Washoe County Library System

"The Anthropocene is the current geological age, in which human activity has profoundly shaped the planet and its biodiversity. In this remarkable symphony of essays adapted and expanded from his groundbreaking podcast, John Green reviews different facets of the human-centered planet—from the QWERTY keyboard and Staphylococcus aureus to the Taco Bell breakfast menu—on a five-star scale. John Green’s gift for storytelling shines throughout this...

"The millions of people around the world who read and loved What If? still have questions, and those questions are getting stranger. Thank goodness xkcd creator Randall Munroe is here to help. Planning to ride a fire pole from the Moon back to Earth? The hardest part is sticking the landing. Hoping to cool the atmosphere by opening everyone’s freezer door at the same time? Maybe it’s time for a brief introduction to thermodynamics. Want to know...

The creators of the seriously scientific YouTube channel, AsapSCIENCE, take readers on a rollicking ride through biology, chemistry, physics and other hard sciences to answer the questions they never got to ask in science class and apply them to everyday life.

The Time Warp team, Jeff Lieberman and Matt Kearney, uses extremely sensitive slow-motion cameras to reveal events that happen much too quickly or too slowly to be perceived in depth by our senses.

How loud can your average middle-grader burp? Parents, librarians, and innocent bystanders are about to find out. This follow-up to the equally alluring Why is Snot Green? tackles more of life's burning questions, many submitted by real-life ten-year-olds. Could we use animal poop to make electricity? What's the world's deadliest disease? Why is your mother turning green? Part silly, part serious, and a big part scatological, How Loud Can You Burp?...

The world's most entertaining and useless self-help guide, from the brilliant mind behind the wildly popular webcomic xkcd and the #1 New York Times bestsellers What If? and Thing Explainer. For any task you might want to do, there's a right way, a wrong way, and a way so monumentally complex, excessive, and inadvisable that no one would ever try it. How To is a guide to the third kind of approach. It's full of highly impractical advice for everything...

Could Dr. Frankenstein's machine ever animate a body? Why should vampires drink from veins and not arteries? What body parts are best for zombies to eat? (It's not brains.) This fascinating encyclopedia of monsters delves into the history and science behind eight legendary creatures, from Bigfoot and the kraken to zombies and more. Find out each monster's origin story and the real-world history that informed it, and then explore the science of each...

"Did you know that you can dry out your wet cell phone by putting its parts in separate bowls of uncooked rice? That you can scroll through a website using only your spacebar? That if you type your airline and flight number in to Google, it tells you where your flight is, the gate, terminal, and how long until it lands? When David Pogue gave this kind of advice in the New York Times, his columns were consistently the most e-mailed of the week. When...