I've read many books, some of them comedies, but I can't remember laughing so much as I did with this. Not only does it provide scientific information about many subjects, but it's also written in a humorous way. What else can you ask from this book? Only that it were longer!

Na verdade eu li a tradução em português que saiu pela Editora Record: "Quanto preciso pesar para ser à prova de uma bala perdida?" (tradução de carolina duarte). Muio divertido.

This is a compendium of a much beloved rubric of questions and answers published in The New Scientist. A delightfully lighthearted and silly (while being smart) romp. An easy and diverting read

It is much better than (what if? )

Light reading on curious questions. An easy read

A collection of questions and answers from New Scientist's "Last Word" column, in which readers would write in with questions, and others would answer. Unfortunately, not what I was expecting at all.

Some questions were more interesting than others ("what would bagpipes sound like with helium?", for example...), and the answers were as varied as the questions. Some questions have multiple answers published, and there are instances in which these answers contradict one another. Rarely are these answers succinct; contributors of this column love to ramble and exhibit the depths of their knowledge. Some of the questions and answers are very informative, others not so much; it really is a mixed bag.

Perhaps reading this book out of the context of this column, and some 20+ years after publication, I might not be experiencing the content as intended. Or maybe I'm just missing the point of the "Last Word" entirely.

1.5/5 stars

As a kid if you were the one who always asked annoying questions about the world...and still haven't stopped as an adult...then this book is for you. Good fun to read with some utterly bizarre questions (yes, what would happen if aliens 'stole' the moon?).
In a few places the answers went on and on...and then scientists wonder why people assume them to be nerds ;-)

I can't get enough of questions I never thought to ask and intelligent answers to those questions. What affects the color of earwax? How much does my head weigh? Why do pineapples have spines? These are great questions and had I not read this book, I would have never thought to ask these wonderful questions.

Entertaining enough but to be honest a fair few of the questions are so ludicrously contrived that you would not want to read the answers, I got the distinct impression that asking a "wacky" question confers some kind of nerd Kudos and that not bothering to print them would have soon discouraged the idiots and returned the subject to popular science with actual relevance to the world, a perfectly engaging subject for a book. but I guess this is aimed at the Christmas present market.

Taking its cue from the popular New Scientist column 'The last word', this book is a collection of the weird and wonderful questions that people have asked of other readers of the magazine. Like the other book 'Why don't penguin's feet freeze', this book takes its title from one of the odder enquiries in the text.

Apparently is transpires that actually an awful lot of different things eat wasps, ranging from various creepy crawlies to birds and larger animals.

Full of questions that will make you go 'I always wondered that...' and answers that will make you say 'oh, right, now I see!', this book is a little treasure trove of invention and interest!

I was really looking forward to reading this book, because I had enjoyed "The Book of General Ignorance" so much and this one was very highly rated. But I guess I'm just not smart enough to appreciate it. For example, one of the questions was "What is the maximum length of a vertical straw with which you can drink cola?" The answer? "If you applied an absolute vacuum above a nonvolatile liquid, then the maximum height you could suck it up a vertical pipe would be reached when the hydrostatic head pressure of the column of liquid equals one atmosphere (101,325 pascals). This pressure is given by p x g x h, where p is the fluid density, g is the gravitational acceleration...." you get the idea. I'll definitely read the second "Book of General Ignorance", but this book was disappointingly tedious and I found myself skimming over a lot of the more technical explanations of equations, ratios, etc.