Then he'll try swinging it gently back and forth along the axis that won't drop it out of the scarf, hoping to getting it moving through the air at slightly faster than its falling terminal velocity (or else see air resistance slow down the whole thing).

Air resistance sure is a thing when you're swinging a paper scarf around with a very light weight held in the end, but it looks like the wood block might be exceeding its falling terminal velocity this way.

Great, now what if he attempts to harness the power of centripedal force centrifugal force Newton's first law and swings it around in a full circle really fast? After making sure he is outside with plenty of space in which to do so, of course.

Tiny wood cube goes wheeeeeeeeee!

Oh, so now you're acting like a normal small rigid mass, huh? What if he lets go of the scarf ends?

Tiny wood cube goes wheeeeeeeeeeee ee ee ee e e e  e  e   e.

The deceleration starts while it's still flying sideways, and by the time it bounces off a tree trunk and falls to the ground, it's already at standard tiny item top speed.

"What the heeeeck. Not that there was any result that experiment could have had that wouldn't have left me going what the heck."

{what's a heck?} wonders the forest spirit.

"Uhhhh, 'what the heck' is a phrase people say when they're confused, it doesn't actually make any grammatical or semantic sense." He goes and retrieves what he flung. "I still don't have any idea why this thing moves differently from other things."

{item is different from not item!} says the forest spirit, with a thoughtful air. {wonder why different like this, though?}

"What other things are items? Is a bucket an item? Is an ink bottle an item?"

{bucket is item! can be small like wood.}

"Then if you think the bucket will fall at the same speed as the wood, then that's a scientific prediction! Want to test it?" (This question is accompanied by excited bouncing.)

Bounce bounce. {science!!}

Then the two of them and a bucket and anything else the forest spirit classifies as an item can go up the Science Stairs and test some predictions!

Things that can Become Small in the way that the wood block Is Small are items, and when thusly ensmallened they behave just like the wood block. At regular size they behave like regular objects. This is excitingly in line with the behaviour the forest spirit expected!

"Congratulations on a successful prediction!" He still doesn't know why, though, so it's time to mess with ensmallened items some more! Does the tiny version of a thing feel like it weighs more or less than the full-size thing? Can tiny things be damaged at all? Can the full-size versions be damaged at all? Can he carry sufficiently small things in a tiny bucket, like a few shreds of grass or the tiny wood bit?

Tiny items all seem to weigh just about the same as other tiny items, i.e. about what you'd expect from, say, a glass marble of about that size. Full-sized versions can be damaged; tiny versions cannot, and in fact if he dents a bucket and ensmallens and disensmallens it, the dent is miraculously restored. All tiny items are about an inch along their largest dimension, and he can indeed carry shreds of grass in the tiny bucket, but the tiny wood bit doesn't fit.

There are so many ways in which this world does not have the laws of thermodynamics Bruce is used to, and he really wishes that a whole civilization could exist here instead of just him and four spirits and a couple of sapient monsters, and then once he dies of old age just the spirits and the monsters. On the other hand . . . 

Between experiments, he asks the forest spirit, "Are you likely to exist forever?"

The forest spirit considers this question very seriously for a few seconds, and then says, {as long as world probably? spirit is part of world.}

"That's good. And how long will the world exist, do you know?" He really hopes he's about to get reassurance that sentient life will endure forever, rather than cause an adorable spirit to become aware of their own mortality and/or discover the world is going to end in six months.

{don't think world is thing that stops?} says the spirit, in a slightly doubtful tone. {have not thought about it before.}

"I hope it isn't the kind of thing that stops. It's a good world."

Nod-bob. {is!}

"It's getting pretty late," he says, having only just noticed this fact. "I should sleep. And maybe start work in the morning on getting an actual bed. I seem to remember there was a spider involved in the process somewhere?"