Talk:what if?

108.233.66.118 21:11, 16 April 2013 (UTC)so is anybody weirded out by last week's post on the worst thing pressure cookers can do, followed by yesterday's terror attacks using pressure cookers?108.233.66.118 21:11, 16 April 2013 (UTC)

Do we want to add some references to the different What-If articles? Obviously putting up an explanation would be a bit of a waste since Randall goes into a lot of detail himself on any given subject. Some good things to mention might be the title-text on each image, mentions of recurring themes, and maybe some thought about the original subject mentioned (such as the "Space Oddity" music video that was the subject of a recent article). 76.106.251.87 17:11, 30 May 2013 (UTC)

"What if" is not Creative Commons related, so respect Randall's copyright. --Dgbrt (talk) 18:05, 30 May 2013 (UTC)

Sorry. Didn't realize that reviewing a creative work fell into copyright issues. No disrespect intended, only ignorance. 76.106.251.87 19:16, 30 May 2013 (UTC)

I agree that "what if?" is not clearly under CC-BY-NC-2.5, but the link next to the Copyright goes to xkcd itself, which clearly does say it is. Mark Hurd (talk) 13:40, 12 August 2013 (UTC)

Agreed. What-if appears to fall under the general xkcd copyright- it says "Copyright ©2012-13 xkcd." with the link pointing to general xkcd copyright info. "http://xkcd.com/license.html" also says that "you are free to copy and reuse any of my drawings (noncommercially) as long as you tell people where they're from." which includes what-if drawings, and I'm not sure if just part of a work could be copyrighted without Randall explicitly saying so. I also think it would be a good idea to have articles on the what-ifs for more information not stated in the what-if itself. 109.144.146.171 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

IANAL, so I will leave the copyright issues unaddressed as I respond to the original question in the affirmative: yes, we should have a page for each What-if article. 173.245.55.63 15:54, 14 April 2014 (UTC)

Logo/Header

I'm convinced there is some sort of specific joke in the "What If" logo, but I'm failing to grasp it. Knowing Randall, there has to be something funny about using a crane to lower a T-rex into the Sarlacc. 173.245.49.90 11:53, 3 February 2014 (UTC)

Nerdist Review says "Remove the jacket, and you can see how that particular experiment worked out in Munroe’s mind"

Discussion regarding What-if 91

I believe that Randall missed an opportunity to discuss means of harnessing thermal energy. See, original question specified HOT water!

He has to pay the electric bill. He couldn't make back the energy spent to heat the water due to entropy. 108.162.237.161 05:51, 31 July 2014 (UTC)

Shall we forgive him this oversight and carry out some analysis to determine the harness-able energy content of hot water from the bathtub faucet in an average American apartment building?

TODO: discuss Sterling engines or other strategies here. (That means you! :) )

I believe that even when you "run out of hot water", the incoming water will still have energy added since the gas or electric water heater will be running non-stop, turning cold water into slightly-less-cold water. Since slightly-less-cold water is still colder than the ambient temperature in the apartment, I'm not sure how to harness the energy added by the water heater... But neither am I sure that "you can't". TODO: Can someone confirm that you can't?

Shall we then turn the dial up a notch, What-if 35 style, and imagine how the scenario changes if the apartment building has a water heater that is perfectly capable of keeping the hot faucet piping hot, even if you run it 24/7?

Suppose the super water heater turns 15C input water (cold) into 50C output water (hot). I think that means that the water heater adds 35 calories (not kilocalories) of energy per milliliter. I played with this expression in Google Calculator "(35/1000) calories per ml * 1 liter / 1 second" and determined that 1. Google uses kilocalories for "calories", thus the /1000 part... and 2. it takes ~150 watts to turn a liter of cold water into a liter of hot water in *one second*.

Let's stop this for now and see if anyone is interested in participating. 173.245.55.63 16:28, 14 April 2014 (UTC)

Go here: What If? discussion. That's a BIG forum to discuss your items. --Dgbrt (talk) 23:16, 14 April 2014 (UTC)

Discussion area

Is there a discussion area for each of the "what-if?" pages? - Eg I'd like to point out that in #111 "All the money", the mouse-over text in the tombstone graphic says "Cash Ruled Everything Around Me" - or C.R.E.A.M. - coincidence? ;) Also, there have been past pages in which there have been items which I would contest some facts/statements, or seek further explanation. Jarod997 (talk) 13:06, 4 September 2014 (UTC)