Throw
[As this is an interactive comic, not all possible text should be given in this transcript. Also, it is not possible to see all the different throwers or objects in one image. This transcript here includes the text that can be found when loading the page, without changing the thrower or object (the default), but also includes the text that can be found by scrolling in the two select "windows" as that would be similar to a long comic where you need to scroll as well as customization options. For further differences that occur by changing the objects refer to a table of all combinations.]
[A heading with a subheading is above a line, beneath which are a sentence, that is generated by the selections in the two windows beneath this sentence:] Throw Calculator This calculator implements the approximate throwing distance estimation model from How To Chapter 10: How to throw things .
How far could George Washington throw a Microwave oven?
[Beneath this sentence are two "windows" with a frame around them, one to the left and one to the right, each with a heading breaking the top frame. Each also has a scroll bar to the right, which allows one to scroll down through 8 different possible selections in the left window and 16 in the right window. There are, depending on the browser zoom level, one or two selections on each line. Each window's content is given here under their respective headings. Each possible selection is a drawing with a caption beneath it.] Select a thrower
You An NFL Quarterback George Washington Pikachu Carly Rae Jepsen Thor, God of Thunder Chris Hemsworth A squirrel
Select an object to be thrown You A microwave oven A basketball A blender A gold bar A wedding cake A ping-pong ball An acorn Thor's Hammer A javelin George Washington Pikachu A car A silver dollar (spinning) A silver dollar (tumbling) A squirrel
[Below the two windows is the result of the animation that will happen when a selection has been made. An animation of the selected thrower throwing (or failing to throw) the selected object is shown, and the object's traveling distance is measured out both in meters (SI units) and in some other unit in brackets below. If the distance is not too long compared to the size of the object and thrower, then both can be seen, and in case the object is soft it may break from the throw.]
[In the pre-selected version, George Washington throws a microwave oven, which ends up several meters from him lying on a corner broken with its wire lying beneath it. The distance is given under the ruler along which the throw has occurred, with markings for approximately every meter. In this case, there are seven steps even though the distance is above 7 meters:] 7.76 meters (25.46 feet)
[Clicking on "You" in the thrower box opens a new window over the above described comic parts. some of the comic can still be seen including the thrower and his item, and a new throw occurs every time something is changed in this new window. It is a customization box with several options shown below.]
Your Name ____You_____ [can be changed]
Height 5.8 ft [number can be changed; ft can be changed to m]
Mass 160 lb [number can be changed; lb can be changed to kg]
Athleticism [Below is a scale showing Black Hat, Knit Cap depicting You , George Washington, and a person with goggles and a helmet. A marker is set at You, but can be changed. Below the characters are descriptions.] Black Hat: Moving objects around is for suckers. Minimal You: I'm in decent shape and have pretty good form. Decent George Washington: I'm so good at throwing they made me president. Extremely High Goggles: I use a time machine to train for 36 hours a day. Champion Athlete
[Once done the box can be clicking on a cross at the top right or just clicking outside the window on the comic behind it. Now the thrower you (and the object you) will have the weight, length and strength chosen and will be able to throw (or be thrown) with these stats. ]

This is an interactive comic made to celebrate the release of Randall's new book, How To . The comic is based on a chapter in the book.
As the comic celebrates the book, which was released on Tuesday, September 3rd, 2019, the comic was thus also released on a Tuesday to coincide with the release day, replacing that week's normal Wednesday release. This was the same timing used for another of Randall's book releases, when 1608: Hoverboard came out on the Tuesday when Thing Explainer came out. Although the Hoverboard comic is much more complex than this one, they are both dynamic and interactive , with animations a part of them. Also the xkcd Header text changed to promote the release creating a large combined promotion of the book during the three full days the comic was on the front page (see more here ).
In this comic the viewer can select a thrower and an object to be thrown, see this table , and get an animation of how the selected throw would work out, along with an estimated distance of the throw (both in the SI unit meter (m) and in other very arbitrary units; see this table below) if the throw was possible. Impossible throws include those where the thrower is not strong enough to throw the object, or when the thrower tries to throw themselves, which is possible as four "objects" are also listed as throwers, most prominently George Washington . As the comic picture above cannot show all the possible selections in the two windows, pictures of all can be found here
The formula/guideline is apparently based on chapter 10 from the new How to book, see more under Formulas .
It seemed though, that there was a special case to the calculations with Thor's hammer ( Mjolnir ). Because this comic obviously refers to the Thor from the Marvel universe , played by  another  possible thrower, Chris Hemsworth in the Marvel Cinematic Universe , and his hammer , which is enchanted such that only those deemed "worthy" are able to lift it. As such, despite its mass in principle being liftable by many of the characters, only Thor, God of Thunder (who is canonically worthy), is able to throw it. Also Thor is the only one who uses furlongs to measure his distances among the standard throwers. However, it is not a canonical part of this comic that only he can throw it, and its mass is not realistic, see more below.
Originally , when the comic was just released, there where only 7 throwers and 15 things to throw, giving a total of 105 different combinations; see the table below. But only Thor can throw all 15, with three of the objects (George Washington, Thor's hammer, and the car) unthrowable by any of the other throwers. The smaller critters can throw only a few things, so the total number of throws is much less than 105. Still, there is an animation for all 105 combinations, but with no throw distance for many of these.
But already on day one the comic was out, a new thrower was added with the standard name "You", and this person, Knit Cap , was also added to the objects that can be thrown increasing the number of throwers to 8 and objects to be thrown to 16. However, it would not be true to say that the number of options now would be 8 x 16 = 128, since the "You" can be customized when selecting it in the throwers menu (but not when selecting You in the object menu). When doing so a new window called Custom thrower will open up over the comic. The "You" option can then be customized by changing the name (from the default "You"), and defining the height (default 5.8 ft = 1.77 m) and weight (default 160 lb = 72.57 kg), where ft (feet) can be changed to m (meter) and lb (pound) can be changed to kg (kilograms). But when doing so the window will not correct the number from feet to meter etc. but stay the same.
Below the above options there is line with four persons above it, defining a scale of athleticism , the default second option being the drawing of "you" which represents Decent form (i.e. a normal person).  The first on the scale is Black Hat , who thinks moving things is for suckers, thus representing minimal athleticism. "You" in second position is in decent shape and pretty good form, representing decent athleticism. George Washington in third position represents extremely high athleticism, and as he states he threw so well they made him President. Finally the fourth position, representing a champion athlete, shows a person with a helmet with chin strap and goggles who states that he trains 36 hours a day by using a time machine. It is thus indicated that such athletes can only be so good by training more than is possible; for instance, if he travels 24 hours back every day, he could use 12 more of these to practice, making it 36 hours on that "normal day" and he would then still have 12 hours to eat and sleep/restitution before his next 36 hours training pass.
Changing away from the decent "You" to one of the other three characters on the athleticism scale does not, however, change the character used for the animation, which stays the same. But still this gives a very large number of different "yous" to both throw and be thrown.
A self-created character, unrealistically tall and heavy well over the human records for height ( 272 cm ) and/or weight ( 635 kg ), can actually be able to throw Thor's hammer (For instance 4m and 1000 kg, see more here . So it is not because it is magically inclined to only be thrown by Thor, it is just that the weight is set to 2000 kg, and only Thor of the standard characters have the strength (1000 times normal human strength) to throw such a heavy object. But if the "You" is big enough, the athletic difference with Thor will be compensated by sheer weight and height. See this table of data from the comic for the above numbers.
Interestingly, Thor can throw a squirrel 257 meters.  If a Custom Thrower is created, and they are 200 meters tall and 150 KG, they can throw the squirrel 256 meters (1 meter less than Thor).  Thor can throw an acorn 136 meters, and the Custom Thrower will throw it 133 meters.  Now, Thor can throw Thor's Hammer 19 meters.  The Custom Thrower can throw it 44 meters!  Apparently there is more to the enchantment of Thor's Hammer than meets the eye, as it would have been expected that if Thor can throw a squirrel and an acorn farther than an extraordinary human, then certainly he could throw his own enchanted Hammer a longer distance. This is, of course, because the Custom Thrower now throws from much higher than Thor.  As to why the height doesn't affect the acorn or squirrel throwing distance in the same way it does Thor's Hammer, we'll leave that to you, the reader.
The title text refers to throwing a party (a colloquial synonym of hosting a party) and first makes the assumption of actually giving hints for giving a party, and then switches to suggest a mechanism to literally throw a huge object, such as a house with a party going on inside. An aircraft steam catapult is a mechanism to launch aircraft from ships, typically used on aircraft carriers.
Many of the items, even if technically possible to throw, may not be able to be thrown safely.
For example:


Constants and Units:
As this comic is very complicated several screen shots and tables are needed for the full explanation. In order to keep this main page easy to use, these pictures and possibly some of the tables will be placed on some extra pages, as has also been done with other complex comics in the past:
[As this is an interactive comic, not all possible text should be given in this transcript. Also, it is not possible to see all the different throwers or objects in one image. This transcript here includes the text that can be found when loading the page, without changing the thrower or object (the default), but also includes the text that can be found by scrolling in the two select "windows" as that would be similar to a long comic where you need to scroll as well as customization options. For further differences that occur by changing the objects refer to a table of all combinations.]
[A heading with a subheading is above a line, beneath which are a sentence, that is generated by the selections in the two windows beneath this sentence:] Throw Calculator This calculator implements the approximate throwing distance estimation model from How To Chapter 10: How to throw things .
How far could George Washington throw a Microwave oven?
[Beneath this sentence are two "windows" with a frame around them, one to the left and one to the right, each with a heading breaking the top frame. Each also has a scroll bar to the right, which allows one to scroll down through 8 different possible selections in the left window and 16 in the right window. There are, depending on the browser zoom level, one or two selections on each line. Each window's content is given here under their respective headings. Each possible selection is a drawing with a caption beneath it.] Select a thrower
You An NFL Quarterback George Washington Pikachu Carly Rae Jepsen Thor, God of Thunder Chris Hemsworth A squirrel
Select an object to be thrown You A microwave oven A basketball A blender A gold bar A wedding cake A ping-pong ball An acorn Thor's Hammer A javelin George Washington Pikachu A car A silver dollar (spinning) A silver dollar (tumbling) A squirrel
[Below the two windows is the result of the animation that will happen when a selection has been made. An animation of the selected thrower throwing (or failing to throw) the selected object is shown, and the object's traveling distance is measured out both in meters (SI units) and in some other unit in brackets below. If the distance is not too long compared to the size of the object and thrower, then both can be seen, and in case the object is soft it may break from the throw.]
[In the pre-selected version, George Washington throws a microwave oven, which ends up several meters from him lying on a corner broken with its wire lying beneath it. The distance is given under the ruler along which the throw has occurred, with markings for approximately every meter. In this case, there are seven steps even though the distance is above 7 meters:] 7.76 meters (25.46 feet)
[Clicking on "You" in the thrower box opens a new window over the above described comic parts. some of the comic can still be seen including the thrower and his item, and a new throw occurs every time something is changed in this new window. It is a customization box with several options shown below.]
Your Name ____You_____ [can be changed]
Height 5.8 ft [number can be changed; ft can be changed to m]
Mass 160 lb [number can be changed; lb can be changed to kg]
Athleticism [Below is a scale showing Black Hat, Knit Cap depicting You , George Washington, and a person with goggles and a helmet. A marker is set at You, but can be changed. Below the characters are descriptions.] Black Hat: Moving objects around is for suckers. Minimal You: I'm in decent shape and have pretty good form. Decent George Washington: I'm so good at throwing they made me president. Extremely High Goggles: I use a time machine to train for 36 hours a day. Champion Athlete
[Once done the box can be clicking on a cross at the top right or just clicking outside the window on the comic behind it. Now the thrower you (and the object you) will have the weight, length and strength chosen and will be able to throw (or be thrown) with these stats. ]
