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"Wait!" Tom exclaimed. "We're not quite ready."
Several of the children had already found a log and started to enter.
"This tunnel is quite exacting," he continued. "It is not only our height that must be metricized, but our density and temperature as well."
"I'm quite thick," said a well-rounded boy with a British accent.
"Where did you come from?" Stefanie asked. "I don't remember seeing you anywhere in chapters one through four."
"Novel writers these days," Vanessa said. "They think they can just invent characters anytime just to suit their whims and fancies."
"Yes, I think you will serve quite well to introduce the concepts of mass and volume, Young Sherlock," Tom said.
"Oh, and his name is Sherlock?" Stefanie said. "Like Sherlock Holmes?"
"Well, what do you want to name him?" Shayna said.
"We could call him 'Harry Potter,'" Elise said with excitement.
"Or Dudley,"' said Vanessa.
"Let's start with volume," Tom continued undeterred. "You take up a certain amount of space, Sherlock."
"Quite a bit," my mother says.
"So, Sherlock, let's see if you've been paying attention. How tall are you?"
"100 centimeters," Ervin blurted out quite excitedly.
"Or a meter," Elise added.
"Thanks, SHERLOCK," Tom said, shooting an annoyed glance in Ervin and Elise's direction. "And the bit on the front of the word that is 'centi' -- what does it tell us?"
"That there were a 100 centipedes!" Vanessa interjected excitedly.
"Well, SHERLOCK, you seem to be quick to answer," he said, now glaring at Vanessa.
"Centi- means 100, and there are a hundred centimeters in a meter."
"Aren't there several other prefixes like that?" Stefanie added.
"Quite right. Quite right," Tom said excitedly.
"What's a prefix?" the plump boy asked.
"It's some letters you put on the front of a word," Vanessa answered before Tom could get a word out of his mouth.
"Yes, yes," Tom continued. "Centi- means 100, but there are other prefixes."
"Like kilo- means a thousand," Elise said.
"OOH, a kilometer is a 1000 meters!" Shayna almost shouted.
"And a millimeter is one 1000th of a meter," Tom added.
"Like if you were to cut a meter into 1000 bits instead of 100," Ervin said.
"If you only had some millipedes in your pocket, you could use them to measure us!" came a voice from somewhere inside Mr. Tom's coat. Vanessa ran over and promptly opened one of Tom's pockets.
"Hey, there are millipedes in his pocket!" Vanessa said.
"Not now!" Tom exclaimed, rapidly closing the pocket. "Now, what if we all had to be a cubic meter to get through the tunnel?"
"A cubic meter?" Sherlock asked. "What's that?"
"It means you would be a cube that was one meter on each side," Stefanie said. "Height, width, and length -- all three dimensions, each one meter long."
"Wonderul!" Tom said.
"Is that the same thing as a liter?" Elise asked.
"Great question!" Tom said, barely able to keep up with the conversation. "But no. A liter is much smaller than a cubic meter, which is a meter long, wide, and high."
"A liter is more like a gallon," came an echoing voice from the tunnel.
"Is that you, Lane?" Vanessa said rushing over to the entrance of the tunnel.
"Yes, and you shouldn't stand for this liter stuff," Lane's voice came, as if uttered from deep in a cave.
"I've had several 2-liter Mountain Dews just today," Sherlock said. "I think a liter is actually a bit smaller than a gallon. I drank a gallon of milk today too."
"Come on over to the meauring machine," Tom finally said to Sherlock, ignoring Lane's continued mutterings about 'merica from the tunnel.
"See this density dial," he continued. "I'm going to set it to one kilogram per liter."
"Wait," Ervin interjected with concern, "does that mean you're going to make Sherlock be the size of a liter?"
Tom ignored him and before Sherlock could object, he had set the dial on a kilogram/liter (kilogram per liter) and pressed the button. Sherlock immediately shrunk into a cube the size of a liter. Tom bent over and picked him up.
"There," Tom said with a smile. "Now, Sherlock is quite the travel size." Then he tossed the boy to Ervin. "He has a mass of one kilogram taking up a volume of one liter."
"He's not very heavy now either," Ervin said.
"No, he's only a kilogram in mass now," Tom responded.
"That's 2.2 pounds," came Lane's voice from the tunnel.
"2.2 pounds? That's not much at all," Shayna said.
"The kilogram was originally the weight of one liter of pure water," Vanessa said.
"Smarty pants," Tom added. "But to correct you slightly, Vanessa, the kilogram is actually a unit of mass rather than weight."
"What's the difference?" Elise asked.
"You'll have to take my physics course," Tom said. "Basically, you have weight when you're on a planet. It's a force due to gravity."
"But in outer space?" Stefanie asked.
"In outer space, you wouldn't have weight. But you'd still have mass. You'd still be made of stuff, er, matter. Mass is what makes your 'stuff' have weight when you land on a planet. But your weight would be different on different planets."
"I don't understand," Sherlock said, now being tossed back and forth between the children.
"Do we all have to become little cubes to get through the tunnel?" Stefanie asked.
"No, I just wanted to introduce you all to the concept of density."
"But you haven't really mentioned density," Stefanie responded.
"I have," Tom answered. "I just haven't explained the word. Density is the amount of mass per volume. Sherlock currently takes up a volume of one liter."
"That's the amount of space he occupies," Elise said excitedly.
"Yes," Tom agreed.
"And he weighs one kilogram," Vanessa added.
"Well, he has a mass of one kilogram," Tom said.
"And one kilogram per liter is his density?" Stefanie asked.
"Exactly," Tom concluded. "I think that turned out rather well," he added.
"Can we go through the tunnel now?" Stefanie asked somewhat impatiently. "I'm still on a mission to find some interesting atoms for Mr. Atkinson."
"Almost," Tom said. "We just have one more concept to mention -- temperature."
"Can we do it somewhere else?" Shayna said. "This room is getting really boring."
"Oh, alright," Tom said. "Everyone get in a log."
"But what about Sherlock?" Ervin asked.
"Just set him in the corner over there," Tom said. "I don't think we need him any more."
"You're just going to discard him after using him for just this scene?" Stefanie protested.
"OK, then bring him along."
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2. The Nuclear Cafe
3. Mr. Tom's Mild Ride
4. March of the Centipedes
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