A FUN WAY TO ENTERTAIN and enlighten early adolescents is via the following exercise:
“What’s the first dimension?” you’d ask. They’d answer, “Length.”
“The second?” “Width.”
“Third?” “Height.”
“Fourth?” “Time!”
“That’s right. Now, for my next trick, I will unite the Universe…”
You would then hold up an object, say a pencil, and ask, “Where did this come from?”
“The pencil factory!” they’d chorus.
“Right. And before that?”
“A tree?”
“And before that?”
“The ground.”
“And before that?”
“Space?”
“Well, ‘space’ is a good answer, but a better one would be the early solar system, which came from condensed gas and dust, which came from the Universe, which came from the Big Bang. And it’s the same for everything you see: it all came from somewhere else, but ultimately, that ‘somewhere else’ came from the Big Bang too. So — everything you see is related to everything else in some way. And so everything is One.”
“Coooool!”