What If?: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions by Randall Munroe, 303 pages.The author of the famous XKCD web-comic, and its younger weekly web-partner, What If, puts a great deal of thought into answering such questions as "what would happen if you tried to hit a baseball pitched at 90 percent the speed of light?" His answer to this one posits that with the ball moving at 600 million miles per hour, the plasmised air, and disintegrating baseball, bat, and batter, would result in the destruction of everything within a mile or so, and would cause Major League Baseball rule 6.08b to be invoked, with the most probable outcome being the batter ruled hit by the pitch. Who knew?
Other outcomes are not quite so dire. Swimming in a spent nuclear fuel rod containment pool should be fine, if everything is stored properly, you keep far enough from the fuel, and the angry guards don't cause you harm.
There are 37 or so questions answered, often with additional scenarios considered if the answer to the original question lacks sufficient drama. There are also special short answers to questions the author finds disturbing.
Great for reading aloud to annoy your friends and family! Highly recommended.
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