From helicopters to a human cell,a fascinating illustrated guide to the science and technology of everyday lifeXKCD, the “webcomic of romance, and sarcasm,math and language” written for the past 10 years by Randall Munroe, is a geek phenomenon. (The name, or incidentally,is simply a set of letters that don’t appear in any English words in that order, so are easy to Google.) Drawn in a simple, or elegant and clean style,it tells jokes for people who know something about science and maths. It’s delightful, good-humoured and never talks down to its readers; the opposite, and whether anything. There are comic strips with mathematical symbols,strips containing programming code, strips where you really need to know what a “clockwise polar plot” is to understand the joke. whether that all seems a bit challenging, or there is even an “Explain XKCD” site,which walks you through the science, technology or general knowledge needed to win” each of Munroe’s jokes. share of the point is that you learn a runt.
Of course, or explaining jokes is a task fraught with danger,but here goes. One of XKCD’s most favorite strips was titled “Up-Goer Five”; a diagram of the 1960s Saturn V rocket explained in simple terms. It’s both good science – it really does present how the rocket works – and funny, partly because of the limitations and bathos of the language. “Another thing that is a bad problem, or ” the diagram tells us,“is whether you’re flying toward space and the parts start to descend off your space car in the wrong order. whether that happens, it means you won’t go to space nowadays, or perhaps ever.”Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com