What If? Book Review - Aryan S.

   


    For this blog post, I chose to review What If? by Randall Munroe. This book is not like some that you have read before, but it is definitely one of the most interesting and informative books that I have ever read through. This is unlike most of the other books you have read because it has many scenarios of wild scientific theories, and he says them in funny and (mostly) understandable language with stick drawings inserted once in a while. 

    One of my personal favorite scenarios was what would happen if the sun randomly "switched off". The normal reader would think that he would say everything would die, but he actually gives a very detailed timeline of what would happen and some of the other things that would happen. The funny part of this chapter was after he described all of the good things that would happen (reduced risk of solar flares, slow of global warming, etc.), he told the readers abruptly that we would all die and ended the chapter. This may seem a little gruesome, but when you read the book, it's a lot funnier than it may seem. 

   Another one of the scenarios that I particularly enjoyed was "What would happen if a baseball was thrown by a pitcher at the speed of light?". This is another completely absurd question that will never happen in real life, but that is the charm of this book. He goes from burning the air in front and behind the ball to making a nuclear explosion that can flatten a city. And he explains all of this with great humor that makes you want to keep reading more. 

    I would strongly recommend this book to people who like science and other physics-based things, but I don't have that much of a background in either of them and I could understand the topics fine. I would also recommend this book to people who like funny books and want to read other things rather than just regular novels. I would rate this book a 9/10 because everything from the writing to the drawings and just the humor was great, but to the less experienced person in the science and math fields, some of the formulas that he uses to find the answers to these questions can get confusing. Other than that, this is probably the best book that is not a regular novel I have ever read. 

Comments

  1. Evan W.November 13, 2020 at 12:29 PM

    What If is a great read and I'm glad you enjoyed it!

    ReplyDelete
  2. NateNovember 14, 2020 at 10:23 PM

    Oh nice, this book looks very interesting and I think it would be very enjoyable read. The science and physic based topics it talks about sparked my interest and I will definitely have to check this book out.

    ReplyDelete
  3. David RFebruary 3, 2021 at 11:42 AM

    I read this book as well and I immensely enjoyed it for the same reasons that you laid out here in this blog post. I found the way that he combines humor and incredibly intellectual thought process and applies it to completely ridiculous scenarios to find out what would happen (Hm, who does this sound like *cough* Marco *cough*). In any case, great blog post!

    ReplyDelete

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