From modern-day challenges such as balancing a checkbook, following the stock market, buying a home, and figuring out credit card finance charges to appreciating historical developments by Pythagoras, Archimedes, Newton, and other mathematicians, this engaging resource addresses more than 1,000 questions related to mathematics. Organized into chapters that cluster similar topics in an easily accessible format, this reference provides clear and concise...

"Millions of people visit xkcd.com each week to read Randall Munroe's iconic webcomic. His stick-figure drawings about science, technology, language, and love have a large and passionate following. Fans of xkcd ask Munroe a lot of strange questions. What if you tried to hit a baseball pitched at 90 percent the speed of light? How fast can you hit a speed bump while driving and live? If there was a robot apocalypse, how long would humanity last? In...

A reference guide to a wide range of topics that provides information on various issues related to art, astronomy, business, sports, history, medicine, philosophy, photography, biology, film, economics, geography, the Internet, and more.

Relates the scientific story and the human struggle behind the search for the string theory--the ultimate theory which scientists believe is capable of describing all physical phenomena, large and small; and discusses how the theory is impacting human understanding of space and time.