INTRODUCTION
简介
THIS BOOK IS A collection of answers to hypothetical questions.
这本书里包含了各种各样稀奇古怪的问题的回答。
These questions were submitted to me through my website, where-in addition to serving as a sort of Dear Abby for mad scientists-I draw xkcd, a stick-figure webcomic.
这些问题都是通过我的网站提交给我的，而在这个网站上 8211;除了充当疯狂科学家的答疑解惑专栏之外 8211;我还会画 8221;xkcd 8221;，一套火柴人风格的网络漫画。
I didn 8217;t start out making comics. I went to school for physics, and after graduating, I worked on robotics at NASA. I eventually left NASA to draw comics full-time, but my interest in science and math didn 8217;t fade. Eventually, it found a new outlet: answering the Internet 8217;s weird-and sometimes worrying-questions. This book contains a selection of my favorite answers from my website, plus a bunch of new questions answered here for the first time.
不过我并不是画漫画起家的，我的专业是物理，在毕业后去了美国航空航天局（NASA）做机器人方面的工作。后来我离开了NASA开始全职画漫画，但我对科学和数学的热爱却并未因此而消减。最终我找到了一个发挥我的能力的途径：回答互联网上各种稀奇古怪、有时让人有些担忧的问题。这本书中包含了网站上我最喜欢的一些问题，以及许多从未在网站上出现过的问题。
I 8217;ve been using math to try to answer weird questions for as long as I can remember. When I was five years old, my mother had a conversation with me that she wrote down and saved in a photo album. When she heard I was writing this book, she found the transcript and sent it to me. Here it is, reproduced verbatim from her 25-year-old sheet of paper:
从我有印象以来，我就一直在用数学来解决稀奇古怪的问题。在我5岁的时候，我的母亲在一本相册中记录了当时她和我的一段对话。当她知道我在写这本书后，她翻出了这本相册并把它送到我手中。我从这张25年前记录的纸上一字不差地把这些文字摘抄下来贴在这里：
Randall: Are there more soft things or hard things in our house?
兰道尔：我们家里硬的东西多还是软的东西多？
Julie: I don 8217;t know.
朱莉：我不知道。
Randall: How about in the world?
兰道尔：那全世界哪种东西多呢？
Julie: I don 8217;t know.
朱莉：我不知道。
Randall: Well, each house has three or four pillows, right?
兰道尔：嗯，每家每户都有三四个枕头，对吧？
Julie: Right.
朱莉：是的。
Randall: And each house has about 15 magnets, right?
兰道尔：然后每家每户都有大约15块磁铁，对吧？
Julie: I guess.
朱莉：我猜是吧。
Randall: So 15 plus 3 or 4, let 8217;s say 4, is 19, right?
兰道尔：所有15加上3或者4，不妨加上4吧，就是19，对吧？
Julie: Right.
朱莉：是的。
Randall: So there are probably about 3 billion soft things, and . . . 5 billion hard things. Well, which one wins?
兰道尔：所以全世界一共有大约30亿个……软的东西，还有……50亿个硬的……东西。那么，谁赢了？
Julie: I guess hard things.
朱莉：我猜是硬的东西吧。
To this day I have no idea where I got 8220;3 billion 8221; and 8220;5 billion 8221; from. Clearly, I didn 8217;t really get how numbers worked.
直至今日我都不知道当时30亿和50亿这两个数字是从哪里冒出来的，很显然那时我并不理解数字是怎么回事儿。
My math has gotten a little better over the years, but my reason for doing math is the same as it was when I was five: I want to answer questions.
后来我的数学水平慢慢地变好起来，但我使用数学知识的目的还是和我5岁那时一样：我想用它来回答问题。
hey say there are no stupid questions. That 8217;s obviously wrong; I think my question about hard and soft things, for example, is pretty stupid. But it turns out that trying to thoroughly answer a stupid question can take you to some pretty interesting places.
有人说世上没有愚蠢的问题。这句话很明显是不对的：比如说我觉得那时我问的关于硬的东西和软的东西的问题就十分愚蠢。但后来我发现想要完整地回答一个愚蠢的问题有时会带来许多十分有趣的东西。
I still don 8217;t know whether there are more hard or soft things in the world, but I 8217;ve learned a lot of other stuff along the way. What follows are my favorite parts of that journey.
我现在还是不知道世界上硬的东西多还是软的东西多，但在回答问题的过程中我已经学到了许多其他的东西。接下来我将向你们呈现这段旅途中我最喜欢的那些部分。
RANDALL MUNROE
兰道尔·门罗