Chapter 1158 Postscript Fourteen Return from the circumnavigation
Chapter 1158 Postscript 14 Return from the circumnavigation
Kaifeng, Taixue.
Zhu Shirong finished his lecture and walked around the campus before returning to his office.
He is the sixth generation grandson of Emperor Taizu and comes from the Wangchuan Valley lineage. There was no title in his grandfather's generation. His grandfather was a commoner, his father was still a commoner, and even his great-grandfather only had a low-level title.
To put it nicely, he has the status of a distant relative of the clan.
To put it harshly, his bloodline has become so alienated that no one even gossips about him as Prime Minister.
That's fine, there's no danger.
Two of the direct clan members passed down by Taizu were killed during the Dingtai Dynasty, all because they colluded with officials to create commercial monopolies and bullied the market while not even wanting to pay taxes.
Of course, the real reason they were punished was because they wanted to get involved in the Shaanxi section of the railway to the Western Regions, and to achieve this goal they secretly obstructed the official railway construction.
Emperor Dingtai had tolerated them enough, and the final result was just to demote the two of them, and their descendants would no longer be allowed to inherit the title.
Wangchuan Valley still exists today, and many non-noble clans live there.
But Wangchuan Valley’s status as an academic center has long since disappeared.
All the land in the valley and tens of thousands of acres outside the valley were gradually annexed by the clans. The farmers in the valley and outside the valley all became tenants of many untitled clans.
There is no need to force the split anymore, because those clans have already been separated.
As the number of descendants increases, families will continue to be divided in the future, and the land will be divided into more fine pieces.
Each one of them didn't even have a title, they just became large and small landowners, and the court didn't need to allocate funds to support them.
There are also a few inspiring people who have become non-commissioned officers and military officers and have moved away early, or they have taken their money to do business in other places because they do not want to stay in their hometown and waste their time.
"Sir, a letter from Luoyang." The assistant held a large envelope.
Zhu Shirong took it and opened it casually. He didn't pay much attention to it at first. As he looked at it, he suddenly sat upright, put down the letter and picked up the attached paper.
This paper is a transcribed copy.
Hydrogen and oxygen have been named as early as Taizu's time, and the names were given by Taizu himself.
Water is composed of hydrogen and oxygen elements, which has long been a consensus in the chemical community. However, the symbols for hydrogen and oxygen were created by Ming chemists and did not use H and O.
The content of chemistry textbooks has long been outdated, and now the two mainstream schools have each updated their theories.
Let’s take water as an example:
One school believes that there is water element and water atom, and water atom is a composite atom, composed of hydrogen atom and oxygen atom. Composite atom is not a molecule as Taizu mentioned, it is a relatively complex basic atom.
Real molecules are more complex substances that have a multiple relationship. For example, copper oxide is a basic atom, and cuprous oxide, which has a multiple relationship with it, is a molecule.
The other school believes that there is no water element. Water atoms, hydrogen atoms and oxygen atoms directly form water molecules. Elements are composed of single atoms, and all molecular composite substances are composed of two or more atoms.
However, these two schools have a common misunderstanding, that is, the same kind of atoms directly constitute matter.
If we use oxygen as an example, oxygen atoms directly form oxygen, and it is impossible to form any oxygen molecules.
Expressed in another space-time chemical symbol, there is only O, there cannot be O, O. And the combination of O and O can only appear in complex atoms or molecular complexes.
Why is this consensus formed?
Because most of the experiments to explore and measure atoms are to obtain gases through electrolysis.
Inspired by electrolysis, chemists believe that every atom is charged, and if atoms want to combine, opposite sexes must attract each other. Two or more atoms of the same sex must repel each other, so O and O cannot appear alone.
Therefore, the group that admits the existence of water molecules does not admit the existence of oxygen molecules and believes that oxygen atoms directly constitute oxygen.
Zhu Shirong is different from the old man in Luoyang. He belongs to the water molecule sect, while the old man belongs to the water atomic sect.
When he saw the mention of water molecules in Xie Yan's paper, he subconsciously thought that Xie Yan was one of his own, thus offsetting his resistance to the subsequent content.
For young people of my own group, it is normal for them to make mistakes, and they can just correct them later.
Zhu Shirong also frowned when he saw oxygen molecules.
Nonsense!
How is it possible that there are oxygen molecules in the world?
Who taught this paper author named Xie Yan to be a fool?
Today's chemists don't even understand molecules and atoms, so it is naturally impossible for Xie Yan to explain electrons and covalent bonds.
Xie Yan only admitted in his paper that the combination of atoms is related to electricity (the current basic consensus), but it does not necessarily have to follow the same-sex repulsion. The same type of atoms can also be combined into molecules.
He also proposed the concepts of elements, mixtures, and compounds, and redefined elements, molecules, and atoms.
After Zhu Shirong read this, he felt that it seemed to make some sense, and at least it provided a hypothetical system and research direction.
But then, Zhu Shirong frowned again. Because Xie Yan also put forward a conjecture that at the same temperature and pressure, any gas with the same volume (it can be a single gas or a mixed gas. It can be a simple gas or a compound gas) has the same number of molecules.
This conjecture is counter-intuitive. All chemists have always believed that different molecules (molecules are often mistaken for atoms) have different volumes.
Xie Yan did not mention a certain equation and a certain constant because it was too advanced.
Zhu Shirong put down his paper, took out his pipe, shook in the shredded tobacco from Nanyang, lit it and started puffing away the smoke.
Zhu Shirong did not have the heavy academic baggage of the old man in Luoyang.
Because that old man has too many academic achievements and is over sixty years old.
What's the difference between asking such an old man to accept new theories and overturning most of the achievements of the first half of his life, and killing him directly?
After half a pot of tobacco was smoked, Zhu Shirong began to write a letter to his friend.
After I finished writing to my friend, I wrote another letter to Xie Yan, inviting Xie Yan to be a guest in Kaifeng.
He didn't know Xie Yan's age. At first he thought he was a young man, but after reading the paper he thought he was a middle-aged scholar. And the address was the back house of the Tongpan Hall of Huangzhou Prefecture. He guessed that Xie Yan should be Huangzhou Tongpan or his family.
, teacher.
If Zhu Shirong knew that Xie Yan was still a student, he would definitely try his best to recruit him into Kaifeng Imperial College as his disciple. Even if Xie Yan's theory is wrong, such a young man is still worthy of training.
After all the letters were written, Zhu Shirong walked to the office next door. He wanted to discuss with his colleagues who studied physics how to increase the accuracy of the balance.
Over the past 100 years, the accuracy of laboratory balances has been increasing.
That is, continuously increasing the arm length of the balance.
This method of improving accuracy has reached its limit, and a new way of thinking is required to achieve a breakthrough.
"It's difficult," Tian Shouyi sighed, "You who work in chemistry want to improve the balance, but don't we who work in physics don't? There are so many physicists across the country, but it has been difficult to make any progress in the past twenty years."
Zhu Shirong said: "Increasing the arm length of the scale has come to an end. Do you have any other ideas?"
Tian Shouyi shook his head.
The two of them were silent, each taking out his tobacco and puffing on the smoke, and the office soon became like a fairyland.
"Bang bang bang bang..."
There was a hurried knock on the door, and at the same time a loud shout was made: "Two gentlemen, the global navigator is back. He is passing by Kaifeng and is about to enter Beijing. He just stayed at the post station outside Kaifeng!"
Zhu Shirong stood up awkwardly and said with a puzzled expression: "Who is engaged in global navigation?"
"I don't know." Tian Shouyi was also confused.
The Ming Dynasty in this time and space did not have the need for global sea navigation.
First, the domestic market is huge, secondly, it can rely on Southeast Asia and India to support itself, and thirdly, there are also vast markets in Central Asia, West Asia, and Northeast Africa.
Not to mention sailing around the world, no one even wants to go to America.
Even thirty years ago, when gold and silver mines were discovered one after another in the Americas, very few people went to pan for gold because the Americas were too far away and navigation was extremely risky.
Similarly, the development of firearms in the Ming Dynasty was also extremely slow.
Because there is no demand!
The period when weapons and armor developed most rapidly was inevitably accompanied by wars all year round. How could the Ming Dynasty fight so many wars? Even if they fought, the existing weapons would be enough.
Decades ago, firearms technology had spread to West Asia and Eastern Europe.
But even with firearms, the armies of West Asia and Eastern Europe were still unable to defeat the Ming Dynasty border troops.
Ming Dynasty’s problems are always internal.
Many teachers and students of Taixue went out of the city to the inn, wanting to know what they had learned from the global voyager.
But outside the inn, the leader of the global sailing team raised his hands to everyone and said: "Please understand that I went to sea four years ago on the order of the late emperor. I didn't expect that when I came back, I heard about the late emperor in India.
The news of his death. There are many things he has seen and heard, which cannot be disclosed for the time being. Now he needs to go to Luoyang to return his life to the new king!"
Someone shouted: "Then let's talk about what we can say."
The navigation leader said: "America is very big, even bigger than we imagined. It should be long and narrow, and you have to go around a long way from the south to get across. Under normal navigation, it takes two or three years to complete a circumnavigation of the world, and we are halfway there.
The delay only took four years."
"Can there be a country if the United States goes south?" someone asked again.
The navigation leader said: "We have not had deep contact with the indigenous people, and our language is not clear. We don't know if there are states. But there are tribes, and they know how to weave, make pottery and farm, but they don't seem to know how to smelt iron."
At the end of the development of American civilization, people actually knew how to smelt iron, but it was just not popular yet.
Someone else asked: "After passing the United States, is there any land in the ocean?"
The navigation leader said: "There is an ocean to the east of the United States. After crossing the ocean, we will reach the south of the Western countries (Gold Coast of West Africa). When we arrived there, the ship was seriously damaged, so we had to go to the Western countries to repair the ship first."
"I have read "The Chronicles of the Western Kingdoms". Do they still have emperors there?" People continued to inquire.
The sailing leader said: "There are those who arrogantly call themselves emperors, but they are unable to convince the public, just like the Emperor Zhou in the pre-Qin period. Well, that's all I can say. It's better not to gather here."