What If?

Currently reading What If? Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions by Randall Munroe. Little over a third of the way through and enjoy it very much. Some of the nuggets uncovered from the book include:

• If a pitcher threw a baseball close to the speed of light it would cause a nuclear blast but according to MLB's rule 6.08 (b) the batter would be considered "hit by pitch"
• The water in a spent nuclear fuel pool is "warmer than most pools but cooler than a hot tub."
• "You may actually receive a lower dose of radiation treading water in a spent fuel pool than walking around on a street."
• "There were no earthworms in New England when the European colonists arrived."
• Pangea's predecessor was Rodinia
• "Bromine is liquid at room temperature, a property it shares with only one other element - mercury."
• "If an unused charger isn't warm to the touch, it's using less than a penny's worth of electricity a day."
• "When Enrico Fermi built the first nuclear reactor, he suspended the control rods from a rope tied to a balcony railing. In case something went wrong, next to the railing was stationed a distinguished physicist with an axe. This led to the probably apocryphal story that SCAM stands for 'Safety Control Axe Man.'"
• "The Mars rover Curiosity, for example, is powered by the heat from a chunk of plutonium it carries in a container on the end of a stick."
• The Empire State building's spire was originally intended for mooring Zeppelins.
• "The ocean is colder than space."

Some of these are facts I did not know or simply just found interesting. Not sure if any of these facts will ever come into play in real life. You'll have to read the book to learn the context. Recommend it - especially if you're looking for a bathroom book as each Q&A is just the right length for the Irish library.