IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT!!!
Professor Pat Pending believes that he has identified four fundamental substances, which he has named "elements", from which everything is made: earth, air, fire and water. Like many great ideas it came to him out of the blue.
"I was watching a pot boil", says Pat "when I noticed water forming on the bottom of the pot. It just appeared as if by magic!"
Now it is well known that a tree needs earth and water to grow but, when you burn it, you get earth and fire out. The professor claims to have solved this apparent contradiction.
"My experiments show that a tree also needs air and sunlight to grow so what if the sun is made of fire?"
To really clinch the theory three questions must be answered: How does the fire get from the sun to the tree, how does the water get from the burning wood to the pot and where does the air go?
According to the professor, the missing air isn't really missing at all; we just don't see it. In support of this theory he has thrown dried leaves onto fires and noticed that some are carried upwards by an invisible wind. He hopes to prove that the sun is made of fire by prodding it with a very long pole but admits that he has absolutely no idea how the water gets to the bottom of the pot.
A fellow alchemist Max Plank has suggested that some things may be able to 'jump' from one place to another because, as he says, his stuff never seems to be where he left it but his twin brothers, the two short Planks, refute this idea and claim that "The silly old fool is completely out of his tree".
The professor's theory has, predictably, provoked outrage from certain quarters. The Noble Order of Wizards have denounced him as a loony (moon worshipper) and the High Priest of the Sun Temple has threatened to have him boiled in his own pot! But Professor Pending is unrepentant. "You can't suppress the truth forever." he said defiantly. "Some day they'll see that I was right!"
