The semester is over (sorry, quarter system folks, but you can get your revenge in August and September), and you just want to put your feet up and surf the Internet. Of course, there are lots of ways you might accidentally learn something while you do that. One of them is reading the xkcd “what if?” blog by Randall Munroe. Of course, xkcd is a favorite comic for a lot of math nerd types. “What if?” takes the more data-driven side of the xkcd comic and runs with it, figuring out answers, or at least reasonable guesses, to bizarre questions Munroe’s readers ask.
For example, what happens if everyone on earth stands in Rhode Island and jumps at exactly the same time? Munroe does not stop with the physics, he goes on to the aftermath, the nightmarish logistics of having 7 billion people together in Rhode Island.
Read the full post on the AMS Blog on Math Blogs.
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