The Thing Explainer

From the NASA engineer, creator of the humorous webcomic xkcd, and author of the New York Times bestseller What If?, comes a series of brilliant - and simple - drawings with descriptions that explain everything from nuclear reactors to ballpoint pens.

Have you ever tried to learn about something amazing, only to be frustrated by incomprehensible jargon?

Randall Munroe is here to help.

Using only schematic drawings and the thousand (or, as he puts it, "ten hundred") most common words in our language to give simple explanations for some of the most interesting things that exist, including:

- Food-heating radio box (= microwave oven)
- Sky roads (= bridges)
- Computer building (= data center)
- Shared space house (= International Space Station)
- Worlds around the sun (= solar system)
- Rock plates we live on (= tectonic plates)
- Parts of all the stuff (= periodic table)
- Flying boat with turning wings (= helicopter)
- Clothes-smell-making machine (= washing machine and dryer)
- Things you have inside you (= organs)

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, cooled them, turned them in a different direction, or pressed a certain button?

In Thing Explainer, Munroe answers these questions and many more. Funny, interesting, and always understandable, this book is for anyone - from 5 to 105 - who has ever wondered how things work and why.