Best known as the brains behind the beloved webcomicxkcd , Randall Munroe has recently published a book – “ How To : Absurd Scientific Advice for Common Real - World Problems”–all about foolish idea and the wonderful skill behind them . As ever , all of this unadvisable advice is painstakingly calculated and playfully explain with the classifiable stick - citizenry illustration that makexkcdso lovable in the first place .
If you ’ve ever wondered whether astronaut Chris Hadfield could pilot a plane from England to France in the Channel Tunnel , or if it ’s possible to predict the weather using pixels on your smartphone , then Munroe is your guy wire .
“ I feel like I ’m always come up with bad thought for how to do things , ” Munroe tell IFLScience . “ Often , they vocalize like speculative idea and turn out to be defective ideas . But the outgrowth of analyse and trying to cipher out whether they ’re bad approximation or not can instruct you something really interesting . ”
“ Then occasionally , something that sounds like a ridiculous idea does turn over out to be better than it sounded at first . You would n’t know that if you did n’t take it seriously for a minute and try thinking about it , ” he explained .
While the advice is doubtlessly idiotic , the think experiment help to unearth some fascinating fact and otherwise unknown sixth sense . According to the Munroe school of opinion , science is at its most engaging at the most absurd ends of the possible .
Take , for example , Munroe ’s friend who text him saying he ’s got a nasty ant infestation at his house . Not slaked with any sensible solutions , Munroe headed towards the in spades bad idea of whether it would be feasible to protect the house with a fosse of lava .
Well , this was a plainly terrible theme . But as he explains in the new book , this bad idea result him on a whole trail of discovery , from the element of lava to the freaky insects that in reality go on recently cool down lava period called lava crickets . Then comes the job of construct a lava - proof fosse and the energy necessitate to keep a live weed of nicely heat up fluid lava ( which , according to his computing , could tip your day-after-day vigour bill into the millions of dollars , depending on the desired heat of the lava and size of the moat ) .
By his own admission , Munroe typically likes to undertake these ideas by himself in true nerdy style . However , for this account book , a few of the ideas require a helping hand from expert to develop , include an astrophysicist , a robot ethicist , an astronaut , and Serena Williams .
When faced with the task of witness whether it ’s potential to take down a drone using just backyard sports equipment , Randall rapidly hit a drained - end .
“ I found experimentation about the truth of football players or baseball game , but I could n’t find data on tennis to plunk for the experiment I want , so on a whim I require Serena Williams . ”
To his surprise , she was more than felicitous to help out . Under the instruction of Randall , she and her hubby Alexis Ohanian ( coincidently , the co - father of Reddit ) hold out a scientific experiment that detail the dependableness of using lawn tennis equipment to take down a drone .
“ We stood at the service line and tried to help at it until she hit it . My exemplar suggested it would take 5 to 7 shot to hit it at that distance , but she get it on her third serve , ” Munroe explained .
“ I do n’t know if that ’s a statistic outlier or perhaps , more likely , it ’s a Serena Williams outlier . ”
