After leaving the observatory every night and returning to Mrs. Brown's house, Chen Muwu was occasionally harassed by his roommate Dirac.
In a recent lecture given by Professor Ebenezer Cunningham, Dirac finally learned what Maxwell's equations were all about, which he had never encountered before.
This made him very excited. With only a few simple equations, he could explain the results of various electrical, magnetic and optical experiments he had done in Bristol, as well as many other phenomena.
At the same time, after knowing this equation, Dirac also understood why his other idol, Einstein, had been ridiculed by everyone since he proposed the photon theory, because it did not conform to Maxwell's equations!
Fortunately, this year finally came out an Eastern Knight who saved the photon theory, that is, his roommate Chen Muwu.
He used experiments to prove that light in gamma ray scattering exists as particles, and there are many contradictions with the electromagnetic waves in Maxwell's theory.
Because Maxwell's theory did not leave a deep impact on Dirac's mind, he was not like those physicists who refused to admit this theory, but calmly accepted this new photon theory.
Now, Dirac often consults Chen Muwu in the evenings about classical electromagnetism, the Bohr atomic model and the wave-particle duality of photons.
When Chen Muwu told him that electrons may also have wave properties, Dirac did not show any fuss like Rutherford, but readily accepted it.
His interest in the theory of relativity gradually shifted to the physics of the microscopic world.
Originally, the work of guiding Dirac's work focus from relativity to quantum theory should have been completed by his mentor Fowler.
But now that the butterfly's wings have been fluttered, the role of quantum mentor has also been transferred to Chen Muwu.
…
After half a month of one-on-one training with Eddington, Chen Muwu finally got the opportunity to independently use the Nolanberg telescope at the Cambridge University Observatory.
After previously calculating the orbit, he quickly found the somewhat dim Planet X in the telescope.
Chen Muwu would take a photo of the planet every weekend. In order to confuse the audience, he would also adjust the telescope to several other specific directions and also pretend to take a few photos of Li Gui.
Chen Muwu decided to save a few more photos until they could clearly show the position changes of Planet X, and then publish the results.
Although progress was quickly made in the observatory, Chen Muwu's electron diffraction experiment was not going smoothly in the Cavendish Laboratory.
The diffraction glass tube he designed before had already been blown by workers. As for the target crystal for diffraction this time, Chen Muwu chose gold foil.
Although the Cavendish Laboratory was poor, it had plenty of gold foil. After all, Rutherford got his start with gold foil experiments.
Chen Muwu put the cathode that generates the electron beam, the accelerating electric field, the gold thin film and the photographic film into the glass tube one by one.
After the assembly of this set of equipment was completed, he connected the vacuum pump and smeared Vaseline on various interfaces. Then Chen Muwu started the machine and looked at the mercury level on it, moving little by little to the mark. The place with the lowest pressure.
However, as he expected, this experiment was not successful. The expected concentric circle diffraction pattern did not appear on the photosensitive film at all.
This shows that the Sprenger pump in the Cavendish Laboratory produces a vacuum of four decimal places pascals, which is not enough for Chen Muwu's electron diffraction experiment to achieve results.
Now there are only two paths before Chen Muwu.
If you want to continue to verify the volatility of electrons, you will either spend a lot of money to buy a more precise vacuum pump to continue the experiment, or you will passively wait for others to complete the experiment first.
It's really a penny that can stump a heroic man.
…
Shortly after taking the first picture of Planet X, Chen Muwu received a letter from Paris, France.
He felt a little strange about this, because since he traveled through time, except for abandoning the ship and landing in Marseille Port, he has not had any other interactions with France.
The only person who exchanged several letters with each other was Zhang Xiuyou, a special correspondent of "Yi Shi Bao" in France.
And the handwriting on this envelope was different from the usual letters I received from Zhang Xiuyou.
Moreover, this envelope is exquisite in everything from its material to its printing, and there is also a strange crest printed on the corner.
After opening the envelope, Chen Muwu discovered that the person writing the letter was, like Bohr, an "old acquaintance" whom he had never met.
Although France has long been without a king or emperor, it has retained a large number of noble titles.
The person who wrote to Chen Muwu was such a nobleman, Louis-Victor de Broglie.
No wonder there is a mark on the envelope, which should be the emblem of their De Broglie family.
Unlike Compton, who suffered a mute loss at the University of Chicago, Chen Muwu was finally approached by the real owner this time.
However, de Broglie was not at all dissatisfied with condemning him for plagiarizing his own ideas. Instead, he felt that he and Chen Muwu had a "clear understanding", and he was even more proud of being able to think of this rookie in physics together.
In his letter, he unreservedly expressed his praise for the idea that "electrons are a wave" proposed by Chen Muwu.
In fact, de Broglie's idea of matter waves in his brain was only a prototype, and his doctoral thesis was still a long time away from being completed.
Not long ago, de Broglie reported new ideas generated in his brain at a regular meeting of the French Academy of Sciences.
After the meeting, someone told de Broglie that his "new" idea had already been published in the German journal "Annals of Physics."
So de Broglie found Chen Muwu's paper and studied it carefully. The concise formula derivation and conclusion matched seamlessly with Bohr's atomic model.
This is not a long paper, and almost every letter and symbol pierced de Broglie's heart.
He didn't expect that he had just had a rudimentary concept in his mind, but it had already been enriched and perfected by others.
De Broglie had known for a long time that there was another person like Chen Muwu because at the beginning of this year, the physics world was stirred up by the photon theory that Chen Muwu brought up again.
This photon theory, which was verified by gamma ray scattering experiments, also inspired de Broglie, which led him to the idea of matter waves.
Therefore, in his heart, de Broglie had a feeling of admiration for Chen Muwu, so he wrote this letter, wanting to get to know Chen Muwu, and personally praise and congratulate him. He proposed such a How wonderful is the theory that electrons are also waves.
After receiving this letter, the first thought that came to Chen Muwu's mind was not to collect stamps for another Nobel Prize winner in physics, but to think about, generally speaking, are nobles very rich?
Two thousand pounds may be a huge sum of money for me and the Cavendish Laboratory, but for de Broglie, who is well-off and well-off, will it be just a sprinkle of water?
And are the big financial backers behind Tycho, Galileo and Gauss that I have longed for finally showing up this time?
Therefore, Chen Muwu had a bold idea. He put down the work at hand and concentrated on writing a reply to de Broglie.
"Dear Monsieur de Broglie:
"I am delighted to receive your letter and thank you very much for your support of my proposed electron hypothesis.
"It can be seen from the lines of this letter that you must be very passionate about physics and have a very keen intuition in this matter, so you have the same idea as me.
"I would like to report to you now the new progress I have made regarding the hypothesis that electrons are waves.
"In the Cavendish Laboratory, I have successfully assembled a set of instruments to conduct diffraction experiments using high-speed electron beams through gold elemental films, but unfortunately, this experiment did not successfully obtain a diffraction pattern.
"However, I don't think there is a mistake in the theory. After analysis after experiments, I think the vacuum in the diffraction tube did not meet the requirements, which is not enough to provide a long enough free path for the electrons to successfully complete the diffraction process.
“Next, I plan to modify the vacuum pump in the Cavendish Laboratory until it can reduce the vacuum degree to about ten to the seventh power of Pascal, and then conduct the next experiment.
"This process seems to be very difficult. After all, this vacuum pump is an old thing developed more than ten years ago. I don't know how long it will take to complete the transformation. Maybe it will never be able to lower the vacuum level, but As soon as there is any progress in the experiment, I will write to you as soon as possible.
"Yours sincerely, Chen Muwu."
Such a straightforward reply was sent by Chen Muwu to de Broglie in Paris according to the address on the envelope.
I don’t know if this letter can successfully lure de Broglie. Will the little prince know the elegant meaning of the song and sponsor him with the latest vacuum pump from General Electric out of his own pocket?
(End of chapter)
