In sixth grade, my science teacher, Mr. Mason, demonstrated the space-filling property of liquids by slowly pouring a big bucket of water into a small cup. The water overflowed the cup, and he kept pouring. As the puddle spread across the floor, to our desks and around our feet, Mr. Mason gleefully instructed us: “See? This water wants to fill up this container, our room.”

Of course, Mr. Mason was, like us, much more fascinated by the vandalistic act of dumping large quantities of water on the polished hardwood floors of Utica Elementary, but none of us forgot what he taught us that day.

However, Mr. Mason was just warming up for the year. The scientific revelations to come were even more mind-bending.

In one memorable lecture, he explained to us the purpose of the mysteriously useless pound and asterisk buttons on touch-tone phones. Back in 1980, the only buttons that did anything were the numbers, and we always wondered what the other two buttons were doing there. When Mr. Mason told us that he knew their secret purpose, we were beyond ready to learn. In the not-distant future, we learned, these buttons would be used by the government to stun people. Agents would call criminals up, hit the pound and star buttons to freeze them in their seats, and capture them without having to shoot them.