ABCD
Runtime

At least there's a general understanding all around that Doctor Who is its own thing.
Methodology Trial

If you think THAT'S unethical, you should see the stuff we approved via our Placebo IRB.
Sunspot Cycle

Who can forget the early 2010s memes? 'You know you're a 90s kid if you remember the feeling of warm sunlight on your face.' 'Only 90s kids remember the dawn.'
Washing Machine Settings

I guess the engineers who built my dishwasher MIGHT have some insight into how to load it, but instead of reading the booklet they gave me, it seems easier to experiment for years and then get in arguments so heated that I get banned from Quora.
Outdated Periodic Table

Researchers claim to have synthesized six additional elements in the second row, temporarily named 'pentium' through 'unnilium'.
Etymonline

NOTE TO FUTURE ETYMONLINGUISTS: Our best guess is that 'blimp' is onomatopoeia. The 'B-Limp' thing is a folk etymology.
Euler Diagrams

Things Leonhard Euler created ( most of math ( overlapping circle diagrams ) a cricket bowling machine ) Things John Venn created
Biology vs Robotics

Sorry, I've just always had these random things I don't like--like olives, or robots drilling holes in me without warning.
Hydrogen Isotopes

Oops, All Neutrons is also known as Neutral Quadrium, Nydnonen, and Goth Tritium.
New Year's Eve Party
![[Earlier, at the eye doctor] 'No, for the last time, the numerals on the paper aren't my prescription, it's the shape I want you to make with the laser.'](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/new_years_eve_party.png)
[Earlier, at the eye doctor] 'No, for the last time, the numerals on the paper aren't my prescription, it's the shape I want you to make with the laser.'
L6 Lagrange Point

It's difficult to orbit L6 stably due to gravitational perturbation from Akron and Toledo.
Game Night Ordering

One good trick, if you get called on a fake service, is to build a working version of it and mention it again the next week.
Pando

The presents under the tree are actually a single gift connected by an underground ribbon system.
Cold Complaints

Our investigation into whining-based remedies became the first study to be halted by the IRB on the grounds that the treatment group was 'too annoying.'
Data Point

In general you should only include your single best data point in the paper. The rest of the data can go in the supplementary materials.
Gravity

It's a long way down.
Optimal Bowling

If you want to bowl a strike, the optimal place is almost certainly inside a bowling alley, although with a little luck any establishment uphill from one could also work.
Hydropower Breakthrough

A hydroelectric dam is also known as a heavy water reactor.
Solar System Model

The Earth is, on average, located in the habitable zone, but at any given time it has a certain probability of being outside it, which is why life exists on Earth but is mortal.
Mystery Asterisk Destination

If you ever see the † dagger symbol with no unmatched footnote, it means the writer is saying the phrase while threatening you with a dagger.
Astronomy Numbers

I adopted a cat that weighs 12 solar masses. Laser pointers love chasing it.
Bendy

Squaring the circle is really easy with some good clamps.
Spacetime Soccer
![Spacetime Soccer, known outside the United States as '4D Football' is a now-defunct sport. Infamous for referee decisions hinging on inconsistent definitions of simultaneity, it is also known for the disappearance of many top players during... [more]](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/spacetime_soccer.png)
Spacetime Soccer, known outside the United States as '4D Football' is a now-defunct sport. Infamous for referee decisions hinging on inconsistent definitions of simultaneity, it is also known for the disappearance of many top players during... [more]
Faucet

It's okay, they can figure out which control positions produce scalding water via a trial-and-error feedback loop with a barely-perceptible 10-second lag.
Paper Title

CONFLICT OF INTEREST STATEMENT: The authors hope these results are correct because we all want to be cool people who are good at science.
What If 2 Gift Guide

BABIES OR LITERATURE BUT NOT BOTH: Baby shoes
Change in Slope

Squinting at a graph is fine for getting a rough idea of the answer, but if you want to pretend to know it exactly, you need statistics.
Account Problems

My password is just every Unicode codepoint concatenated into a single UTF-8 string.
Feature Comparison

Below the Web, and the Dark Web, a shadowy parallel world of Cybiko users trade messages on the Translucent Neon Plastic Web.
Bad Date

"Even split between us, this will pay way better than the Jumanji sponsorship I came into the date with."
Y2K and 2038

It's taken me 20 years, but I've finally finished rebuilding all my software to use 33-bit signed ints.
Precision vs Accuracy

'Barack Obama is much less likely than the average cat to jump in and out of cardboard boxes for fun' is low precision, but I'm not sure about the accuracy.
Soil

You might want to bring your frost-sensitive plants in from the patio. The high-level aerosols may result in short-term cooling across the entire backyard.
Königsberg

At first I thought I would need some gold or something to pay him, but then I realized that it was the 18th century and I could just bring a roll of aluminum foil.
Wirecutter Recommendation

Their 'best philosophy of epistemology' picks are great, but you can tell they're struggling a little in the 'why you should trust us' section.
Interior Decorating

It all came flat-packed in Pandora's Box.
Encryption

WARNING: PEOPLE NAMED EVE ARE PROHIBITED FROM INSTALLING THIS APP!
Cool S

Although I hear they were caught cheating off of Rosalind, who sat at a desk in front of them.
Fermat's First Theorem

Mathematicians quickly determined that it spells ANT BNECN, an unusual theoretical dish which was not successfully cooked until Andrew Wiles made it for breakfast in the 1990s.
Bubble Universes

The theory finally unifies cosmic inflation and regular inflation.
Division Notation

Science tip: Scientists hardly ever use the two-dot division sign, and when they do it often doesn't even mean division, but they still get REALLY mad when you repurpose it to write stuff like SALE! ALL SHOES 30÷ OFF!
Space Adventure

"Sir, it looked really cool." "Oh no--prestige TV. Okay, which of you has a terrible secret that's being slowly revealed to the audience through flashbacks? Just spit it out so we can escape this arc!"
2045

"Sorry, doctor, I'm going to have to come in on a different day--I have another appointment that would be really hard to move, in terms of the kinetic energy requirements."
Road Space Comparison

I wonder how hard it would be to ride an electric scooter in a hamster ball.
Fan Theories

The universe fandom is great. Such sweet and enthusiastic people.
Easy or Hard
!["Friction-driven static electrification is familiar and fundamental in daily life, industry, and technology, but its basics have long been unknown and have continually perplexed scientists from ancient Greece to the high-tech era. [...] To date, no single theory can satisfactorily explain this mysterious but fundamental phenomenon." --Eui-Cheol Shin et. al. (2022)](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/easy_or_hard.png)
"Friction-driven static electrification is familiar and fundamental in daily life, industry, and technology, but its basics have long been unknown and have continually perplexed scientists from ancient Greece to the high-tech era. [...] To date, no single theory can satisfactorily explain this mysterious but fundamental phenomenon." --Eui-Cheol Shin et. al. (2022)
Archimedes Principle

"I've always wanted to run naked through town, but I don't want to get in trouble with the king or be remembered by history as a weirdo. I wonder how I could ... EUREKA!"
Battery Life

It's okay, I'm at 10%, so I'm good for another month or two.
Quantified Self

It's made me way more excited about ferris wheels, subways, car washes, waterslides, and store entrances that have double doors with a divider in the middle.
Wing Lift

Once the air from the top passes below the plane of the wing and catches sight of the spooky skulls, it panics, which is the cause of turbulent vortices.
Two Key System

Our company can be your one-stop shop for decentralization.
Historical Dates

Evidence suggests the 1899 transactions occurred as part of a global event centered around a deity associated with the lotus flower.
Pilot Priority List

CELEBRATE: Serve passengers tiered cakes shaped like the airspace class diagram
Everyday Carry

Someday I just know I'm going to encounter a problem that requires 500 flashlights and 700 knives with weird holes in them, and on that day I won't be caught unprepared.
Cursed mRNA Cocktail

Serve one each to guests whose last cursed cocktail was more than 2 months ago.
What If? 2 Flowchart

Don't worry, the dogs are all fine. That's actually kind of the problem.
Rotation

It's okay, we can just feed the one-pixel image into an AI upscaler and recover the original image, or at least one that's just as cool.
Interruption

It's been extra bad ever since my GPS got stuck on Phoebe Judge mode.
Things You Should Not Do

Now I'm tempted to start telling people that I secretly don't actually know how to do any physics calculations, and so all the answers in What If are based on me actually trying to do the thing and then reporting what happened, but phrased as if it's hypothetical.
Artemis Quote

Another option: "It is an honor to be the first human to set foot on the moon."
First Internet Interaction

To that stranger on the KOOL Tree House chat room, I gotta hand it to you: You were, ultimately, not wrong.
Universe Price Tiers

In Universe Pro®™ the laws of physics remain unchanged under time reversal, to maintain backward compatibility.
America Songs

Juraaaassic Park, Juraaaassic Park, God shed his grace on theeeee
Cloud Swirls

'Why did you get into fluid dynamics?' 'Well, SOME planet has to have the coolest clouds, odds are it's not ours, and rockets are slow.'
Tetherball Configurations

Ground-pole-ball-pole can be fun if you shake the first pole to get the second one whipping around dangerously, but the ball at the joint gets torn apart pretty fast.
Physics Safety Tip

In general, avoid exposure to any temperatures, pressures, particle energies, or states of matter that physicists think are neat.
Age Milestone Privileges

If you reach 122, you get complete unrevertible editorial control over Jeanne Calment's Wikipedia article.
Gen Z

Curdled milk, of a peculiar kind, made after a Bulgarian recipe and called "yaghurt," is now a Parisian fad and is believed to be a remedy against growing old. A correspondent who has tried it, says he would prefer to die young. (1905, The Elk Falls Journal)
Unreliable Connection

NEGATIVE REVIEWS MENTION: Unreliable internet. POSITIVE REVIEWS MENTION: Unreliable internet.
Coffee Cup Holes

Theoretical physicist: At the Planck length, uncountably many.
Complex Vowels
![Pronouncing [ṡṡċċḣḣẇẇȧȧ] is easy; you just say it like the 'x' in 'fire'.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/complex_vowels.png)
Pronouncing [ṡṡċċḣḣẇẇȧȧ] is easy; you just say it like the 'x' in 'fire'.
Scientific Field Prefixes

Massage: Theoretical (10), Quantum (6), High-energy (2), Computational (1), Marine (1), Astro- (None)
Asking Scientists Questions

'Does the substance feel weird to the touch?' is equally likely to get the answers 'Don't be ridiculous, you would never put your hand near a sample. We have safety protocols.' and 'Yeah, and it tastes AWFUL.'
Chemtrails

Ants have reverse chemtrails--regular citizens spraying chemicals everywhere they go to control the government.
Omnitaur

"My parents were both omnitaurs, which is how I got interested in recombination," said the normal human.
Proxy Variable

Our work has produced great answers. Now someone just needs to figure out which questions they go with.
Air Gap

You can still do powerline networking, but the bitrate does drop a little depending on the lightbulb warmup and cooldown delay.
Deepfakes

If so great a deductive mind as Arthur Conan Doyle can be fooled by the Cottingley Deepfakes, what chance do we mortals have? Soon our very reality will be dictated by the whims of Frances (9) and Elsie (16).
Physics Cost-Saving Tips

I got banned from the county fair for handing out Helium-2 balloons. Apparently the instant massive plasma explosions violated some local ordinance or something.
Chemicals

It's hard to believe, but lots of kids these days ONLY know how to buy prepackaged molecules.
Capri Suns
![[As security is dragging me away] "Come on, at least I didn't make the mistake in the other direction!"](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/capri_suns.png)
[As security is dragging me away] "Come on, at least I didn't make the mistake in the other direction!"
Minkowski Space

My liege, we were able to follow the ship into Minkowski space, but now they've jumped to Hilbert space and they could honestly be anywhere.
The Best Camera

The best camera is the one at L2.
fMRI Billboard
![[other side] If the first word of an instruction you're given starts with the same letter as your crush's name, for that step imagine the experimenter is your crush.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/fmri_billboard.png)
[other side] If the first word of an instruction you're given starts with the same letter as your crush's name, for that step imagine the experimenter is your crush.
Cosmologist Gift

These neutrinos were freshly produced by a local source just 8 minutes ago
Meta-Alternating Current

It's always bothered me that you can't cancel out an inverter by putting a second inverter after it.
Mouse Turbines

It's sad seeing those videos of turbine blade being torn apart in high winds, but it's the only way they can disperse their seeds.
The Universe by Scientific Field

The math and philosophy people also claim everything, but the astronomers argue that the stuff they study really only comprises a small number of paper surfaces.
Periodic Table Changes

It's nice how the end of the periodic table is flush with the edge these days, so I think we should agree no one should find any new elements after #118 unless they discover a whole row at once.
Extended NFPA Hazard Diamond

With most labs, the hushed horror stories are about something like dimethylmercury or prions, but occasionally you'll get a weird lab where it's about the soda machine or the drop ceiling.
Roman Numerals

100he100k out th1s 1nno5at4e str1ng en100o501ng 15e been 500e5e50op1ng! 1t's 6rtua100y perfe100t! ...hang on, what's a "virtuacy"?
What If? 2 Countdown

If you don't end the 99 Bottles of Beer recursion at N=0 it just becomes The Other Song That Never Ends.
Superintelligent AIs

Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they should, they didn't stop to think if they could.
Red Line Through HTTPS

Some organization has been paying to keep this up and it hasn't been removed from search results. Seems like two votes of confidence to me.
Astronomer Hotline

Employment statistics have to correct for the fact that the Weird Bug Hotline hires on a bunch of extra temporary staff every 17 years.
Greatest Scientist

"Ow! One of the petri dishes I left on the tower railing fell and hit me on the head! Hey, that gives me an idea..."
Exercise Progression

They said after I got into a routine, I'd enjoy getting progressively stronger and stop whining so much about how hard exercise was. Well, they were half right!
Shuttle Skeleton

It's believed to be related to the Stellar Sea Cow.
Or Whatever

Oh yeah, I didn't even know they renamed it the Willis Tower in 2009, because I know a normal amount about skyscrapers.
Motion Blur

I can't speak for your other subjects, but MY motion was as smooth and natural as the framerate allowed.