The Quirks & Quarks Question Book: 101 Answers to Listeners' Questions

• Is there really such a thing as a blue moon?
• What time is it at the North Pole?
• Why don’t woodpeckers get concussed?
• Why don’t snorers wake themselves with the racket they make?
• Do insects sleep?

These are just a few of the intriguing questions asked and answered in The Quirks & Quarks Question Book, the first question and answer book to come out of CBC Radio’s enormously popular weekly science program. Quirks & Quarks producers have combed through ten years’ worth of archives to find the most puzzling questions – or the most fascinating answers to apparently simple questions – from the program’s Question of the Week segment or its once-a-season all-question show. The scientists and researchers with the answers (many of whom updated their answers for the book in light of new research findings) come from all scientific disciplines and all parts of the country. What they have in common is their ability to explain serious, complicated science in layman’s terms. This isn’t science made simple, but science made understandable.

Introduced by the program’s host for the past ten years, the genial and ever-curious Bob McDonald, The Quirks & Quarks Question Book has the answers to questions you may never have thought to ask (why does Uranus spin on a different axis from all the other planets in our solar system?) or have spent idle time wondering about (why is there a calm before a storm?). Whether you want to know if you can sweat while you swim or what the view would be like if you could travel at the speed of light, or perhaps you just want to peruse the latest scientific thinking on a wide range of topics, The Quirks & Quarks Question Book has the answer.

Quirks & Quarks has been keeping Canadians up to date on the world of science for more than 25 years. Every week, the program presents the people behind the latest discoveries in the physical and natural sciences. The program also examines the political, social, environmental, and ethical implications of new developments in science and technology. Over its lifetime, Quirks & Quarks has won more than 40 national and international awards for science journalism.

Besides being the host of Quirks & Quarks, Bob McDonald is the CBC’s science reporter and the author of two books based on the program, Wonderstruck I and Wonderstruck II. He is also the author of the memoir Measuring the Earth with a Stick: Science As I've Seen It.