Is the Speed of Light What It Is?

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The process of getting there is just fascinating. The math that you're using is the same as math that you'd use to answer a very practical and important question. You don't really need to know what happens when a baseball goes at 0.9, the speed of light,. but the process of gettingThere is just fascinating; I hope no one gets scalded to death in Yellowstone.

What’s the fastest way to get a human being around a racetrack, if we ignore all the rules of racing? How many pages would you have to read to absorb all of the government laws that apply to you? It’s hard to imagine a better person to tackle these kinds of slightly-askew questions than Randall Munroe, creator of the xkcd webcomic. He collected some answers in his book What If?, and has released a sequel, What If? 2. We dive into how one goes about choosing the right questions and answering them, and how to make it funny along the way.

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Randall Munroe received a degree in physics from Christopher Newport University, before working for a while at NASA’s Langley Research Center. He is now the creator of xkcd and the author of several books. What If? and What If? 2 are based on a regular feature in which he tackles questions asked by readers.

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