Ah, the med student life style.

He's had to take it up again to keep up with them. It's not just that usually his students before have had medical training and he wasn't on his own, usually they had a high school education.

He had a whole lesson on ion gradients derailed by the (in hindsight, predictable) discovery that when asked, they thought fire was an element.

So now he's having to teach the periodic table. From memory.

"Fire is, in fact, an element."

"I don't care if you can summon it, it is in fact made of carbon. ...I think."

"Are you sure it's made of carbon or whatever here?"

Oh God, he knows just enough about spectroscopy to be dangerous, he can't prove fire is a plasma made of... whatever fire is made of.

"Can you burn wood into charcoal here?"

"Yes."

Life! Is! Carbon based! Here! Excellent.

"Fire should be carbon, then."

"I do not see how that follows at all. Perhaps the gods visited a periodic-table-based planet, thought charcoal was a good thing, and negotiated with the Elemental Plane of Fire for it to happen."

"Water is definitely not an element. ... and I could prove that with some electricity."

"Yes! Let's do SCIENCE!"

Yes! Science! And vindication, probably! Though a good scientist is just as pleased by failures, though good scientists are probably imaginary.

"...Do we have a good way to do this without setting ourselves on fire? The proof involves flammable gasses."

"Make... Tanidio... Infernal Heal us?"

"Get...an air tight... box?"

"If you're boring."

"We're going to prove we've made the right stuff by setting it on fire, that can't be that boring."