"I don't think you'd have any idea more than some other person I could pester in the street, necessarily - though I did have some priors on you knowing someone I might want to talk to about potentially making stuff - but you would have more idea than I do about where anything might be here, because I don't have the foggiest idea where I'd be on a map right now, let alone what else is around."

"Yes, if you want directions to the nearest bathhouse I can do that, but I don't know where you should be asking directions to."

"Well, damn.  Do you think you know anyone who would know?  Research-oriented professors with spare money to throw around, business contacts especially in - hm, probably casting or sculpture, what with troportation being a thing, mechanical engineering cares about fiddly detail work most often in the use cases I'm thinking about..."

"I... don't think the professors would thank me for referring you to them."

"Would it help if I had something shiny to show them?"

She has a smartphone, even if she's conserving its charge until she can recharge it...

"...Quite literally, actually.  Eheh."

"...shiny?"

Indeed, this small handheld box is emitting light and sound.  (And then she turns it off because she's conserving charge.)

"I don't think I can replicate this, even given a generation's lifespan, but I know some of how it was made, at the very least."

"- okay, that's pretty neat," acknowledges the registrar. "I... don't know what kind of science it has to do with. ...acoustics?"

"Nope.  Most of the theory behind this is...materials science in the form of semiconductors, electromagnetism, probably some sort of quantum subatomic stuff, precision manufacturing, and making mathematics sit up and do tricks.  Here's not anywhere near that, yet, though.  Goodness knows what'll happen when you add troportation, for that matter.  We didn't have it, back where I come from."

"...so, given that you acknowledge that I'm of course not going to know what those words mostly mean, what kind of science do you think is relevant?"

"Yeah, that was absolutely full of jargon.  Even for my world.  I think that what I start with should be - metalwork, in the sense that what I want to do first is probably going to involve the same sort of processes as I expect that trade uses, or possibly chemistry."

She gives directions to a chemistry professor's office.

And she will follow the directions to that professor's office!

He's not in!

She can wait.

About two hours later, in someone comes. He is surprised to find his office occupied.

She stops idly humming something.

"Hello!  The registrar directed me your way.  Can I interest you in a research opportunity?"

"Which registrar?"

"...you know, I don't think that throughout the entire conversation either of us offered names.  Rather silly of me, that."  She can provide a description?

"Huh. And she thought I'd be interested?"

"She did, yeah.  The shiniest demonstration widget I have is barely tangentially your field, but..."

She shows off her phone.  "It's powered by chemical energy."

"Chemical energy, like - fire?"

"Like lightning, actually.  ...do I actually have -"

She does have disposable batteries, in her graphing calculator!

Shit, she should've demonstrated with that, instead.  Oh well.

"A simple chemical battery, as built by an industrialized civilization."

"...I don't believe lightning is a chemical."

"It isn't.  But acids are, and the component of batteries that aren't metals, are acids."