8.2 The Briefing Room -- Part II

The chemistry novel continues...
_________________________
"Why am I still here?" Stefanie asked.

"We've finished the early bits where chemistry pretends to be physics," Stacy said pleasantly. "But there are a few things that chemistry insists on keeping to itself."

"But Mr. Atkinson sent me to find some interesting atoms and molecules," Stefanie said. "I'm very, very late for a very important date."

"I do appreciate that you can tell the difference between atoms and molecules, by the way," Stacy said. "It's quite important. Can you explain it to Sherlock?"

Stefanie looked over, and the cube that once was Sherlock was sitting on the desk next to her.

"Oh, I already know," Sherlock said in an American accent.

"Didn't you have an English accent before?" Stefanie asked.

"A molecule," he said, returning to his British accent, "is a group of two or more atoms that have bound together." 

"Sounds very romantic," Sherlock continued, desperately trying to get his eyes to move in Stefanie's direction.

"Ew," she said.

"Very nice," Stacy continued. "Let me see what my notes say we haven't quite remembered. Ah, yes. There is the matter of mixtures."

"I believe there was also something about a boy named Kelvin," Stefanie said.

"Interjection!" Stacy said. "I forgot to mention Kelvin before Tom left."

Suddenly, Tom appeared in the doorway, peeking his head just inside the door.

"I know what Kelvin is," he said in a Vanessa voice. "It's the absolute temperature scale we learned in space. Zero Kelvin is minus 273.14 degrees Celsius. The scale has units the same size as Celsius degrees."

"You said you weren't going to use the metric system once we left the Briefing Room," a miniature Lane said, peaking out of Tom's hoodie pocket.

Then he disappeared down the hall.

"If all you need is a reminder of mixtures, I think I have that sorted," Stefanie said.

"Sherlock here is a heterogeneous mixture. He's a solid with uneven parts."

"Hey," Sherlock said. "I don't quite know what that means but it didn't sound nice."

"Your coffee," Stefanie continued, "is a homogeneous mixture, also called a solution. Even though it has different molecules in it, they have been mixed evenly throughout."

"You're doing very well," Stacy said, "but who said this was coffee?"

"Finally, there are pure substances, like distilled water, which is just water. Water is a molecule, a group of atoms bonded together like Sherlock said."

Sherlock had managed to turn his eyes toward Stefanie and wore an expression of utter amazement -- we think.

"The air we are breathing is a homogeneous mixture too, with different molecules like oxygen and nitrogen mixed evenly throughout."

"But if you had something made of just one type of atom," she continued, "like a block of iron, it would just be that element, a pure substance rather than a group of different molecules."

Both Stacy and Sherlock stared at Stefanie. She did not sound at all like herself.

"Just kidding," she said. "The answer is strawberry ice cream."

With that, they all breathed a sigh of relief and had a good chuckle.

"Breathing," Stacy continued laughing. "We're too small to breathe air here."

_________________________
1. A Mole in the Lab
2. The Nuclear Cafe
3. Mr. Tom's Mild Ride
4. March of the Centipedes
5. A Thick Little Boy 
6. Bubbles in Space
7. The Canceling Game 
8. The Briefing Room

8.1 The Briefing Room, Part I

When Stefanie opened her eyes, there was only one of her, which she considered a relief. She was sitting in a classroom very much like her chemistry classroom at Dalton High School, except something felt a little odd about it. It was like the room couldn't quite remember itself properly.

A head lifted from two rows over.

"Vanessa!" Stefanie exclaimed.

"Well, yes and no," he said, removing a wig with a flourish that suggested he had practiced it. "Mostly no."

Stefanie stared.

"Ta-da," he said. "Trick or treat."

She could now see that Vanessa did not just look like Tom. It was Tom in a cheap wig, dressed up as if for Halloween. And, indeed, there was an orange plastic pumpkin with a smile on it next to his seat, filled with something that looked like candy.

"How old are you?" she asked.

"Sixteen," he said. "Academically, it varies."

"What happened to the older Tom?"

"I assume he's trying to figure out what to do with the other 10,799 Stefanies," he said. "And there must be a lot to clean up back in chapter 7."

"Look," she said, "I don't have time to be here unless the teacher is going to be handing out some interesting atoms for me to take back to Mr. Atkinson."

"Well, I have some glowing atoms in my candy bucket," he said. "From the looks of it, uranium and plutonium. I suspect we are both being bombarded this very moment with alpha particles. The wig is very good at shielding a person from them. Where is your wig?"

"He's not serious," Stacy said, now entering the room stridently. "We don't get to beta particles until next year."

"I don't have time to wait till next year," Stefanie exclaimed. "Mr. Atkinson hoped I could bring them back before class was over. 

"Wait, aren't you my younger sister?" Stefanie said to the teacher, who seemed to be in her twenties.

"Of course," I'm here to give the briefing.

"Ah, the briefing," Stefanie said. "But why is everyone so much older than they were?"

 “The Lorentz contradiction,” they said -- Tom a moment too early, Stacy a moment too late. 

Stefanie was really beginning to hate that Lorentz guy, whoever he was.

"I know you're in a hurry, so let's get to the point," Stacy quickly continued.

"Can you do my part first so I can leave?" Tom asked.

"Sure," she said. "We'll start with the units and conversions. That goes for both physics and chemistry."

"I'm doing the physics track," Tom whispered to Stefanie, now suddenly sitting right next to her.

"You've been learning the metric system," Stacy said, after which Tom burst out laughing.

"You're joking, right?" he said.

"No, I think that's right," Stefanie said. "We've been learning about length, volume, mass, and temperature."

"No, no, no, no, no, no, no," Tom said. "This can't actually be about learning. It's not in my contract. Only foolishness."

"And," continued Stefanie, quite proud of herself, "the measures have been in meters, liters, grams, and Celsius."

"Make it stop!" came a voice from inside Tom's desk. It was one of those where you stored your books and things in a space just under the top.

"Lane, you're embarrassing me," Tom said not too covertly to the desk, speaking out of the right side of his mouth. "I told you I'd give you some glowing candy if you would be quiet until we get to the slingshot."

"OK, OK, just see if you can distract them from talking about the metric system. It's unamerican."

"You're exactly right," Stacy said, completely ignoring Tom's conversation with his desk. Then she promptly went over to the board. It was currently hidden by one of those white screens they pull down when they are showing a video. 

With a quick tug, the screen went crashing to the top with a loud bang, revealing a table on the chalkboard underneath.

"I don't like your table," Tom immediately said.

"And why not?" Stacy asked with a grin on her face.

"It's not quite balanced," he said.

"Yeah," Stefanie added. "Your prefixes don't really line up with the categories or units. The prefixes in the third column apply to all the different units."

"Very good," Stacy replied quite satisfied. "I have now demonstrated one of the greatest techniques of a master teacher. Teaching it wrong so that I can help you see what's right."

"That doesn't make any sense," Stefanie said.

"Brilliant!" Tom said.

"You're right that the kilo- prefix can apply to meters, liters, or grams."

"Kilometers and kilograms!" Tom exclaimed with excitement.

"Make it stop! Make it stop!" Lane could be heard to say from inside Tom's desk.

"Shhh!" Tom said out of the corner of his mouth. "There'll be no plutonium for you!"

"The Celsius unit seems a little strange to me too," Stefanie said. "I mean, there's no such thing as a kilocelsius, right?"

"Quite right. Quite right," Stacy said. "Another of my brilliant teaching tactics."

Stefanie looked at her with one eyebrow slowly rising, as if it had its own doubts.

"Celsius is the scale," Stacy continued, unfazed. "We talk about one degree Celsius or ten degrees Celsius, but not amounts of Celsius the way we do with meters or grams."

"I think I've got it," Tom said. "Can I leave now?"

"Yes, let's blow this place," came Lane's voice.

"Not quite," Stacy said definitively.

"Can you combine these units?"

"Of course," Tom said. "If you do grams per liter, that's density."

"Correct," Stacy said.

"And you can cancel units out by multiplying," Stefanie said with excitement. 

"Tops and bottom cancel out!" Tom said, falling briefly into his Vanessa voice. "That is," he now said compensating in his deepest voice, "Tops and bottoms cancel out."

"Let's make sure you've got it," Stacy said. "If you multiply grams/liter by liters, what happens?"

"Tops and bottoms cancel out!" Tom said. "The liters go away because you have the liter unit on the top and on the bottom."

"Ok, you can leave," Stacy said. Tom promptly grabbed a tiny Lane from inside his desk, grabbed his pumpkin candy bucket, and sprinted out of the room. The door closed behind him before it quite remembered being open.

_________________________
1. A Mole in the Lab
2. The Nuclear Cafe
3. Mr. Tom's Mild Ride
4. March of the Centipedes
5. A Thick Little Boy 
6. Bubbles in Space
7. The Canceling Game

7. The Canceling Game

After what seemed like a very long moment moving in slow motion, the children suddently found themselves in a great hallway. Except, the vast majority of them seemed to have doubled.

"Hey, there are two of me," Ervin said.

"Me too!" said Elise.

There were two of Shayna and two of Vanessa (which was quite worrying). There were even two of Sherlock, who was still in cubical form.

"But where is my double?" Stefanie asked.

"In this game, you will perhaps be glad that you are the only one of your type," Tom answered.

"Hey, I thought we were going to a party," Shayna said.

"There are games at parties, aren't there?" Tom replied.

"Yes, yes," Shayna said, her excitement returning.

"OK, find your pair," Tom said, and the group excitedly went about finding their equivalent, like two animals of a kind about to board the ark.

"Except we're not boy and girl versions," the Vanessas said in unison to the narrator. "We're not like the animals about to board the ark."

That's fair, the narrator answered.

When they had all found their match, Tom continued.

"I need one of you to go up those stairs on the left and the other to stay down here and go over to the right."

"Is that stage left or audience left?" both Vanessas said.

"From the audience's point of view," Tom answered. "After all, we're trying to teach them chemistry. It's their left and their right."

"So stage right and stage left," the Vanessas said.

"Shh, you'll confuse them," Tom said.

So one set of Vanessa, Shayna, Elise, Ervin, and Sherwood went upstairs to the audience's left, and another went to the opposite side downstairs.

"Where do I go?" Stefanie asked Tom.

"Good question. Let's have you go to the top left, although we could make it would work either way."

So Stefanie dutifully made her way up the stairs to the top left.

In the center of the stage was an elevator like shaft. It was glass and see through, like many elevators in big city hotels with lobbies that are open to the top of the building. But there were only two stories here.

"OK, Shayna 1, I want you to run toward the elevator from your side on the second floor. And Shayna 2, I want you to run toward the elevator from your side on the first floor. Then, when you get to the middle, go inside the elevator."

"Fun!" both Shaynas exclaimed, and they began running at full speed toward the elevator. In almost no time, they jumped inside the elevator on their respective floors.

Then a voice came seemingly from out of nowhere, loud enough for everyone to hear clearly. "Shayna divided by Shayna equals one."

And with that both Shayna's turned into a ball of energy and disappeared.

"What happened to her?" Elise exclaimed with a hint of fear.

"Anything divided by itself is one!" the Vanessas said. "Except for zero," they continued. "You're not allowed to divide by zero, which makes me really want to do it."

"Quite right," Tom said to Elise. Shayna has simply become one and has gone back home. This is the way to disappear from this place and go home.

Before he had finished talking, the two Ervin's started running unannounced from each slide. And when they reached the elevator, they both also turned to energy and disappeared.

The voice returned. "Ervin divided by Ervin equals one."

"Hey, what about me?" cubical Sherlock said. "How am I supposed to reach the elevator without Ervin to carry me?"

"Oh, that's no problem," both Vanessas said on cue. At the same time, they picked him up and hurled him toward the elevator with suprising accuracy. When both cubes entered the elevator, they simultaneously turned into energy and disappeared. 

"Sherlock divided by Sherlock equals one," came the voice again.

But as they left, you could hear the ever distant sound of Sherlock's voice, "GOODbyeeeeee."

"How am I supposed to teach the lesson when everyone keeps disappearing!" Tom said in frustration.

"There's a lesson?" Elise said excitedly.

"Yay. There's a lesson," Stefanie said with much less excitement.

"I have sweatshirts for you all," Tom said.

"A sweatshirt, a sweatshirt!" the Vanessas said, jumping up and down with glee.

"Elise, you are going to be hours," and Tom tossed both of them a sweatshirt that said "HOURS" on the front.

"Vanessa," he continued, "you are going to be minutes." And he tossed them both a sweatshirt that said "MINUTES" on the front.

"And Stefanie," you'll be seconds. And he tossed her a sweatshirt with "SECONDS" on the front. Then they all put on their shirts.

"OK, pay attention. This is going to be a little tricky," Tom said. "When there are HOURS in the elevator upstairs over HOURS in thr elevator downstairs, HOURS will disappear."

"You mean me!" the Elises said, sporting their new sweatshirts.

"Yes," Tom answered. "Upstairs Elise, pick a number. Make it a small number just to make it easy." 

"Three!" she said with unexpected excitement.

"Great. So you are three hours," Tom said to upstairs Elise, and with that, she tripled into three Elises.

"That's not fair," downstairs Elise said. "Why does she get to be three Elises and I have to stay one?"

Tom ignored her. 

"So we have three HOURS upstairs," Tom said. "Now. Vanessa. How many minutes are in an hour.

"Sixty," she exclaimed.

"Right you are!" Tom said. "It would take 60 Vanessas (minutes) on top to even out one Elise (hour) on the bottom."

"Yes! Yes!" upstairs Vanessa said and promptly began to multiply until there were sixty of her upstairs.

"Now run, Elises and upstairs Vanessas!" Tom said.

"What is going on?" Stefanie muttered to herself. 

But the Elises ran mindlessly anyway, as did the upstairs Vanessas. The elevator seemed to get bigger and bigger as each Elise and Vanessa entered until they were all in the tube.

"Wait for it," Tom said, as all the Elises looked on a bit anxiously and all the Vanessas excitedly. Immediately, the Elises began to turn into energy and the Vanessas multiplied accordingly. 

When all the flashing had stopped, all the Elises had disappeared, and there were 180 Vanessas on the second floor.

"Elise divided by Elise equals one," came the voice again.

"What just happened?" Stefanie asked in confusion.

"Well," Tom said. We had Elise both on the top and the bottom. That is, we had HOURS on the top and bottom, so they canceled and all the Elise's disappeared. But 3 times 60 is 180, so we were left with 180 MINUTES. Er, Vanessas."

"I still don't get it."

"It's really much simpler than all this," Vanessa said. "There are 60 minutes in an hour. So if you have three hours, you have 3 x 60 minutes or 180 minutes. He's just making it seem complicated by trying to make it into game."

"What I'm trying to show you," Tom said, "is that labels like 'hours' and 'minutes' can cancel each other out if you have them on the top and the bottom."

"Tops and bottoms cancel out! Tops and bottoms cancel out!"

"Right," Tom said. "If you have meters per second (m/s) and you multiply by seconds (s), you have seconds on the top and the bottom and they cancel out, leaving just meters."

"Top and bottom cancel out! Top and bottom cancel out!" Vanessa chered again.

"So," he continued, "right now we have 180 minutes (Vanessas) on the top. And how many seconds are there per minute?"

"60," Stefanie said. "No, wait. You're not going to multiply me are you?"

A fiendish grin came over Tom's face, and Stefanie did indeed begin to multiply until there were sixty of her.

"Now we have 60 SECONDS on top per one MINUTE on the bottom (Vanessa)."

"And we have 180 Vanessas (MINUTES) up here," upper Vanessa said, and with that all 180 Vanessas on top and the one Vanessa on the bottom started running toward the elevator.

"Top and bottom cancel out! Top and bottom cancel out!" all the Vanessas said as they ran toward the elevator.

"I'm not running," Stefanie said.

But it didn't matter. The elevator enlarged to fit all the Vanessas and they all began to multiply into Stefanies until there were 10,800 Stefanies on the second floor.

"Vanessa divided by Vanessa equals one," came the loud voice for the last time. 

"Let me say it in ordinary language again," Tom said. "3 hours times 60 minutes/hour equals 180 minutes -- the hours cancel out. 180 minutes times 60 seconds per minute equals 10,800 seconds -- the minutes cancel out."

"I do like myself, but this is a little extreme, don't you think?" all the 10,800 Stefanies said in unison. "And is this floor strong enough to hold all of us?"

"Probably not," Tom said. And with that, the floor began to give way. All the Stefanies closed their eyes as a sinking feeling came over them all.

_________________________
1. A Mole in the Lab
2. The Nuclear Cafe
3. Mr. Tom's Mild Ride
4. March of the Centipedes
5. A Thick Little Boy 

6. Bubbles in Space

6. Bubbles in Space

Previous chapters at bottom. The chemistry novel continues.
_________________________
"Here we go!" Tom said from the side of the water track, both hands wrapped around a large lever that looked far too important to ignore.

"Wait!" Stefanie said urgently. "Aren't you coming with us?"

"Don't worry," Tom said. "I'll be right along."

"One last thing," he continued. "We need to make sure you have the glass top on."

"Why is that?" Elise asked, her voice doing its best to remain calm.

"I thought this was a splash ride," Ervin also objected, holding the cubical Sherlock in his lap. "Isn't getting wet part of the point?" 

"You'll see," Tom said, which was not particularly helpful. "Buckle up everyone!"

He did not have to say it twice. There was enough apprension for everyone except Vanessa to feverishly reach for the shoulder straps and seat belt in each log.

"Let's go!" Tom said and pressed a red button beside the lever. Immediately, a glass covering emerged straight up from the back of each log and came snapping down into place like a decision already made. A look of concern spread across the riders’ faces -- except Vanessa’s. She wore a grin not unlike the Cheshire Cat’s, the sort that seemed to arrive before the joke.

And with that, the logs lurched forward. One by one, they slipped into the tunnel. Shouts and screams echoed back, cheerful or terrified -- it was difficult to tell which. Each went happily gliding down the water track toward the cave-like opening at the end of the hall, which appeared to be waiting for them.

"This is going to be fun!" Shayna said.

Finally, when they had all disappeared, Tom himself stepped into the last log, pressed a button to cover the top and pulled a smaller version of the lever inside the log car.

And he was off, following the others as if this had always been the plan.

Stefanie was not entirely surprised at the sudden drop that happened as her log plunged into the darkness of the tunnel. What was much more a surprise was to find her and the other logs in space as she emerged from what seemed to be a light cloud of stardust.

Below her, Earth hovered at a distance that felt impolite. Then also was the moon, a bit straight ahead. She glanced at the other log-ships to see a rather horrified look on everyone's face. 

That is, except for Vanessa, who was quite enjoying herself. She had not buckled herself in, apparently deciding that gravity was more of a suggestion than a rule. 

The cubical Sherlock was also floating in Ervin's log. He had apparently forgotten completely about him in the strangeness of the situation.

Soon Tom's log-ship emerged from the cloud behind them.

"OK, class."

"We're not a class," Stefanie objected, but Tom paid her no mind.

"Unbuckle yourselves. You're only a meter high, so you should have at least a smidge of room to float, like Vanessa."

Slowly they did as he said, one by one.

"Now, press the green button on the dashboard," Tom continued.

"What does it do?" Elise asked.

"Nothing much, really," Tom said. "It will just help you to get a better feel for the space."

Before she could further express her concerns, Vanessa pushed her palm quickly on the button, disconnecting her glass container from the log into something like a bubble. It also doubled in size, giving her more space to float freely about the bubble.

"Wow!" she said.

Seeing that Vanessa had come to no apparent harm, Ervin, Shayna, Stefanie, and finally Elise also pressed the button. Sherlock now floated in the bubble as free as a cube could be, as did all the others.

"Can we get out of the bubble?" Vanessa asked excitedly.

"NO," Stefanie practically shouted. "Haven't you seen that movie where the guy is out in space without a suit and he almost freezes to death?"

"What movie?" Shayna asked.

"I don't remember, but it was horrifying," Stefanie responded.

"See, there's no such thing," Vanessa said, looking all over the bubble for something like a door.

"She's actually quite right," Tom said. "You would quickly freeze to death. Well, except for Sherlock, because I think he's sealed."

"Arh, arh, arh, arh," Elisa said, making a seal noise and giggling to herself. Tom made an annoyed glance in her direction.

"Space is pretty much at absolute zero, as far as temperature is concerned," Tom said.

"I've been outside in Indiana when it's zero," Ervin said. "I can take it!"

"It's not that kind of zero," Stefanie said knowingly. "He said absolute zero."

"What's that?" Sherlock said, bouncing quite happily around the bubble.

"It's minus 273.14 degrees Celsius," Tom said.

"None of this Celsius stuff," came a voice from the direction of the cloud of stardust in the distances. "We only use Fahrenheit around here!"

"Is that you, Lane?" Elise called to the cloud.

"Yes, Ervin, when you were thinking of zero degrees, you were thinking Fahrenheit. That's the temperature scale we use most of the time in America."

"As it should be!" came Lane's voice again from off in the distance.

"Do any of you know any other common temperatures in Fahrenheit?" Tom asked.

"I know that my temperature is 98.6 degrees when I don't have a fever," Elise said.

"And we sometimes get off school if there's ice rain, which happens around 32ᣞ," Ervin said. 

"That's neat," Vanessa said. "You managed to speak the degree symbol!"

"Yes," Tom said, "a small circle elevated a little is the symbol for a degree. Water freezes at 32ᣞ Fahrenheit."

"The freezing rain was so much fun!" Ervin said, ignoring them. "We slid right into someone's mailbox one time last year. The road was like a sheet of ice."

"But the Celsius or Centigrade scale is much more convenient for doing science than the Fahrenheit scale," Tom continued.

"Is NOT," came Lane's voice echoing again. "It's unamerican and we won't stand for it!"

"Just ignore him," Tom said. "The Celsius scale is zero at the point where water freezes..."

"You mean where it turns to ice, right?" Shayna asked.

"Yes, and the Celsius scale is 100 degrees where water boils."

"You mean turns to steam, right?" Elise chipped in.

"Yes. These are the three phases of matter -- solid, liquid, and gas."

"Or ice, liquid water, and steam, right?" Sherlock said.

"Correct, Mr. Cube," Tom answered.

"But what's absolute zero again?" Ervin asked.

"Absolute zero is negative 273.13 degrees," Tom replied.

"That sounds really cold," Ervin said reflectively, looking down into the stars.

"Yes, it's yet another scale, the Kelvin scale. It was named after a scientist named Lord Kelvin."

"I've never heard of it, but I DON'T like it," came Lane's voice. "I only have one Lord."

"He wasn't that kind of Lord," Tom clarified. "The Kelvin scale starts at the absolute coldest temperature things are allowed to be and starts counting up from there. The size of a degree, though, is the size of a Celsius degree."

"Who says we're not allowed to go colder?" Vanessa said. "I'm going colder. I refuse to be told not to go colder."

"It's just not possible," Tom said.

"Wait," Stefanie jumped in. "At what Fahrenheit temperature does water boil? You said water boils at 100ᣞ on the Celsius scale. But what's that in Fahrenheit?"

"GREAT question," came Lane's voice. "Make America Fahrenheit again!"

"212 degrees is the Fahrenheit version of where water boils," Tom answered.

"That's pretty big," Elise said. "So if Celsius goes from 0 to 100 from freezing to boiliing, Fahrenheit goes from 32 to 212, right?"

"Excellent," Tom said. "You're getting it. And you can see why it's easier to use Celsius than Fahrenheit in science -- the numbers are less random."

"Are not!" Lane yelled from the distance.

"I guess a Fahrenheit degree must be smaller than a Celsius degree," Stefanie said, "because it takes a lot more of them to get to the boiling point of water."

"Truly a sharp observation!" Tom answered.

"So are you going to tell them the secret formulas?" Vanessa asked.

"What secret formulas," Shayna asked, now more interested in the subject. "Can we put the secret formula on chicken and start a restaurant?"

"It's not secret," Tom said. "And it's not that kind of formula."

"Don't you all want to know how to convert back and forth between Fahrenheit and Celsius and back?" Vanessa continued.

"NO, we DON'T," came Lane's voice emphatically from the void. "We are perfectly content not knowing things!"

"Ooh, I want to know," Elise said.

"You can just look it up," Stefanie said. "Or better yet, Google or ChatGPT it."

"I'd just ask Alexa," Sherlock said.

"Yes, you can look it up. But if you must know," Tom started.

"We don't want to know," Lane's voice came.

"We don't need to know," Stefanie's said.

"If you must know," Tom continued like a train that can't stop, "it's quite intuitive. You know that there's 32 degrees between where water freezes on the Fahrenheit scale (32) and where it freezes on the Celsius scale (0). And you know that there are 100 degrees between freezing and boiling on the Celsius scale..."

"Wait," Elise blurted out, "I can figure the difference out on the Fahrenheit scale. 212 - 32 is..." There was a long pause when no one was really listening. "... 180 degrees! There's 180 degrees between boiling and freezing on the Fahrenheit scale."

"Yes," Tom said, "so if you compare the two scales, it takes 180 Fahrenheit degrees to get from freezing to boiling."

"And 100 degrees on the Celsius scale to do the same," Ervin chimed in, not quite sure where the conversation was going but glad to contribute information that had already been shared.

"Divide the two and you get that a Fahrenheit degree is 9/5 of a Celsius degree," Tom said.

"Or a Celsius degree is 5/9 of a Fahrenheit degree," Elise said, quite proud of herself.

"Voila," Vanessa said. "F equals 9/5C + 32."

"Or (F - 32) times 5/9 = C," Sherlock said.

"Did you get that?" Shayna asked Stefanie.

"Kind of, but I'm just going to ask Google," she answered.

"I think that went very well," Tom said, congratulating himself. "OK, everyone, time for the black hole."

"What?" Elise said.

"No worries," it will just shrink us to a point with infinite mass and we'll go to the Briefing Party."

"That sounds rather small," Sherlock said.

"I've already shrunk dramatically once," Stefanie said. "It's not too bad."

"And I'm up for a party!" Shayna said.

With that, Tom pushed another button in his log-ship, and a swirling hole of darkness opened up.

"No need to do anything," he said. "We're already within its event horizon. It's gravity is inescapable."

Their bodies began to stretch uncontrollably in the direction of the hole as if being sucked into a drain. Ervin looked like he was trying to run in his bubble in the opposite direction. But it was no use.

The quantum extraction was inevitable.  

_________________________
1. A Mole in the Lab
2. The Nuclear Cafe
3. Mr. Tom's Mild Ride
4. March of the Centipedes
5. A Thick Little Boy

5. A Thick Little Boy

Previous chapters at bottom. The chemistry novel continues.
_________________________
"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 measuring 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."
_________________________

1. A Mole in the Lab
2. The Nuclear Cafe
3. Mr. Tom's Mild Ride
4. March of the Centipedes

3. Mr. Tom's Mild Ride

The chemistry novel continues...

1. A Mole in the Lab
2. The Nuclear Café
____________________________

The doors burst open of their own accord, as if they were bored of being closed. And although Stefanie wasn't quite sure what a briefing was, she expected to find a classroom of some sort with desks, a chalkboard, and maybe a poster with a motivational kitten.

Instead, she chanced upon a small group of children clustered around what looked like a water ride at an amusement park. A narrow canal led a series of logs on water into a predictable sort of tunnel and then to who knows where. Several children had already made their way into the logs, although the logs seemed quite allergic to moving at the moment.

Upon closer examination, the final log seemed to be stuck to a frozen slab of water beneath it, and there would be no moving forward until its ice had melted. A young man was sprawled on the edge of the platform with a blow torch, trying to melt the ice as quickly as possible.

"Now however did that happen?!" Stefanie exclaimed.

"It's in the solid state of matter," the young man said, pulling himself up from the floor and turning to look at her. "We have to make it transition into a liquid state."

The sight of his face suddenly took her a little aback. 

"You look quite like my eight-year-old brother, Tom," she said.

"I am your brother Tom," he said, "except I'm twenty-five and quite good with a blow torch."

"But that's impossible," she exclaimed. "How could you now be older than me?"

"You are inside an atom," he said. "So, I would be suspicious about that word impossible. I expect it is the time dilation."

"I've had my pupils dilated once," she responded. "They put a puff of air in them, as I recall. Not too pleasant, but not too painful either."

"Did someone say something to you about a Lorentz contraction?"

"Yes," she answered. "There was some talk of that with regard to the shrinkage."

"So there you have it," he said, as if the matter of his greater age was now obvious.

"You see there are three states of matter," he continued. "Solid, liquid, and gas."

"Yes, everyone knows that," she protested.

"Did you know that kids?" he said, turning to the children on the platform.

"No, we didn't know that," several said.

"Yes, that's very interesting," a girl named Vanessa answered.

"Thanks, Vanessa," Tom said to a girl who looked a lot like a smaller version of Tom in a whig.

"The water down there is liquid and ready to go," he proceeded to say. "It's at normal room temperature. 

"But the water here is frozen, most likely because of the liquid nitrogen I used to try to freeze my salmon. Now look at it. There's no eating that."

And sure enough, there was a salmon frozen into the ice.

"And, since you asked, this is pure water," he continued.

"I didn't ask," Stefanie said.

"That's right. There are no minerals or other impurities in this water like there would be coming out of a faucet in your kitchen sink."

"There are impurities in my water?" Stefanie responded, now somewhat alarmed.

"Oh, don't worry," he said. "They're not dangerous. If enough people get sick or die, they put regulations on such things. All it takes is a few decades of not listening to scientists."

"Aren't they trying to take flouride out of water right now," Stefanie asked.

"No, just one rather peculiar fellow," Tom answered.

"When are we going to get to go on the ride?" Vanessa finally interrupted. "My parents are expecting to meet me at the briefing ten minutes ago."

"Fine," Tom said. "I only have two learning outcomes for this ride, and I need to make sure Stefanie has them down solid," he said with a smirk. "See what I did there?"

"No, I'm not sure what you are saying," she said with a puzzled look on her face.

"Solid -- it's one of the three states of matter. Well, four if you count plasma."

She still looked at him with a little impatience.

"Solid, liquid, gas -- the three phases of matter. It's the first learning outcome of this ride."

"Yes, yes," she said. "Everyone knows that if water is cold enough, it turns to ice. At normal temperatures, it's liquid." Then she paused.

"Oh, you can boil it and it evaporates, right?"

"Exactly!" he exclaimed. "If you put more heat into its molecules, they will become a gas. You might call it 'steam.' It's the vapor that comes off a pot of boiling water."

"Can you get on with the second outcome so we can get this ride going," Vanessa interrupted.

"Ah, yes," he said. "This water here is a pure substance. It's not a mixture of water with something else. It's just water, H₂O. Have you heard of H₂O?"

"Of course," Stefanie said. "Everyone's heard of H₂O.

"Have you ever heard of H₂O, kids," Tom said, turning to the other children again.

No, we haven't heard of that." several said.

"Yes, that's very interesting," Vanessa also chimed in.

"One molecule of water has two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom."

"I guess I'd never really asked what the H₂O stood for," Stefanie said. "But do these children know what hydrogens and oxygens are?"

"No, we don't know nothin' about chemistry," they said one after the other.

"Except that cesium explodes when you throw it in water," Vanessa said, and with that she secretly showed Stefanie that she had a carefully wrapped lump of cesium hiding under her jacket. "I won it in a cereal box contest."

"Everything in all the world is made up of atoms!" Tom excitedly proclaimed, flinging his arms wide open with great enthusiasm. "And if you glue the atoms together, you get molecules."

"Does anyone have Legos?" Stefanie added, eager to enlighten the children.

"No, we just play video games," one boy said. "We don't play with toys any more."

"Well," Stefanie tried to continue, taken somewhat aback. "They were these little blocks you could stick together and build things. That's like the atoms and molecules of the world that Tom was talking about."

"I like Legos," Vanessa said, "although I prefer Thomas the Tank Engine."

"That sounds boring," the boy said.

"So H₂O means that water has two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom," Tom continued. "But the water you get from your kitchen is a mixture. It has water in it, but it also has things like iron and sometimes flouride and other substances.

"Isn't that dangerous?" another boy named Lane asked. "I mean, do they unplug the iron before they put it in the water?"

"ABSOLUTELY you must NEVER let anything plugged in near water or you might electrocute and kill yourself," Tom said in the most emphatic tone yet.

"It's not that kind of iron," Stefanie added. "There must be some atom named iron."

"An element!" Vanessa said. "The atoms are called elements, right?"

"Yes," Tom continued, trying to steer everyone back to the topic at hand. "Iron is a type of atom, an 'element,' as Vanessa said."

"And they call an iron an iron because it's made up of iron?" Lane asked.

"That's quite clever of you to suggest," Tom answered. "And they were when the iron was first invented, but that's a topic for another day. Right now you need to know the difference between a pure substance and a mixture."

"That's easy!" Vanessa protested. "A pure substance is just one thing. A mixture is more than one thing."

Tom paused, as if she had stolen his thunder.

"Yes, more or less," he finally answered.

"And a pure substance probably could either be a single element, like iron," Stefanie interjected. "Or a few atoms glued together, like water -- a molecule, right?"

"Yes," he said, bending over and whispering to Stefanie. "But I'm supposed to be the teacher in this scene."

"Are there different kinds of mixtures too?" Lane said.

"Why, yes," Tom answered. "I'm glad you asked."

"There are mixtures where everything is so evenly distributed that you can't see any differences in what you're looking at. For example, you can't tell that iron is mixed with the water in your sink."

"Or in the different elements mixed together in the air, right?" Vanessa threw in.

"Except when the light comes in the window and you can see the little particles hanging in the air," Lane added.

"Yes, yes," Tom tried to regain control of the conversation. "Those are called homogeneous mixtures --without the particles you see in the air."

"Homo what?" Stefanie asked.

"Homogeneous -- it means everything is spread throughout evenly."

"Then why didn't they call it a spread-throughout-evenly mixture?" Stefanie responded.

"Because that involves dashes and isn't confusing enough," Tom answered. "It can also be called a solution, if it's a liquid. Does that make it better?

"So what would you call this kind of mixture?" Lane picked up a stick on the platform and threw it into the water canal for the ride.

"An annoying one," Tom said. "because now I have to fish that out before we can start the ride.

"And the salmon," Stefanie said.

"But a mixture with a stick or salmon in it is called a heterogeneous mixture," he continued, "because now the materials are differently distributed in it. It's not all smooth throughout."

"So let me summarize so we can get this ride going," Vanessa said. "There are pure substances and mixtures. Of the pure substances, there are individual elements like iron, but there can also be single molecules like water, pure water."

"Yes," keep going, Tom said.

"Then with mixtures you can have solutions that are evenly distributed throughout, called homogeneous mixtures. But you can also have mixtures that aren't evenly distributed throughout, called heterogenous mixtures."

"Superb, Vanessa," Tom added. "I think you have it! And look, the blow torch seems to have completely melted the ice and brought it into a liquid state."

He had carefully suspended the torch over the water to keep heating it while he talked to Stefanie and the children.

"But isn't there another learning outcome you haven't covered?" Vanessa asked.

"And what would that be?"

"The difference between a physical property and a chemical property," she said.

"Ah, yes, we might be able to slip that one in as well before we get on the ride," Tom responded. "A physical property is like the difference between water as a solid, a liquid, or a gas. It's changing its state, but it's not really interacting with anything.

"Then a chemical property would have to do with how something might interact with something else," he continued.

"Like cesium," Vanessa added. "Water would have a chemical reaction with cesium."

"Yes, certainly," Tom answered. "The water would have quite a dangerous reaction with cesium," he said, "and that would have to do with the chemical properties of cesium and water."

"Like this," Vanessa said, pulling out the wrapped up cesium under her jacket and throwing it into the water canal. The result was quite a massive explosion that abruptly brought this chapter to an end. 

1. A Mole in the Lab

I was beginning to get rather bored of listening to Mr. Atkinson go on and on about chemistry. He was saying something rather uninteresting about how the number of hydrogens on the left side of the board had to equal the number on the right side. 

"You see," he said. "None of us mortals are God. For us, matter can neither be created nor destroyed."

Meanwhile, I was thinking about how nice it would be to have some strawberry ice cream. I like it particularly when the strawberry ice cream has real strawberries in it. But, then again, Cookies and Cream is also quite delicious and hard to pass up.

"There are exceptions, Stefanie," Mr. Atkinson said directly to me.

"What?" 

I was startled that he was now speaking directly to me. He also seemed quite smaller than before. In fact, he was standing on top of his desk, which was not really a desk but a lab table with a sink and a Bunsen Burner on top. He quite delighted in setting the thing afire and burning all manner of things over its intense blue flame.

Come to think of it, he seemed to have taken on the shape of a mole. Not that I had ever seen a mole before. Rather, he looked like what I had imagined a mole to look like, not more than a foot tall.  

"There are some exceptions, Stefanie," he said again. "According to Einstein, you can convert matter to energy according to the equation E = mc². It happens all the time in particle accelerators."

I looked around to see if any of my classmates saw anything particularly bizarre about having a mole for a teacher, but they all seemed rather unconcerned. Mike the jock feverishly wrote down E = mc², and April the cheerleader's lips moved as she spelled out a-c-c-e-l-e-r-a-t-o-r.

"Could we perhaps get a particle accelerator?" Troy the skater asked. "Perhaps we could sell some pies or wash some cars. We could put it around the inside of the track, and the runners could race the particles during practice."

"That is quite a good idea, Troy," Mr. Atkinson said. "But we will also need some rather more interesting atoms than we have in the stock room. That is, unless the principal has been hiding some radioactive isotopes around here without telling me."

I was now barely listening to Mr. Atkinson and wouldn't have undertood him if I were. Rather, I was entranced by how attentive Mike and April were, whose engagement was usually limited to copying Wade's homework. And, seriously, how would Troy know what a clavicle -- or whatever -- was?

Meanwhile, Wade the brain was flicking Cristy-of-exceptional-IQ's ears, while she drew pictures of daisy chains. Mary Jo and Libby too, whose brains were so big they hardly fit in their heads, were distracted by some sort of fly skirting its way around the room.

"There is another storage room, of course," Mr. Atkinson said, jarring my attention once again. He was now standing alarmingly on my own desk, his handlike facial features flapping too close to my personal comfort zone. He had a molish odor of sorts, not unlike the exotic scents of PE.

"There is another storage room that Principal Crum doesn't know about," he repeated in a whisper to me. "It's directly through that molehole next to the door to the stock room." 

I looked over to see that, indeed, there was something like what I imagined a mouse hole to look like, although I had never seen one outside of a cartoon. Funny that I had never noticed it before.

"Wouldn't a mole hole go straight down into the ground," I asked innocently. "I mean, that looks more like a mouse hole."

Mr. Atkinson was undeterred. 

"The other stock room has much more interesting atoms and other things the government will not let us have up here. I'd get them myself, but you see they pay me to teach this class. And I can hardly leave Wade and Cristy alone.

"But how am I supposed to get through such a small hole," I asked. "And, in any case, aren't atoms much smaller than that hole?"

"We could try a Lorentz contraction," Troy the skater suggested.

"Yes, a Lorentz contraction," Mike and April chimed in.

"What's a Lorentz contraction?" I nervously asked. 

"We'd have to get her going quite fast," Mr. Atkinson replied.

"Perhaps we could spin her fast enough in your lab chair to do the trick," Troy continued, pointing to a swivel chair behind Mr. Atkinson's desk, of which he was quite fond.

"What's a Lorentz contraction?" I asked again.

 "Mike is a linebacker," April added. "I know from personal experience that he is quite strong."

"And I am quite good at pool," Wade interjected unexpectantly.

"What's a Lorentz contraction?" I asked a third time.

"It's really quite simple," Troy said, jumping off the front of his desk. He had been sitting on top with his legs draped over the empty chair in front of him. He proceeded to the board where he wrote some sort of equation with an L and a square root in it.

"It's quite obvious," he continued. "As you approach the speed of light, L becomes infinitely small, which means we will have to be careful not to spin you so fast that you completely disappear out of existence."

"What?!" I asked, not having understood a word he said except the part about disappearing out of existence.

"He's saying that the faster we spin you in the chair, the smaller you'll become," April explained excitedly.

This was news to me. I had on many occasions enjoyed a good spin in a swivel chair. Indeed, I took a spin once in Mr. Atkinson's chair when he was out of the room, along with several others in the class. But I had never seen anyone shrink in the process.

"It's settled then," Mr. Atkinson said, hopping in a zigzag fashion from desk to desk back to the front of the room and onto his lab table. Mike and Wade jumped up and grabbed the swivel chair enthusiastically. April joined in as well and waved her hand with a bow in front of the chair, saying, "Have a seat, your Majesty."

With everyone in the class looking at me expectantly, exhuberant smiles on their faces, I hardly wanted to disappoint. After all, I did enjoy a good spin anyway. So I sat down.

Mike and Wade wasted no time. They immediately began to spin me, round and round and round. I enjoyed it for a moment. Then I thought I might get sick. They were spinning me quite fast now, more quickly than I ever could remember going.

But soon it seemed that I was not going very fast at all, but they were. They were moving faster and faster. Also, they were getting larger and larger. And they seemed to move farther and farther away from me.

"Wait!" I suddenly exclaimed. "What atoms am I supposed to get?"