100,000 WHYS FOR CURIOUS ADULTS

About this book

WHY IS YOUR OWN RECORDED VOICE UNRECOGNIZABLE TO YOU?

You know the feeling: a small question you've wondered about for years but never chased down. Here's the real answer. When you speak, you hear yourself partly through the bones of your skull, which carry low tones especially well. A recording captures only the sound that travels through the air, so it comes out thinner and higher, and that is the voice everyone else has heard all along.

That's what this book does. Most fact books tell you that something is true. 100,000 Whys for Curious Adults tells you why, with the actual mechanism, in plain English.

Inside are nearly 700 questions worth asking, each answered in a couple of minutes:

Why is each atom in your body older than the Sun?Why is almost all solid matter actually empty space?Why can't a country just print money until everyone is rich?Why does the casino always win in the long run?Why do the most vivid dreams come toward morning?

Twelve parts run from the edge of the universe to your kitchen table: space, planet Earth, plants and animals, the human body, the mind, food and drink, money, technology, history, and words, art, music, and play. Many answers take apart a popular myth along the way and replace it with the real story, which is usually stranger. Read one, and you'll want the next.

It's the kind of book you pick up for one question and put down forty minutes later, full of things you can't wait to tell someone. A great gift for trivia lovers, lifelong learners, and the relentlessly curious.

Open it anywhere, and find out why.

Want more? The Christmas Edition adds more than 700 new questions about the holidays, winter, and New Year.