![]() ![]() Last week, he explained Einstein’s general theory of relativity. The explained things include cells (“tiny bags of water you’re made of”), a microwave (“food-heating radio box”), an airplane cockpit (“stuff you touch to fly a sky boat”), a particle collider (“big tiny thing hitter”), and a tree (“tree”). This week, Munroe will publish “Thing Explainer,” a compendium of blueprints and diagrams in the spirit of “Up Goer Five.” Like any good work of science writing, the book is equal parts lucid, funny, and startling. The rocket’s tower-jettison motor became the “thing to help people escape really fast if there’s a problem and everything is on fire so they decide not to go to space.” The Apollo command module became the “people box.” It was aerospace engineering made simple. He called it “ Up Goer Five.” The blueprint, he explained in a parenthetical note, was annotated “using only the ten hundred words people use the most often”-that is, the thousand most common words in English. Several years ago, Randall Munroe, the creator of the Web comic “ xkcd,” published his own blueprint of a Saturn V rocket, the launch vehicle that sent the Apollo astronauts to the moon. ![]()
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