How to Build a Lava Moat (with xkcd)

Where to Buy "How To" by Randall Munroe:

The world's most entertaining and useless self-help guide, from the brilliant mind behind the wildly popular webcomic xkcd and the #1 New York Times bestsellers What If? and Thing Explainer

For any task you might want to do, there's a right way, a wrong way, and a way so monumentally complex, excessive, and inadvisable that no one would ever try it. How To is a guide to the third kind of approach. It's full of highly impractical advice for everything from landing a plane to digging a hole.

Bestselling author and cartoonist Randall Munroe explains how to predict the weather by analyzing the pixels of your Facebook photos. He teaches you how to tell if you're a baby boomer or a 90's kid by measuring the radioactivity of your teeth. He offers tips for taking a selfie with a telescope, crossing a river by boiling it, and powering your house by destroying the fabric of space-time. And if you want to get rid of the book once you're done with it, he walks you through your options for proper disposal, including dissolving it in the ocean, converting it to a vapor, using tectonic plates to subduct it into the Earth's mantle, or launching it into the Sun.

By exploring the most complicated ways to do simple tasks, Munroe doesn't just make things difficult for himself and his readers. As he did so brilliantly in What If?, Munroe invites us to explore the most absurd reaches of the possible. Full of clever infographics and amusing illustrations, How To is a delightfully mind-bending way to better understand the science and technology underlying the things we do every day.

REFERENCES

How To (Randall Munroe) - see above for links!

Rock melting points

Syracuse University Researchers Make Lava Using Keweenawan Basalt

BEDROCK GEOLOGY OF WISCONSIN MAP: UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN–EXTENSION Geological and Natural History Survey

Electric Furnace

Large Geothermal Power Plants

Coal Power Plant Capacity

The size of an A19 or A21 Lightbulb

Low melting point Vanadate glass

MinutePhysics is on twitter - @minutephysics

Minute Physics provides an energetic and entertaining view of old and new problems in physics -- all in a minute!

Created by Henry Reich

[Awgolas]

Using a nuclear reactor to generate heat to generate electricity to generate heat seems very inefficent. Using a coolant loop from the reactor into the lava would definitely increase the efficiency significantly, and if you only use 1 loop, now you've got radioactive lava. Absolute win.

[grfrjiglstan]

Minute physics and xkcd - a match made in heaven.

[reubenfromow]

My wife: “why do you never help out with home planning?”

Me:

[TheCooldudeG]

☆☆☆☆ I give this Four stars! This guide has helped me solve almost all of my trespasser issues and given the outer walls of my personal fortress a wonderful glow. Keeps out burglars and in-laws! Would have given it 5 stars but the heat from the lava moat boiled away the water for the moat holding the Laser Sharks.

[kingbranden]

Right, of course. I knew I was doing something wrong. Thank you so much for this tutorial it has been extremely helpful.

[IamClipsus]

2:20 "Which is clearly absurd."
Yeah, that is the absurd part, of course.

[keyboardmannow]

*forgets to add the bridge*
“Hey boss uhm I cant come to work today”

[deanastasya]

UGH I WISH I SAW THIS BEFORE MAKING MY EVIL LAIR! had to settle for a circle of shark infested waters instead


EDIT- I have made this comment 10 months ago and am still getting replies so I will update you. The sharks are a difficult balance between feeding them too much and starving them, I would be careful managing their bloodthirst without risking their health. As a downside of my inexperience I have been overfeeding them at first and my heroic nemesis made her way into my lair, there was a lot of fighting and monologuing. As an upside we are married now, both evil, and both have learned from the past security issue. With 2 villains in a lair the amount of heroes doubled, so now I don't have to feed the sharks myself much at all

[thomasr.jackson]

I wish someone had made this video when I made my lava moat. It would have been a big help

[Aeihd]

"Which is clearly absurd"
Yea, that's the absurd part.

[sprazz]

"It's tempting to choose a kind of rock that melts at a lower temperature." Well duh, it's not like we're going to choose a high melting point rock for literally no reason other than to flex our economic superiority over our *OK NEVERMIND I GUESS WE'RE GOING THERE*

[SaHaRaSquad]

Book's subtitle: 'advice for *common* real-world problems'
Also book: how to build a lava moat.

Okay then.

[rc]

I’m going to go the 4km solar panel array route. We need to be green with our lava moats.

[GS-wznp]

I didn't really search for this, but nice to know...

[solarsatan]

Oh I need higher quality rock that's where I've been going wrong

[lizlee]

Minutephysics: "There aren't that many tutorials on how to build a lava-moat."
5 minute crafts: *Is that a challenge!?*

[chingamfong]

Me: I have a homework due tonight and I barely started on it.


YouTube: *Do you want to know how to build a lava moat?*



Also me: Good question

[The_Jzoli]

Just get some lava with a bucket and pour it in the moat.

[renardleblanc]

I kid you not, the day this video came out, my parents were installing geothermal heating in their house. Maaaybe I should ask if they have any plans for home security. Just to be prudent. X3

[fendoroid]

And then comes the guy with a bucket of water.