What If?

Randall Munroe is, of course, known for the often hilarious web comic xkcd, but he's also been answering odd questions on his web site for a number of years. The questions and answers are now gathered in What If?, subtitled "Serious Scientific Answers to Absurb Hypothetical Questions." Most questions merit a several page essay considering issues such as how a longbow archer is an arrow generator with a frequency of 150 millihertz and how many archers you need to shoot enough arrows to block out the sun. Or what happens if the earth suddenly stopped spinning. Or how much Force power Yoda can output. He uses a lot of entertaining footnotes, including a number of pseudo-Wikipedia [citation needed] notes, and some more-or-less accurate calculations. His explanations sometimes take notable shortcuts on clarity, but this is, after all, in the interests of amusement, not scientific rigor. There are also some interjections of questions he chose to not answer, like: "what is the total nutritional value (calories, fat, vitiamins, minerals, etc) of the average human body?" All-in-all it's a lot of fun, but may require a certain nerd sensibility to appreciate.