this book to my 9 yr-old, hoping he would be enticed by the pictures. He has so far read four chapters, and gave me the following review: "I understand next to nothing but I read everything and I love it." I don't think it is possible to give a stronger endorsement of the writing style.

53 people found this helpful

John

Avoid it.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 28 November 2019

Verified Purchase

It was an impulse buy due to a low price offer it had for the hardcover...

I regret spending that money, or any money at all...

This book content is something you would watch on an imgur/9gag website or something and thumb up but its a totally waste of money and time otherwise.

When buying it I was under the impression it would have some actual brake down on how things work, like real world complex projects explained in a way for average people to understand the basic concept of it... like e.g "how a cpu is manufactured"or "how you get power from the grid" kind of topics or in the relevant nature of those where in my mind when purchasing this book, but instead you get some ridiculous ideas e.g how to change between airplanes while in mid air or drive an airplane while outside on the cockpit and on top of the craft...

Which is ridiculous and useless and on top of that it doesn't do a good job even at that...
The book's explanations even to these ridiculous matters are just HA """"explained"""" in a few lines missing a lot of facts... in other words it doesn't even seriously tackle those ridiculous scenarios only presents a seemingly working workaround.

Its like if you join a group at somebody's home and you are college students and then you start a bonk and everybody says some stupid idea and briefly talks about how it would work..

THAT's this book!

Did not like it at all and it is not even worth to spend time and effort to return it.. just gonna stash it somewhere in my house..

17 people found this helpful

admiralross2400

How to write a review

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 9 November 2019

Verified Purchase

First, think of something humerous to call your review and some key points to get across. Items such as:
Does not contain any bobcats
Can be used as kindling for fire (unless you bought the kindle version)
Should not be relied upon for real-world advice

This is a brilliant book, yet again, from Randall. It's hilarious and thought-provoking in places...and it's amazing how far Col. Hadfield was willing to be questioned! You'll love it! Don't put off buying it any further - do it! Do it now!

14 people found this helpful

Amazon Customer

Wonderful, hilarious look at the world from the mind that brought us XKCD

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 17 September 2019

Verified Purchase

This book is hilarious! I have read his XKCD online comic for many years and this is an extension of the smary, crazy, slightly nerdy comic. Loved it!

10 people found this helpful

Viktoria Halassy-Timar

Great fun

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 28 November 2019

Verified Purchase

We had a great time reading it with my husband. Fun and educational. Wish we'd had this kind of books when I was a kid.

6 people found this helpful

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