humungous, humungous, humungous or humungous, humungous, humungous, humungous or about the size of a grain of sand. take your pick, gang. hint, last one. grain of sand, 15, 20 miles up and these things... even if they're standing still with respect to the sun, here comes the earth, thousands of miles an hour. and that grain of sand burns up in the air. and you look up, hey, wow, a star, honey. it ain't no star. it's a grain of sand, looks like-- if you lit a match up there, it'd look like a star and it's just a grain of sand burning up by friction, going so fast. and so when the space shuttle comes in, one of the big problems of the space shuttle when they first got this thing, how are you gonna get that thing back down into the air? you kinda go out gradual, gradual, gradual, but when you come back in, you're gonna come in with a splash, so they have to make it so it will melt, but the part that melts is not the part where the people's feet are, okay? and you put these tiled blocks in the bottom. you gotta--the tile looks right thickness, right? so it melt away, melt away, melt away

"i want you to shoot me with a humungous bullet, "more humungous than the rifle from which it's fired. and you, i want you to pull the trigger." what's gonna happen? [laughter] who is better off, the target or the shooter? what's gonna happen to that guy when he fires-- whomp--he gonna walk around the rest of his life like this. one of his eagle's gone, right? rockets. first day i was here talking to you guys, i said, "how does a rocket move?" remember, we all get in the swimming pool together? and we get in the pool, and i push against the edge of the pool, and i rocketed across the pool, right? and i said, "is that how a rocket works?" and you guys said, "yup. sure is, hewitt, sure is." and i said, "nope, it ain't." and he says, "oh, what's going on?" let's talk about that now. how does a rocket move? what makes a rocket go to the moon? does it push against the launching pad so hard that it bounces up and just keeps going, going, going, going? like throwing a ball against-- super ball against the ground and have it bounce to the moon? is that how a rocket works? what pushes on a roc

because it's a big humungous atom? no, because it's tiny. it's tiny, honey, here right through the little open spaces, helium, the smallest atom that there is. i'll tell you another atom that's extremely small too, a little bit bigger than helium and that's fluorine. ever hear of the element fluorine? you be having fluorine in your toothpaste, gang, and guess what the fluorine does to your teeth? you know what the hardest part of your body is? the hardest? the enamel of your teeth. and guess what's small enough to get right in between the atoms and hold them together, strong, strong, begin with a "f", "l", end with "e", try it. - fluorine. - that's right, fluorine. so you get fluoride toothpaste, yeah? that's what it does. it gets right in there, gets them white and stronger. nice to have fluorine in toothpaste, ain't it, gang? gang, makes your teeth stronger, tiny atoms. if i put another proton in here, now i'll pull those things even tighter and hold an extra electron and that one will be out here. and that atom now is called, guess what?