"Money, I wonder what surprises your country will bring to me..." Fon Karman closed this military document and looked out the window at the scenery passing by rapidly. He recalled his most proud student at present and silently felt in his heart. Some expectations.
The money comes from this ancient and great oriental country. Because of this, von Karman has a good impression of China.
The motorcade moved forward steadily. If nothing else goes wrong at this stop, we will go to Tsinghua University.
During his first trip to China, von Karman explained to the school the importance of developing the aviation industry and aviation disciplines during his academic visit to Tsinghua University. He suggested that Tsinghua University establish an aeronautical engineering major as soon as possible and focus on cultivating talents in this area in order to Maintain a military balance with the Japanese.
However, his suggestions were not taken seriously by the then president Luo Jialun. Only when Mei Yiqi became president of Tsinghua University did Tsinghua establish the School of Engineering and establish the aeronautical engineering professional group. During this period, not only was more than three years of valuable time wasted, but also a heavy cost was incurred. price.
The main reason why Tsinghua University established the aviation engineering professional group was because during the September 18th Incident, Japanese Army aircraft relied on air superiority to bomb the ground. It was like entering uninhabited territory, which shocked the whole country. From the public opinion circles to the academic world, aviation The cry for national salvation.
As the world's top aerodynamics master, von Kármán sincerely hopes that his trip to China can bring something different to this country, allowing them to truly understand the meaning of air supremacy.
…
"Nuclear physics, translated as nuclear physics, or nuclear physics for short, mainly studies the structure and change rules of atomic nuclei, as well as the properties and generation of rays. In 1896, Mr. Becquerel discovered the natural radioactivity of uranium, which was the first time in human history that An observed nuclear change is often defined as the beginning of nuclear physics, for which Mr. Becquerel and Mr. and Mrs. Curie were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1903."
“After the discovery of natural radioactivity, physicists focused on the study of radioactive decay laws and ray properties, and began to initially use radioactive rays to study atomic nuclei. For example, in 1911, Rutherford and others used alpha rays to bombard various atoms and observed alpha The deflection of rays established the nuclear structure of the atom and proposed a planetary model of the atomic structure. This achievement laid the foundation for the study of the atomic structure."
"In 1919, Rutherford discovered that protons are released when alpha particles bombard nitrogen nuclei. Since then, the method of causing nuclear reactions by bombarding atomic nuclei with rays has gradually become the main method of studying atomic nuclei."
"So far, the physics community has discovered many types of rays and initially created a series of detection methods and measurement instruments, such as cloud chambers, counters, ionization chambers, etc."
On Friday afternoon, Professor Zhao Zhongyao’s deep and magnetic voice echoed in the classroom. The content of this nuclear physics elective course was very basic, mainly related to the concepts and history of nuclear physics, and was not advanced.
The reason why I talk about these basic contents is mainly because Yu Hua is the only one in the classroom.
Yes, only Yu Hua himself.
Yu Hua is sitting in the audience, holding a pen in his right hand, constantly recording relevant knowledge. He is honored to be the only one among more than a thousand students at Tsinghua University to take a general elective nuclear physics course.
In Tsinghua's nuclear physics courses, except for a few students in this major, there are absolutely zero students in general elective courses.
There is no way, because people in this era have not truly realized the power of nuclear weapons. As one of the emerging branches of physics, nuclear physics is far less popular and attractive in the entire physics building than the three brothers from the same school. ——Classical mechanics, electromagnetism and thermodynamics.
For students, electrostatics, electromagnetism and thermodynamics are more practical and easier than learning about atomic nuclei and rays that do not seem to exist at all...
understand.
A considerable number of students are unaware of the nuclear physics course offered by Professor Zhao Zhongyao. A very small number of students in the nuclear physics course have also lost their interest and love for nuclear physics and switched to other majors because of the difficulty of learning nuclear physics and their unclear future.
The summary is: Those without talent will not be able to learn, and those with talent will have no use learning.
Really, for China in this era, nuclear physics is completely a highbrow type. Its status is almost the same as that of the four major tiankeng majors in later generations, and it is not popular among students at all.
In a word, will learning nuclear physics help you get a job?
If you want to engage in research in this area, do you have the funds, equipment, links and talent?
Without the investment and support of national-level forces, the size of the school platform is simply not enough to support research activities in such cutting-edge disciplines.
This is not only the case in China, but also in most places around the world. Only after the end of World War II, when people around the world feel the terrifying power of nuclear weapons from beginning to end, will nuclear physics usher in a real spring, move higher and be influenced by countless The pursuit of students has entered a period of rapid development and prosperity, reaching its peak.
Of course, for physicists from various countries today, nuclear physics is the most cutting-edge research direction in physics today, the goal of forward development and progress, and a gold mine containing the highest honors and academic achievements.
The Curies and Becquerel discovered natural radioactivity and won the Nobel Prize in Physics.
Roentgen discovered unusual rays and won the Nobel Prize in Physics.
Bragg won the Nobel Prize in Physics for his use of X-rays to study crystal structures.
Bohr won the Nobel Prize in Physics for his research on atomic structure and the radiation emitted by atoms.
What is a physics gold mine?
Nuclear physics is it!
Yu Hua listened quietly, like a sponge, systematically learning knowledge about nuclear physics to replenish his ignorant brain. The more he learned, the more he felt ignorant, and the experience became deeper and deeper.
Standing on the stage, Zhao Zhongyao was a little surprised to see Yu Hua listening attentively. He randomly asked a few simple questions, and Yu Hua gave accurate and correct answers to them all.
This situation made Zhao Zhongyao a little more interested. The difficulty of the teaching content was slightly raised to a higher level, and he began to intersperse mathematical formulas and physical formulas.
The reason why nuclear physics is difficult is inseparable from another reason, which requires students to have a solid mathematical foundation and perform a large number of complex calculations.
The vast majority of students who are interested in nuclear physics often give up when they encounter this difficulty.
Radioactivity and rays are currently the two major research directions in nuclear physics. Regarding the development and application of nuclear technology, due to the limitations of the times, it is not yet mature.
A lot of academic achievements have been accumulated in the two major directions of nuclear physics.
The first direction is at the juncture of the research on radioactive decay. It proposes the radioactive decay theory and decay law, proves that one element can become another element through decay, overturns the previous view of "elements cannot be changed" in the physics community, and establishes the law of decay. Statistical.
Based on the theory of radioactive decay, physicists have discovered that radioactive elements often release large amounts of energy-containing rays during the process of decaying into another element, and this is the theoretical source of nuclear weapons.
There has been a lot of progress in the second direction, discovering alpha rays, beta rays, gamma rays, roentgen rays, neutron rays, etc., and measuring their properties and basic characteristics.
In addition, nuclear physics was born in the 1930s and discovered the heavyweight achievement of antimatter. The first discoverer was Zhao Zhongyao, but he was not the one who won the Nobel Prize in Physics.
On the podium, Zhao Zhongyao became more and more energetic as he lectured. The content of the course transitioned from basic knowledge to advanced levels. The difficulty was beyond the syllabus and was not considered a general elective course at all.
However, neither Yu Hua nor Zhao Zhongyao cared about this.
After a while, Zhao Zhongyao picked up the chalk, turned around and wrote a question on the blackboard: "For the rest of my life, try to solve this question. get out of class is about to end. You can hand in the answer to this question within three days."
After finishing speaking, he put down the chalk and looked at Yu Hua with a smile.
Yu Hua looked at the blackboard and carefully reviewed the questions. After two seconds, he stood up. Under Zhao Zhongyao's gaze, he came to the podium, picked up the chalk and started to solve the questions.
This question is of medium difficulty. It completely belongs to the knowledge content mentioned by Zhao Zhongyao. It is characterized by the fact that it requires a lot of calculations.
As it happens, what Yu Hua is least afraid of is a lot of calculations.
The thinking computer was running steadily at a speed of 300 million operations per second. Yu Hua's face was calm, without any expression, exuding an aura of absolute rationality. He quickly converted and calculated the answer according to the formula, and his right hand was responsible for holding the chalk and writing it out in detail. Calculation steps and parameters.
"Sir, it's untied. Please see if it's correct." Three minutes later, Yu Hua put down the chalk and smiled at Zhao Zhongyao, who had an expression of surprise and ghost on his face.
Zhao Zhongyao heard Yu Hua's voice, but he didn't want to speak. His eyes looked at the question once assigned by his teacher Robert Millikan, and his eyes were full of disbelief and doubt.
What's incredible is Yu Hua's problem-solving speed. It took him three full days and a lot of time to solve this nuclear physics problem. But what about Yu Hua?
The doubt is... why did Yu Hua only take less than five minutes?
Zhao Zhongyao can swear to God that he never leaked the topic in advance.
"How... did you do that?" Zhao Zhongyao looked at Yu Hua and asked as if he had seen a ghost.
Yu Hua bowed in salute and said with a smile: "Sir, you have forgotten that I am a top student in the Department of Mathematics. This question is not difficult, but the calculation is very troublesome and the amount of calculation is very large. However, students can solve it with just mental arithmetic. "
Can it be done with just mental arithmetic?
The corner of Zhao Zhongyao's mouth twitched slightly, and he suddenly wanted to hit someone: "..."
