It gets worse: Instead of calling a rocket a rocket, he calls it an “up-goer.” Instead of talking about cells, he talks about “the little bags of water you’re made of.” Speaking of Einstein, we can’t, because the word “Einstein” isn’t in the top thou…I mean, the top ten hundred. Sounds kind of goofy to me, and it really doesn’t seem any clearer kind of the opposite, actually. Instead of using the word “thousand,” for example (which itself isn’t in the top thousand), Monroe uses “ten hundred.” Um…OK. It turns out that you can go overboard in avoiding.

It’s an intriguing concept, but right from the start I was a little dubious about the execution. Albert Einstein himself once said 'You do not really understand something unless you can explain it to your grandmother' (allegedly, anyway, and if he didn't say it, he should have). Munroe understands lots of things really well otherwise, his comics wouldn't be so unfailingly clever. Intriguing concept! Scientists and science communicators are often reminded to avoid jargon at all costs, lest they drive away nontechnical readers. The idea was to explain scientific and technical ideas using only drawings and a vocabulary of the thousand most commonly used words in the English language. Last year, XKCD’s creator, Randall Munroe, came out with a new book-not a collection of his comics, but something he called Thing Explainer: Complicated Stuff in Simple Words. The geeks are not going to be happy with what comes next. It’s usually about science, which I particularly love, and which makes it a perennial favorite of geeks everywhere. It’s almost always smart, and often hilarious in an understated, intellectual way. Funny, interesting, and always understandable, this book is for anyone-age 5 to 105-who has ever wondered how things work, and why.Let me start by saying that I’m a huge fan of the Web comic XKCD. 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. boxes that make clothes smell better (washers and dryers).planes with turning wings (helicopters).the pieces everything is made of (the periodic table).the big flat rocks we live on (tectonic plates).the other worlds around the sun (the solar system).the shared space house (the International Space Station).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: Have you ever tried to learn more about some incredible thing, only to be frustrated by incomprehensible jargon? Randall Munroe is here to help.

The thing explainer