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xkcd.com: A webcomic of romance and math humor.

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Hardwood

They may technically have been softwoods at some point, but they definitely aren't now.

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Atom

What's weirder is that muons turned out to be INCREDIBLY cute.

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Incoming Asteroid

The bottom ones are also potentially bad news for any other planets in our solar system that have been counting on Earth having a stable orbit.

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Suspension Bridge

As a first step, they can put in a secondary deck, to help drivers try it out and find out how fun the jumps are. After a while no one will use the old flat deck and they can remove it.

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Rotary Tool

It was great until my thumb slipped and I accidentally launched my telescope into the air at Mach 8.

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Stromatolites

If only my ancestors had been fortunate enough to marry into the branch of the bacteria family that could photosynthesize, like all my little green cousins here.

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AlphaMove

It struggles a little with complex positions, like when there are an even number of moves and it has to round down, but when run against itself it's capable of finding some novelties. At one point I saw six knights on the board at once; Stockfish rarely exceeds four.

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Humidifier Review

They should add a little sticker that certifies that the humidifier supports water conservation, but in the sense of energy conservation or momentum conservation.

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Muons

Update: I've been banned from the physics department for the way I pronounce "Doppler effect."

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T. Rex Evolution

Unfortunately, body size and bite force continue to increase.

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Unit Circle

They're continuing to search for a square with the same area as the circle, as efforts to construct one have run into difficulties.

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Chemical Formulas

Can you pass the nackle?

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Human Altitude

I wonder what surviving human held the record before balloons (excluding edge cases like jumping gaps on a mountain bridge). Probably it was someone falling from a cliff into snow or water, but maybe it involved something weird like a gunpowder explosion or volcano.

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Uncanceled Units

Speed limit c arcminutes^2 per steradian

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Radon

A good ²³⁸Umbrella policy should cover it.

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Chess Zoo

The zoo takes special care to keep kings separated from opposite-color pieces as part of their conservation program to prevent mating in captivity.

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Trimix

You don't want the nitrogen percentage to be too high or you run the risk of eutrophication.

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Features of Adulthood

I don't dig pit traps and cover them with sticks and a thin layer of leaves nearly as much as I expected; I find a chance to do it barely once a month.

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Origami Black Hole

You may notice the first half of these instructions are similar to the instructions for a working nuclear fusion device. After the first few dozen steps, be sure to press down firmly and fold quickly to overcome fusion pressure.

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Skew-T Log-P

The most important quantity for meteorologists is of course the product of latent pressure and temperostrophic enthalpy, though 'how nice the weather is' is a close second.

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Time Capsule Instructions

Inside is a third box, labeled DO NOT OPEN UNLESS YOU ARE IN THE TIME ZONE WHERE YOU OPENED BOTH PREVIOUS BOXES.

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Lasering Incidents

I still don't know how the police found my compound where I ran an illegal searchlight depot/covert blimp airfield/fireworks testing range.

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Sun Avoidance

C'mon, ESA Solar Orbiter team, just give the Parker probe a LITTLE nudge at aphelion. Crash it into the sun. Fulfill the dream of Icarus. It is your destiny.

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D Roll

Under some circumstances, if you throw a D8 and then a D12 at an enemy, thanks to the D8's greater pointiness you actually have to roll a D12 and D8 respectively to determine damage.

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Exclusion Principle

Fermions are weird about each other in a standoffish way. Integer-spin particles are weird about each other in a 'stand uncomfortably close while talking' kind of way.

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Linear Sort

The best case is O(n), and the worst case is that someone checks why.

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Phase Change

Even when you try to make nice, smooth ice cubes in a freezer, sometimes one of them will shoot out a random ice spike, which physicists ascribe to kiki conservation.

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METAR

In the aviation world, they don't use AM/PM times. Instead, all times are assumed to be AM unless they're labeled NOTAM.

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The Maritime Approximation

It works because a nautical mile is based on a degree of latitude, and the Earth (e) is a circle.

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Making Tea

No, of course we don't microwave the mug WITH the teabag in it. We microwave the teabag separately.