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The Book of What If...?: Questions and Activities for Curious Minds
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Overview
What if a book didn’t just tell you how to think or what to know, but rather encouraged you to think for yourself? What if there was a book that focused on asking questions instead of just answering them.
The Book of What If…? does just that! What if you lived on a floating city? What if politicians were kids? What if broccoli tasted like chocolate? What if you could explore outer space?
By asking these fun, open-ended questions, this book fosters greater critical thinking skills and gives kids a space to interact by breaking out a notebook to draw or write out their personal reactions, or engage in entertaining exercises with family and friends. Plus, sidebars deepen the investigation with peer-to-peer insights, historical and current profiles, real-life examples, and more, making for unlimited learning opportunities!
Divided into sections—history, people, stuff, and nature—along with four introductory text to open up a dialogue about why it’s important to be inquisitive and to always ask questions, The Book of What If…? is sure to be a hit with kids, teachers, and parents alike. So ask a question and let the answers lead you on an exciting journey filled with endless opportunities to learn!
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781582705293 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Aladdin/Beyond Words |
| Publication date: | 04/19/2016 |
| Pages: | 240 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.50(w) x 8.40(h) x 1.00(d) |
| Lexile: | 910L (what's this?) |
| Age Range: | 8 - 12 Years |
About the Author
Andrew R McHugh breaks down complexity into understandable and useable chunks. He is currently a Masters student at Carnegie Mellon University, studying human-computer interaction. Previously, he co-founded the What If...? Conference, What If...? 360’s predecessor. Andrew left in 2014 and has been designing and developing user experiences ever since. Actively curious about many things, he has a background in design, philosophy, technology and people, mathematics, and physics. During his undergraduate years, Andrew built a bikeshare program, led a movement for systematic sustainability change, and researched brain-computer interfaces, and digital divide/differentiation problems. In his free time, he tinkers on his next project and listens to music louder than necessary.
Read an Excerpt
The Book of What If . . . ?
If you’ve done any digging around on dinosaurs, you’ve probably discovered that the word dinosaur means “terrible lizard.”1 But this isn’t entirely true. The actual translation for the Greek prefix deinos is “fearfully great.” The inventor of the word dinosaur, Richard Owen, intended the word to inspire awe, not terror.2 Over time, people have turned “fearfully great” into simply “terrible.”
“I would have a pet velociraptor. And we could buy dinosaurs at dino dealerships because there would be no need for cars because you just ride your T. Rex where you need to go.”
—Charlie, Battle High School, age 15
The second half of the word dinosaur comes from the Greek word sauros, which means “lizard.”3 Even though many originally thought dinosaurs were lizards, scientists have now determined that they weren’t. Interestingly enough, birds and lizards both seem to be descendants of dinosaurs (though different ones).4 The more we learn about dinosaurs, the more ways we find how they differed from the reptiles we have today, including lizards.
But what if we had more than just a bunch of bones to go by to understand dinosaurs? What if dinosaurs were alive today?
“I would train a dinosaur to let me ride it to school.”
—Andrew, Battle High School, age 15
There are several questions to consider here. Perhaps the most urgent one is: who would “rule” the earth—dinosaurs or humans?
Looking around today, humans have been able to create an existence at the top of the food chain, and we’ve been able to develop technologies that move us further from the natural world. Do you think humans could have evolved in this manner if we had to compete against (or run away from!) dinosaurs all day long?
“The bigger dinosaurs would be hunted and the smaller ones domesticated as animals of labor.”
—Jonathan, Battle High School, age 17
What if, instead of finding a neighbor’s dog digging a hole in your yard, you saw a triceratops digging a hole? What if, instead of being afraid of bee stings when playing outside, you had to look out for pterodactyls swooping down from the sky to scoop you up for dinner? What if every day on your way to school, you were chased by a Tyrannosaurus rex? Could you tell your teacher a T. rex ate your homework?
Where would we be today? What would be better? What would be worse?
ACTIVITY
Imagine you live in a neighborhood struggling with an overpopulation of dinosaurs. They’re everywhere! Many people have come home to find dinosaurs in their yards eating their plants and leaves off their trees. Some homes have even been stepped on by dinosaurs—and crushed to smithereens, of course. What do you do? How can you save your home?
Draw a picture of what your home would look like once it’s been “dino-proofed.”
If you look around, you’ll notice that there are not many creatures that look like the ones that were alive in the time of dinosaurs. The dinosaurs went extinct and some of them were fossilized. Many, many years later, a set of apes evolved into humans, and many years after that, we started fossil hunting. Mary Anning was an expert fossil hunter.
“If dinosaurs never went extinct, humans would have very slim chances of survival with how dangerous the world around us would be. Perhaps this would create a different society that focuses more on survival and protection rather than the society we have developed in which survival isn’t always immediately on our minds.”
—Dillon, Battle High School, age 16
Sometime between 1809 and 1811, when she was only 10 to 12 years old, Anning and her brother found one of the first ichthyosaur fossils (an ichthyosaur looks kind of like a dolphin). Her whole family hunted fossils, but Anning was the most dedicated. She went on to find many other ichthyosaur fossils, but her greatest find was of the first plesiosaur (a swimming dinosaur with a long neck like a giraffe). Anning was a well versed paleontologist (person who studies fossils), an expert at finding, drawing, and analyzing skeletal remains of dinosaurs.5
Table of Contents
Preface xi
Part 1 History 1
What is Dinosaurs Hadn't Gone Extinct? 2
Activity: Dino-Proof Your House 3
What if the Mongol Empire Helped the United States' Westward Expansion? 5
What if Europeans Had Never Landed in the Americas? 7
Activity: Name a New Land 8
What if Humans Had Never Landed on the Moon? 10
Activity: Where Next? Meet Up 12
Technical Corner: Rockets and Rocket ships 12
What If You Could Travel in Time? 14
Activity: Go Back 15
Activity: Go Forward 15
Activity: Create a Time-Lapse 16
Technical Corner: Building a Time Machine 16
What if There Were Never Books? 18
Activity: Remember and Tell a Story 19
What if You Lived in a Floating City? $
Activity: Design Your Own Floating City 22
What if the State of California Became Six Different States? 24
Activity: Split Your State 25
What if the South Had Won the Civil War? 26
What if France Hadn't Helped America in the American Revolutionary War? 28
What if Poland Had Joined Germany in 1939? 30
What if the Internet Were Never Created? 32
Activity: Day without Connectivity 34
Technical Corner: The Internet 34
What if There Were No Stories? 36
Activity: A Hero's Journey 36
What if the Future Never Comes? 39
Activity: Happy/Sad List 39
Whet if the First Olympics Were a Science Competition Instead of an Athletic One? 42
What if Electricity Could Travel through the Air? 44
Activity: Wireless History 44
Technical Corner: Wireless Power 45
Part 2 People 47
What if People Lived for Only One Day? 48
Activity: Single-Day Planner 48
Activity: Record a Day of Your Life 49
What if We Could Be Young Forever? 50
Activity: Write a Letter to Yourself in the Future 51
Technical Corner: How Do We Die? 51
What if Politicians Were Kids? 53
Activity: Talk to a Politician 54
What if There Were No Holidays? 55
Activity: Your Own Holiday 56
What if You Hibernated 57
Activity: Find Your Hibernating Friends 58
What if the Jobs of the Future Were Different? 59
Activity: Read This Book, Create a New Job 60
What if We All Spoke the Same Language? 61
Activity: What's in a Good Language? 62
What If People Didn't Know Anything? 63
Activity: Test Your Knowledge 64
What If We Got Rid of Cars? 65
Activity: You Fill in the Streets 66
What if There Were No Sports? 68
Activity: Play Shnorjin 69
What if You Could Hear and See What Other People Were Thinking? 70
Activity: With the Power of Your Brain 71
Technical Corner: How to Read Thoughts 71
What if Your Community Were More Democratic? 73
Activity: More Democracy: Yes or No? 74
What if There Were No School? 75
Activity: Create Your Own Classroom 75
What if You Were Wrong about Everything? 77
Activity: Comfortably Wrong 77
What if You Wrote Computer Code? 79
Activity: Write Some Code 80
What if There Was No You? 82
Activity: Talk with Your Friends 82
What if You Became a Designer? 84
Activity: Improve Something and Prototype It 85
What If You Could Teleport Anywhere? 86
Activity: One-Way Trip to Anywhere 87
What if You Started Your Own Business? 88
Activity: Seed an Idea Notebook 89
What if Your Parents Couldn't Tell You What Was Right and Wrong? 92
Activity: Write a New Moral Code 92
What if Society Were Truly Altruistic? 93
Activity: Secret Servant Agent 93
What if You Could Move Objects with Your Brain? 95
What if You Challenged the Rules? 98
Activity: Challenge an Authority 99
What if You Kept Your Ideas to Yourself? 101
Activity: Build Your Dream Team 102
Part 3 Stuff 103
What if Nanobots Joined the Fight against Cancer? 104
What if You Had a Box That Could Make Anything? 106
Technical Corner: How 3D Printing Works 107
What if Your Phone Always Knew Where You Were? 109
Activity: Map Your Location 110
Technical Corner: GPS 111
What if Robots Looked Like People or Animals? 113
Activity: Surprise, I'm a Robot 114
What if You Had No Possessions? 115
Activity: Your Top Ten Possessions 116
What if Nanobots Turned the World into a Glob of Gray Goo? 117
What if Broccoli Tasted like Chocolate? 118
Activity: Do the Yucky! 118
Technical Corner: Taste 119
What if Solipsism Were Correct? 121
What if Awesome Didn't Exist? 123
What if You Could Get into a Machine That Created Any Experience You Wanted? 125
Activity: Short Story 125
Technical Corner: Virtual Reality 126
What if Everything Were Only Five Minutes Old? 128
Activity: Write Your Five Minutes 129
What if Everything Could Communicate? 130
Activity: Map the Connections 131
What if Your Clothes Were Smarter? 132
Activity: Fashion Designer of Future Materials 133
What if Your Phone Had Feelings? 134
Activity: Create a Comic Strip 135
What if a Picture Were Worth One Thousand Words? 136
Activity: One Thousand Words or Bust 137
What if Computers Were Conscious? 138
Activity: Watch a Science-Fiction Movie about Al 139
Technical Corner: Artificial Intelligence 139
What if Walls Could Talk? 142
Activity: Listen to the Walls 143
What if You Made Music? 144
Activity: Really. Make Organized Noise 145
Part 4 Nature 146
What if People Could Sting with their Fingers? 147
What if Time Repeated Itself? 149
What if the Sun Never Went Down? 151
Activity: Stay Up All Night 152
What if There Weren't Any Trees? 153
Activity: Plant a Tree 154
What if People Got Energy from the Sun? 155
Activity: Write a News Story 156
Technical Corner: Photosynthesis 156
What if Humans Had Elephant Noses? 158
Activity: Build Your New Nose 159
What if You Could See the Color of Nine? 160
Activity: Your New Senses 161
What if Humans Had See-Through Bodies? 163
Activity Video Voice-Over 164
What if Humans Had Skin That Changed with Their Surrounding? 165
What if You Could Give Your Pet a New Ability? 166
Activity: Draw Your New Pet 167
Technical Corner: Synthetic Biology 167
What If Ants Solved Problems Every Day? 168
Activity: Do It the Ant Way 169
What if There Were No Luck? 170
Activity: Create Your Own Superstition 171
What it You Could Travel at Almost the Speed of Light? 172
Technical Corner: Light Speed, and No Faster 173
Activity: Half Speed 173
Activity: Speedy To Dos 174
What if Humans Ate Inserts as Our Primary Source of Food? 175
Activity: Insect Menu 176
What if You Could Taste and Smell with Your Finders? 178
What if Humans Only Saw in Black and White? 180
Activity: Color Match 181
What if Everything Were an Alien Simulation? 182
What if the World of the Small Seemed Very Different from the World of the Big? 184
Technical Corner: Why the Small Is Strange and the Large Is Not 185
What if There Were No Mosquitos? 187
Activity: Food Web 188
What if All the Continents Were Joined Together? 189
Activity: Earth Puzzle 190
What if You Could Turn into an Animal? 191
Activity: Animal You! 191
What if Everything Were a Hyperiink? 192
Activity: Hyper It Up 192
What if You Had a Superpower? 194
Activity: Create the Super You 195
What if You Could Explore Outer Space? 196
Activity Sagittarius or Bust 197
What if You Could Engineer at Planetary Proportions? 198
Activity: What Would You Build That Was the Size of a Planet? 199
What if You Experienced the Unknown? 200
Activity: Real Surrealism 201
Conclusion 203
We'd Like to Say Thanks 205
Notes 207
Curious Resources 221
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