How long does it take to read What If??
What If? by Randall Munroe takes about 5 hours 47 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.
About 5 hours 47 minutes
A weekend read
First published 1980. 315 pages, about 86,625 words.
12 days at 30 minutes a day
Estimate based on 275 words per page.
At other speeds
| Slow, 150 words a minute | 9 hours 38 minutes |
| Average, 250 words a minute | 5 hours 47 minutes |
| Fast, 400 words a minute | 3 hours 37 minutes |
The page count is the median across 37 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.
About the book
What If? is a non-fiction book in which Randall Munroe, the creator of the webcomic xkcd, responds to hypothetical science questions submitted by his readers. The questions are unusual, picking an improbable scenario and asking what logically follows from it. Munroe tackles each one with mathematics, physics, and knowledge drawn from several fields, often relying on rough approximations and back-of-the-envelope estimates, and he delivers the answers with wit. Most chapters take up a single question, and simple stick figure drawings accompany the text. Short sections also gather questions he chose not to answer.
This summary was written by AI and checked by a second AI model. How these are chosen.
Subjects: Mathematics, Statistics, Miscellanea, Science, Questions and answers, Physics
