Free Web NovelChapter 40: Chapter 38: I Want to Try Guiding Newton
After evening self-study at Jiangcheng Seventh Middle School, in the boys’ dormitory.
"Dongzi, come play a few rounds with me! This marksman is trash!"
Chen Yue sat on his bed, shouting frantically toward Li Dong’s bunk.
However, Li Dong didn’t pay him any mind, just staring at his phone and letting out a silly "hee hee hee" laugh.
Chen Yue turned to ask Liu Liang, who was studying at his side.
"What’s up with Dongzi? Is he possessed or something?"
Liu Liang looked up from his English vocabulary book.
"I don’t know. He’s been giggling foolishly ever since he got back from class. It’s been almost half an hour."
Of course, they had no idea what Li Dong was laughing about.
Ever since learning he was guaranteed to receive the twenty-thousand-yuan prize money, Li Dong had been in a state of extreme excitement.
Twenty thousand yuan!
He had never seen so much money in his entire life.
Although he hadn’t received this huge sum yet, Director Zheng had beaten his chest and guaranteed it would be in his account within two weeks!
Li Dong was currently on a shopping app, picking out a birthday gift for his mom, Li Qin.
’Hua Wei’s Mate series looks pretty classy, and the battery life is good... I just don’t know if I’ll even be able to snag one...’
He scrolled back and forth, mentally calculating how to allocate the money.
He finally decided that as soon as the money arrived, he would take his mom to a physical store to pick one out and let her see how it felt in her hand.
’With the remaining money... I’ll get myself a decent laptop. After all, I’ll need a proper productivity tool to learn Python programming and write that inventory management system.’
Li Dong had planned everything out perfectly in his head.
He already enjoyed shopping, and now he could actually buy things. It was the most fun thing ever, besides studying.
Wow! It was practically the happiest thing in the world, aside from studying!
"Hey, Dongzi, are you coming or not? The ranking-up party is just waiting for you!"
Chen Yue was still nagging him.
Li Dong shot him a glance and scoffed inwardly.
’Honor of Kings?’
’To hell with Honor, I’ve defected!’
’I, Li Dong, am forever loyal to studying!’
"I’m not playing. I have to study!"
Li Dong righteously refused Chen Yue.
Thinking of this, Li Dong felt that none of it would have been possible without the lovely gurus in the "Cyan Dragon Study Group."
’Can’t be too stingy. Maybe I should send a red packet in the group to thank them?’
He had never sent a red packet in this WeChat group before. He wasn’t even sure if it was possible, so this was a good chance to test it out.
So, he opened the chat interface for the "Cyan Dragon Study Group."
But as soon as he opened it, his phone lagged for a moment.
The screen was flooded with unread messages, and among them, the ID [Isaac Newton] was frantically @ing him.
[Isaac Newton]: @ExamGrinder, are you there, Your Excellency?
[Isaac Newton]: I have a question I would like to discuss with you.
Li Dong paused for a moment.
’Hasn’t Newton been busy with his "internal combustion engine" these past few days, trying to kick-start the Second Industrial Revolution ahead of schedule? Why would he suddenly have a question to discuss with me?’
Li Dong quickly scrolled up through the chat history and finally understood what Newton wanted to discuss with him.
It turned out that as the internal combustion engine prototype progressed, the industrialization process in Newton’s time and space began to accelerate. And then they ran into a fatal problem.
Their machining precision was insufficient.
To manufacture more precise mechanical parts, they needed more advanced optical measuring instruments.
This landed right in Newton’s area of expertise.
Newton was, after all, the founder of geometrical optics. He immediately set to work on improving the industrial mass-production plans for optical instruments like microscopes and telescopes.
[Isaac Newton]: Your Excellency, I recently gathered the best glass craftsmen in all of London in an attempt to create a refracting microscope suitable for industrial mass production.
I know that the dispersion of white light is the root of chromatic aberration, and I solved the issue for astronomical observation with reflecting telescopes. However, close-range microscopic measurement cannot use a reflective structure; it must be done with a refractive one.
We have removed nearly all impurities from the glass, ground nearly perfect spherical lenses, and corrected for spherical aberration. But as soon as we increase the magnification, the edges of the image remain blurry. The chromatic aberration can never be fully eliminated!
[Isaac Newton]: I have tried countless types of mineral filters, but the light loss is too great and the monochromaticity is extremely poor. They are completely unsuitable for practical measurement in a factory. I have a nagging feeling that perhaps our entire line of thinking has been wrong from the very beginning.
The old Li Dong might have immediately started searching online for a solution, but now, he wanted to try something.
Could he really hold a dialogue with these titans?
Li Dong’s mind began to race.
He had already finished "University Physics." Although the material wasn’t exceptionally profound, it was all knowledge built upon the shoulders of giants—and Newton was one of those giants.
The craftsmen were trying to eliminate chromatic and spherical aberrations by creating a flawless medium. In classical geometrical optics, that was indeed one possible path.
But they were overlooking something fundamental.
[ExamGrinder]: Sir Newton, it seems you are too focused on the perfection of the medium, and in doing so, have overlooked the nature of light itself.
[Isaac Newton]: The nature of light itself? Your Excellency, you mean to say...
Li Dong quickly distilled the core concepts of wave optics from "University Physics."
[ExamGrinder]: Light in nature is composite light, a mixture of various wavelengths.
You yourself have performed the prism dispersion experiment, so you should be well aware that a lens has a different refractive index for different wavelengths of light.
[ExamGrinder]: As long as you are using composite light, due to the difference in refractive indices, the focal lengths can never be perfectly aligned. The chromatic aberration will always exist.
Even if the craftsmen were to polish the lens into God’s own masterpiece, they could not change the physical laws of light itself.
[Isaac Newton]: !!!
It wasn’t that Newton didn’t know this. He was simply stuck in a path-dependent mindset: ’If there’s an imaging problem, I must optimize the lens.’
[ExamGrinder]: Therefore, to truly see the details of the microscopic world, what really needs to be changed is not the lens.
[ExamGrinder]: It’s the beam of light entering it.
The group fell silent for a full two minutes.
Then, a long message from Newton appeared.
[Isaac Newton]: A pure, monochromatic light source! Of course! I have been blinded by the laws of refraction in geometrical optics all this time!
And then Newton vanished...
Li Dong: ...
’Where’s my stuff? Where’s my red packet?’
The shameless guy used Newton’s own discoveries to lecture Newton, and he still expected a red packet.
And he’d already forgotten that he had come here to send a red packet himself.
After waiting for a long time without any sign of Newton, Li Dong gave up.
’Although there’s no reward...’
This feeling of having an equal dialogue with a great scientific mind from history, even being able to stand on the shoulders of a giant and offer guidance... it was simply...
It was like knowledge being injected straight into his brain, sending him into a cerebral orgasm.
"So damn good!"
Li Dong glanced at the time in the top-right corner of his phone. Without realizing it, it was already almost midnight.
’No good. I have to get to sleep. I have to wake up early tomorrow to memorize classical Chinese texts.’
He casually closed the group chat, pulled the blanket over himself, and closed his eyes.
A few minutes later, his eyes suddenly snapped open.
’Huh? Didn’t I just say I was going to send a red packet to the group?’
’Forget it, forget it. Too sleepy...’
「...」
Li Dong, for his part, slept soundly without a care in the world. But that night in Jiangcheng, some people were not resting so peacefully.
In the home of Liu Limin, the Director of Jiangcheng Sixth Middle School.
He was still at his computer, looking at the advancement list for the Huaxuan Cup semi-finals.
"Jiangcheng Seventh Middle School, Li Dong..."
