1.
How to jump high into the stratosphere

The record may not be recognized, but that's okay.
Because I discovered for myself how high I could jump.
But if you're willing to break the rules a little more boldly, you can jump higher than 6 meters.
Much higher.
You just have to find a good place to jump.
Runners benefit from aerodynamics.
They wear tight-fitting clothes to reduce air resistance.
So you can gain more speed and jump higher.
But what if we take this a step further? Naturally, we're not considering propulsion with propellers or rockets.
Because you can't call this a 'jump' with a straight face.
That's not running, that's flying.
But it will be okay if it rises slightly.
The path of a falling object is influenced by the surrounding air currents.
Ski jumpers adjust their posture to gain aerodynamic advantage when jumping.
In windy areas, you can use the same method.
When the wind blows from behind, runners can run faster.
Likewise, if you jump where the wind is blowing upwards, you will go higher.

--- p.16

2. What if we melted a glacier on the other side of the Earth and filled a swimming pool with water?

You could probably cut off the caps of 24 bottles at once with a sharp sword.
There are many slow-motion videos online of people cutting through a row of water bottles with a sword in one go.
Judging by the videos, this is extremely difficult.
As it passes through the black bottle, it tends to change direction either downwards or upwards.
Even if you swing accurately enough and have the arm strength and stability, using a sword is still too slow.
Guns probably won't do much of a job either.
If you plan well and place your guns efficiently, you might be able to poke holes in a bunch of bottles at once with one gun.
But it's still not easy to puncture all the bottles and pour out the water quickly enough.
And there's going to be a lot of lead in the pool.
In particular, adding chlorine to water will cause lead to corrode and eventually contaminate groundwater.
There are many more powerful weapons you can use to quickly open water bottles, but we won't cover them all here.
But before we move beyond weapons and onto more practical solutions, let's consider the most powerful and most impractical method.
Can you open a water bottle with a nuclear bomb?
It's so utterly ridiculous that it's hard to believe the US government studied it during the Cold War.
In 1955, the Federal Civil Defense Agency purchased beer, soda, and carbonated water from local stores and tested nuclear weapons on them.

--- p.31~32

5.
How to make an emergency landing on a farm, aircraft carrier, train, etc.

How do you land a plane?
To get an answer to this question, I decided to seek out an expert.
General Chris Hadfield flew jet fighters in the Royal Canadian Air Force and served as a test pilot in the U.S. Navy.
He has flown over 100 different types of airplanes.
He flew two space shuttle missions, piloted the Soyuz, became the first Canadian to walk in space, and served as commander of the International Space Station.
I contacted General Hadfield and asked if he could advise on an emergency landing, and he graciously agreed.
I made a list of unusual and seemingly impossible emergency landing scenarios, called him, and asked him about them one by one to see how he reacted.
I half-thought General Hadfield might hang up on me after the second or third question, but surprisingly, he answered every question almost without hesitation (in retrospect, my plan to confuse the astronauts by presenting them with extreme situations was absurd).
My scenario and General Hadfield's response are below (edited slightly for clarity and conciseness, and includes responses added via email).
These answers may not be the only way to handle each situation, but they're a great starting point because they came straight from one of the world's most accomplished test pilots and astronauts.

How to land on the farm
Q I need to make an emergency landing, but all I can see is a farm field.
Which crop should you target? Should you choose something taller, like corn, for greater resistance, or something shorter to soften the surface? Will a pumpkin patch cushion the impact like a water tank on a highway, or will it flip an airplane and set it ablaze?
A thing to always think about when flying a small plane.
As I drive the plane to the landing pad, I look around and think.
How high are those beans? Has the hay been cleared? Has it rained recently? They can't land on muddy ground.
It would be best to have a place without any crops that are too tall or thick to cause the plane to flip over.
Sunflowers are never a good choice.

--- p.69~70

9.
How to create artificial lava and confine it in a moat

Making lava
Actually, making lava is theoretically very easy.
All you need are rocks and heat.
Most rocks melt at temperatures between 800 and 1,200 degrees Celsius.
This is higher than a home oven, but it is possible to achieve this temperature in a high-temperature furnace, charcoal oven, or even with a giant magnifying glass.
You can use any rock you can find around you to make lava.
But you have to be careful.
Some rocks can explode when heated because of trapped gases inside them.
Syracuse University's Lava Project, which creates artificial lava for geological research and art projects, used billion-year-old basalt from Wisconsin.
This basalt was formed when a large amount of magma flowed out from a crack in the center of the North American continent.
The crack eventually filled, but the dense basalt of the crescent-shaped scar was buried beneath the soil of the Midwest.

--- p.141~142

15. How to send a parcel from space

It's easy to send things down to Earth from the International Space Station.
Just throw it outside the door and wait.
Then eventually it will fall to Earth.
There is very little air at the altitude of the International Space Station.
It's not a big deal, but it can create a measurable amount of resistance.
This resistance causes the object to slow down, falling into a lower and lower orbit, and eventually entering the atmosphere where it (usually) burns up.
The International Space Station also faces this kind of resistance.
So it periodically propels itself into a higher orbit to compensate for the lost altitude.
If you don't do that, your orbit will get lower and lower and you will fall back to Earth.
Astronauts very often make mistakes sending packages back to Earth.
While working on the International Space Station, astronauts on spacewalks accidentally drop several objects.
They also dropped wrenches, cameras, tool bags, and even a spatula that the astronauts were using to apply repair adhesive for testing.
These objects become satellites that orbit the Earth unintentionally for months or years until their orbits are lowered.
The package you threw will likely meet the same fate as the lost parts, bags, and various pieces of equipment that have fallen from the International Space Station over the years.
The orbit is lowered and it enters the atmosphere.
There are two big problems with this shipping method.
First, your package will burn up in the air before it even hits the ground.
And secondly, even if you don't ride it, there's no way to know where it will land.
To send a parcel, you need to solve both of these problems.
First, let's look at how to ensure your package arrives safely on the ground.

--- p.213

16.
How to Power Your Home with Various Energy Sources
Buried fuel
Let's say your 0.2 acre piece of land is 1/12,000,000,000th of the entire United States, and that 1/12,000,000,000th of the United States' underground resources are buried there.
Of course, in reality, those resources are distributed in small chunks across the country, so your land will have much more or much less.
But if it's evenly distributed, what's buried beneath your ground will be:
- 3 barrels of oil.
One barrel of crude oil provides about 6 gigajoules of electricity, so 3 barrels is enough to power your home for 8 months.
- 38,000 cubic feet of natural gas.
Enough to power you for over 16 months.
- 19 tons of coal.
Coal has an energy density of about 20 megajoules per kilogram, so 19 tons of coal could power your home for 12 months.
- 1.5 ounces of uranium.
A traditional nuclear reactor can power your home for months, while an advanced reactor called a fast neutron reactor can power your home for more than a decade.
Fast neutron reactors are much more efficient, but more expensive to operate.
And because it enriches uranium to the point where it could be used in nuclear weapons, it could make international regulators nervous.
All together, these buried fuels are worth decades of electricity.

--- p.232