A teacher is someone who teaches, teaches and resolves doubts.
The respect for teachers engraved in the bones of the Chinese people has made Chen Muwu always regard class as a sacred matter.
So invisibly, he put a lot of pressure on himself.
Fowler's words were barely a reassurance for Chen Muwu.
But he suddenly thought back to when he was in college. Every summer before freshmen entered school, there would always be various posts on the school's BBS giving guidance on course selection, and seniors in the same department would spread the word about them.
Most of the contents are such as which courses should be divided and which courses should be attended by students...
There are also some complaints about the teachers: Teacher XX only reads the projected courseware in front of the computer screen in class, Teacher XX makes lots of mistakes in class...
Basically, the vast majority of them are negative comments about teachers and professors.
Chen Muwu didn't believe in evil when he was a freshman. In order to finish selecting courses quickly so he could continue playing games, he blindly selected teachers for professional courses on the website without reading the posts.
As a result, he met a weird mechanics teacher. Not only could he not speak Mandarin clearly, but he also spent most of the class bragging that he graduated from a certain school, went to a certain school abroad to study for a Ph.D., and now is a certain student. The editorial board member of a certain magazine will run for department chair next time, etc., but he won't give lectures.
In order to pass the exam that semester, Chen Muwu could only borrow notes from other classmates and study by himself.
Later, he realized how important a good teacher is to students after he took a class that was serious, responsible, and taught in a simple and easy-to-understand manner.
Chen Muwu decided not to use the method Fowler taught him unless absolutely necessary.
He still had to prepare well for this course, be worthy of his students, and be worthy of his own conscience.
Before the start of the semester, the staff of the Academic Affairs Office of Cambridge University sent a list of course selections. After reading the names of the students who had chosen the course "Linear Algebra", Chen Muwu finally let go of his worries.
As a time traveler, Chen Muwu's advantage is not only the knowledge of various subjects in his brain that is a hundred years ahead of this era. He can also remember the general trend of historical development, as well as the names of some celebrities who have appeared or will appear in the future.
Although these students from Cambridge University are among those with the best IQs among their peers, Chen Muwu went through his own memory and could not find a famous physicist or mathematician in the future.
In this way, it would be easy to handle. He even felt that he did not need to take part in answering questions on a daily basis. It was enough to let Oppenheimer, who had been promoted to assistant coach, do it.
There is another thing before the start of school, that is, as usual, the professors, teachers, staff and students of the Cavendish Laboratory gathered together again, still borrowing the Bursaas Garden belonging to the College of Corpus Christi, standing Take the annual lab photo on the lawn.
Chen Muwu appeared in this photo for the third time, but unlike the previous two times, this time he sat on a chair in the first row.
Behind him stood Oppenheimer, Zhao Zhongyao, Shi Ruwei and Cockcroft. Chen Shantou in the Cavendish Laboratory had gradually begun to take shape.
Chen Muwu still underestimated his popularity at Cambridge University, and he was happy too early.
There are only about twenty people taking his course, and this is true.
When he walked into the classroom, these people were all sitting neatly on their seats.
However, in addition to the more than twenty students attending class, there were many more people in the classroom who had come from other colleges of Cambridge University and had not chosen any courses but wanted to come and watch the fun.
Although Dr. Chen is a famous figure at Cambridge University, he always seems to be in the dark. He basically only stays in the Cavendish Laboratory every day and does not make many public appearances. He is very mysterious.
Although he had given lectures at the Kapitsa Club and the Cavendish Laboratory before, they were only on a small scale after all.
Now Chen Muwu is finally going to give a lecture at Cambridge University. This news has been spread by word of mouth and has quickly attracted more people to pay attention to this matter.
Standing on the podium, looking at the heads one by one under the stage, it would be a lie to say that I am not nervous.
Chen Muwu cheered himself up in his heart and did a lot of psychological construction. After taking a deep breath, he said the opening remarks that he had prepared long ago.
But everyone only gave him a chance to make his opening remarks.
After introducing himself and the name of the course, Chen Muwu just wanted to talk about the history of linear algebra, so as to quickly jump into the formal content of the course.
He turned around and planned to write the word "history" on the blackboard, but as soon as he reached the fourth letter, someone in the classroom boldly spoke: "Dr. Chen, we are not here to listen to mathematics today." Class, you should teach something more interesting than mathematics, right?"
Chen Muwu was very angry when he heard the content of this man's words and his rude interruption of his class.
But listening to this man's voice, he felt that it sounded familiar.
Chen Muwu still stubbornly finished writing history this time. He spoke while writing, then put down the chalk and turned his head. He was very unhappy from the beginning to the end: "Sir, you are welcome to attend my class. You don't want to listen. I don’t care what I say. But what should be said in class is my business, not yours. If you don’t want to hear it, you can just get out... Peter, what are you doing here to cause trouble?"
Chen Muwu was angry and happy when he saw the speaker.
Kapitsa, a Russian guy, instead of doing experiments in the Cavendish Laboratory, came to the classroom to join in the fun!
He deliberately changed his voice and accent so that he would not be caught when he shouted.
If he hadn't turned back in time, he might have been fooled by him.
“That’s not what I mean personally, it’s what everyone in this room thinks today.”
Kapitsa didn't want to apologize for his rashness just now, but instead poured trouble on everyone present.
What's annoying is that many people nodded along, which was a kind of agreement with him.
"Stop it Mr. Kapitsa, there are still so many students in this classroom."
As if he wanted to deliberately oppose him, this time a student raised his hand: "Teacher Chen, we have already completed the self-study of your course."
Hey, Fowler really got it right!
The most basic linear algebra itself is not a difficult course. Chen Muwu personally even feels that the difficulty of this course is neither the concepts nor theorems, but the huge amount of calculations.
"Have you all finished studying on your own?" he asked.
This time the whole class nodded together.
You are so honest, Teacher Chen is very embarrassed.
After working so hard on compiling lecture notes and preparing lessons for so long, wouldn’t it all be in vain?
Chen Muwu was still a little worried. He randomly selected a few students and selected a few after-class exercises and asked them to provide answers to the questions.
Because the difficulty level of the questions was different, the time it took them to give the answers was also inconsistent.
But no matter how fast or slow it was, at least the answers were exactly the same as what Oppenheimer had calculated for him before.
They say taking classes in college is difficult.
However, teaching college students is not easy.
Especially college students from Cambridge University!
This made another hope of Chen Muwu frustrated.
He lectured at Cambridge University, on the one hand, to comply with the requirements of Trinity College, and on the other hand, he also wanted to practice his skills for future lectures.
But who knows, these students have even done the exercises in the last chapter, so what’s the point of continuing?
It's a pity that the linear algebra he had prepared for a long time died immediately after he was born!
It’s not realistic to change classes temporarily, at least for today’s first class.
Chen Muwu didn’t prepare anything except linear algebra?
Could you please tell everyone that I recently made an interesting generator that can generate high-voltage static electricity of tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of volts? It has a good market prospect and welcomes everyone to invest in it?
Let’s just throw this problem to those who raised it!
"If you don't want to hear linear algebra, what do you want to hear?"
After this question was asked, the audience gave a variety of answers.
Some people say they want to hear about the theory of relativity, and some want to hear about quantum mechanics.
There are also people who are interested in the expansion of the universe. Could it be that in ancient China there really was a Pangu who wielded an axe, and with one swing of his axe, he split the world into two halves?
That’s definitely not the case!
It's said to be a myth and legend, how can it still be taken seriously?
However, this person's suggestion provided Chen Muwu with an idea to spend the rest of the class.
He had previously carried out cultural exports with some bad taste, linking the two events of Pangu and the Big Bang.
Now we can do the same thing. Wouldn't it be nice to talk about the development of physics in ancient China?
By this time, Mohism's "Mo Jing" had become an inexhaustible treasure house.
In middle school physics textbooks, when talking about the section "Light propagates along a straight line", there will always be an experiment in which a small hole is formed.
And in the introduction of this experiment, it will also be pointed out that Mozi was the first person in the world to discover this phenomenon.
But on those public accounts that like to exaggerate the facts, Mozi's achievements have been distorted and amplified in all kinds of bottomless ways.
It is nonsense to say that "Mozi discovered the principle of leverage hundreds of years before Archimedes" or "Mozi discovered the nature of force hundreds of years before Newton".
Take the lever principle as an example. Although Mozi lived in an era earlier than Archimedes, it is recorded in the Mo Jing that "when you are negative but not tilted, you are winning; when you are balanced, you are positive, and you are gaining." At best, it is an experimental phenomenon. Not only is it not a complete lever principle, but it also does not provide a specific derivation and proof process at all.
Why is "Mozi's discovery of small hole imaging" written in textbooks, but "Mozi's discovery of the lever principle" is nowhere to be found in textbooks?
This is precisely because textbooks are very rigorous and do not tolerate any ambiguity.
If we can say that we have arrived at the principle behind it by simply observing experimental phenomena, then why not be more bold and say that Neanderthals discovered the lever principle hundreds of thousands of years earlier than Mozi?
Although it is not advisable to be blindly arrogant, the gimmicks mentioned in these public accounts can be used by Chen Muwu to bluff people. Anyway, he has no idea what this class is about.
So Chen Muwu’s first class at Cambridge University changed from a boring linear algebra to a “violent theory” release site:
He discovered pinhole imaging earlier than Aristotle, discovered the lever phenomenon earlier than Archimedes, and defined the circle earlier than Euclid...
Single-handedly, he tortured three ancient Greek scientists.
This made Mozi and his book "Mo Jing" popular in the classroom, and gradually spread throughout the campus.
From that day on, Chen Muwu’s linear algebra class continued according to the time on the course schedule.
But what he taught in class had nothing to do with linear algebra. Instead, it was more like "History of Ancient Chinese Science and Technology."
In addition to Mozi's "Mo Jing", there is also the starting point of friction in Zhang Hua's "Natural History".
In addition to these classics, which can barely be regarded as scientific books, there are also various idioms and proverbs.
"Taking fire from the bottom of the cauldron": There are two conditions for liquid boiling. One is that the temperature reaches the boiling point, and the other is that after reaching the boiling point, the liquid continues to absorb heat.
"If you beat a foot, half of it will be taken in a day, and it will be inexhaustible for eternity": Is matter infinitely divisible? Democritus said no, Zhuangzi said yes.
Out of respect for a certain elder, Chen Muwu even emphasized the last sentence and openly connected it with the Cavendish Laboratory.
"Some people say that atoms are indivisible, but Sir Thomson, the former director of the Cavendish Laboratory, discovered electrons in atoms.
"Some people say that the atomic nucleus is indivisible, but my teacher Rutherford discovered the proton in the atomic nucleus, and has always believed that in addition to protons, there is another electrically neutral particle in the atomic nucleus.
“Now some people say that proton is the smallest particle and it is absolutely impossible to divide it any further.
"Is this statement correct or incorrect? I think the proton may not be able to continue to be divided. Maybe there is something smaller inside it."
In this way, a few years later, will Chen Muwu become the first person to predict the existence of quarks?
This course, called "Linear Algebra," aroused increasing repercussions at Cambridge University, so much so that during the course of the semester, several classrooms were changed.
That is to say, Needham has graduated from Gonville and Caius College with a PhD and has not been in school recently.
If he had attended Chen Muwu's class, he would probably have started thinking about his "Needham problem" decades in advance.
The popularity of Chen Muwu’s class also gave Old Thomson some inspiration.
The proposal to establish a new professor at Trinity College was rejected by the review committee.
But if I apply in the name of the Department of Sinology of the University of Cambridge and let Chen Muwu, a serious Chinese, become a professor of Sinology, will he be able to pass it this time?
(End of chapter)
