《How To》简介：

The world's most entertaining and useless self-help guide, from the brilliant mind behind the wildly popular webcomic xkcd and the #1 New York Times bestsellers What If? and Thing Explainer

For any task you might want to do, there's a right way, a wrong way, and a way so monumentally bad that no one would ever try it. How To is a guide to the third kind of approach. It's full of highly impractical advice for everything from landing a plane to digging a hole.

Bestselling author and cartoonist Randall Munroe explains how to predict the weather by analyzing the pixels of your Facebook photos. He teaches you how to tell if you're a baby boomer or a 90's kid by measuring the radioactivity of your teeth. He offers tips for taking a selfie with a telescope, crossing a river by boiling it, and getting to your appointments on time by destroying the Moon. And if you want to get rid of the book once you're done with it, he walks you through your options for proper disposal, including dissolving it in the ocean, converting it to a vapor, using tectonic plates to subduct it into the Earth's mantle, or launching it into the Sun.

By exploring the most complicated ways to do simple tasks, Munroe doesn't just make things difficult for himself and his readers. As he did so brilliantly in What If?, Munroe invites us to explore the most absurd reaches of the possible. Full of clever infographics and amusing illustrations, How To is a delightfully mind-bending way to better understand the science and technology underlying the things we do every day.

《How To》摘录：

但冰很滑的原因其实有点儿神秘。在很长时间里，人们认为是冰刀的压力让冰的表面融化，制造出薄而滑的水膜。19世纪末，科学家和工程师的研究证明，冰刀的压力能让冰的熔点从0摄氏度降至-3。5摄氏度。几十年来，人们都把受压融化当成冰刀的工作原理。不知道为什么，没有人指出，其实在比-3。5摄氏度更冷的地方也可以滑冰。受压融化理论认为这是不可能的，但溜冰者照滑不误。 令人惊讶的是，冰为什么光滑这一问题现在依然是物理学研究的主题之一。般的解释大致是，冰的表面有一层液态的水，而水分子没能被牢固地锁在冰晶里，这么一来，一块冰就有点儿像一块边缘散开的布。在“布”的中央区域，组成布的线被锁在了严格有序的状态，但在边缘处的线就不太容易被约東，所以更可能松掉，并四处移动。同样的道理，冰块边缘的水分子也会比较松散并四处移动，形成一层薄薄的水膜。不过，对于这一层水的具体性质以及它和冰刀如何相互作用，人们还没有完全弄清楚。 考虑到当代物理学花了这么多时间去思考深刻、抽象的宇宙奥秘，比如寻找引力波或希格斯玻色子，你可能会很惊讶地发现，原来这么多日常现象人们都还没弄清楚呢。除了滑冰之外，物理学家也还没真的搞明白是什么让雷暴云里的电荷积聚起来，为什么沙漏里的沙子是以那种速度运动，为什么你拿气球蹭头发会蹭出静电来。谢天谢地，滑雪和滑冰的人可以继续在冰雪表面滑行，而不用非等着物理学家把这些都研究明白。 雪已经相当光滑了，但为了再加一点点额外的顺滑，滑雪者会在滑雪板上打层蜡。蜡起到了半流体层的作用，能让锐利的冰晶不会因陷进滑雪板的硬质材料里而降低滑行速度。