Table of Contents
Introduction ix
1 Soupiter 1
2 Helicopter Ride 6
3 Dangerously Cold 11
4 Ironic Vaporization 16
5 Cosmic Road Trip 22
6 Pigeon Chair 26
S Short Answers #1 30
7 T. Rex Calories 37
8 Geyser 40
9 Pew, Pew, Pew 43
10 Reading Every Book 47
W Weird & Worrying #1 51
11 Banana Church 52
12 Catch! 55
13 Lose Weight the Slow and Incredibly Difficult Way 59
14 Paint the Earth 66
15 Jupiter Comes to Town 70
16 Star Sand 74
17 Swing Set 78
18 Airliner Catapult 83
S Short Answers #2 88
19 Slow Dinosaur Apocalypse 98
20 Elemental Worlds 103
21 One-Second Day 108
22 Billion-Story Building 111
23 $2 Undecillion Lawsuit 120
24 Star Ownership 124
25 Tire Rubber 128
26 Plastic Dinosaurs 131
S Short Answers #3 135
27 Suction Aquarium 143
28 Earth Eye 149
29 Build Rome in a Day 154
30 Mariana Trench Tube 159
31 Expensive Shoebox 164
32 MRI Compass 168
33 Ancestor Fraction 172
34 Bird Car 176
35 No-Rules NASCAR 180
W Weird & Worrying #2 185
36 Vacuum Tube Smartphone 186
37 Laser Umbrella 192
38 Eat a Cloud 195
39 Tall Sunsets 199
40 Lava Lamp 202
41 Sisyphean Refrigerators 206
42 Blood Alcohol 210
43 Basketball Earth 214
44 Spiders vs. the Sun 217
45 Inhale a Person 220
46 Candy Crush Lightning 223
S Short Answers #4 226
47 Toasty Warm 234
48 Proton Earth, Electron Moon 236
49 Eyeball 241
50 Japan Runs an Errand 244
51 Fire from Moonlight 249
52 Read All the Laws 255
W Weird & Worrying #3 262
53 Saliva Pool 263
54 Snowball 268
55 Niagara Straw 272
56 Walking Backward in Time 277
57 Ammonia Tube 284
58 Earth-Moon Fire Pole 287
S Short Answers #5 298
59 Global Snow 305
60 Dog Overload 308
61 Into the Sun 314
62 Sunscreen 318
63 Walking on the Sun 323
64 Lemon Drops and Gumdrops 329
Acknowledgments 335
References 337
Index 349