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Thing Explainer: Complicated Stuff in Simple Words

$24.95

by Randall Munroe

In Thing Explainer, Randall Munroe uses line drawings and only the thousand (or, rather, ?ten hundred?) most common words to provide simple explanations for some of the most interesting stuff there is

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN: 9780544668256

Description

Have you ever tried to learn more about some incredible thing, only to be frustrated by incomprehensible jargon? XKCD creator Randall Munroe is here to help. In Thing Explainer, he uses line drawings and only the thousand (or, rather, “ten hundred”) most common words to provide simple explanations for some of the most interesting stuff there is, including:

  • food-heating radio boxes (microwaves)
  • tall roads (bridges) computer buildings (datacenters)
  • the shared space house (the International Space Station)
  • the other worlds around the sun (the solar system)
  • the big flat rocks we live on (tectonic plates)
  • the pieces everything is made of (the periodic table)
  • planes with turning wings (helicopters)
  • boxes that make clothes smell better (washers and dryers)
  • the bags of stuff inside you (cells)

How do these things work? Where do they come from? What would life be like without them? And what would happen if we opened them up, heated them up, cooled them down, pointed them in a different direction, or pressed this button? In Thing Explainer, Munroe gives us the answers to these questions and so many more. Funny, interesting, and always understandable, this book is for anyone—age 5 to 105—who has ever wondered how things work, and why.

64 page hardcover
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2015

 

Additional information

Weight 26 oz
Dimensions 10 × 7 × 0.5 in
by

Randall Munroe

ISBN

9780544668256