A Man of Science and Engineering in Troubled Times Wandering in the Late Qing Dynasty

Chapter 16 Essay on traffic rubbing
At the moment Li Yu and Fan Xiren are in Rong Bao Zhai, which specializes in selling the Four Treasures of the Study.

He originally wanted to ask him about a place to buy some manuscript paper, but he didn't expect Fan Xiren to drag him here directly!
What an international joke, how can this be affordable!

When Li Yu and a rich classmate went to Liulichang to play, they had seen Rongbaozhai, which occupied almost half of Liulichang West Street.The things inside can be said to be quite tall, and any Chinese painting can be counted in tens of thousands.

Speaking of which, Rongbaozhai has been operating the Four Treasures of the Study for three to four hundred years. It is an absolutely time-honored brand, and its original name was Songzhuzhai.

During the Opium War, Songzhuzhai was severely damaged by the flames of war, but the emaciated camels were bigger than horses, and they had a lot of traffic in the literati circle.So the original store name "Songzhuzhai" was changed to "Rongbaozhai", and Lu Runxiang, a great calligrapher and number one scholar in the Tongzhi period, was invited to mention the three characters of the store name, and the business flourished again soon.

The things in Rongbaozhai are good, but they are really expensive!

Fan Xiren is a son of a rich family, and he doesn't care about money. When he entered the door, he took a fancy to the raw rice paper on the shelf.

"Boss, how do you sell this order paper (500 sheets)?"

The receptionist replied: "Guest officer has good eyesight. What you are holding is rice paper produced in Jing County, Anhui Province. It just arrived yesterday. It is the best raw rice paper in our store. It only costs 1300 Wen per order."

Fan Xiren touched the paper and said, "It's really a good thing, is the price still negotiable?"

The clerk's eyes are very vicious, and he can tell at a glance that Fan Xiren's fondness for putting it down must be wanted, so he immediately sells it: "Guest officer, the land transportation is not smooth, and there are not many good books that can be shipped here. If the guest officer doesn't take it today , maybe it will be gone tomorrow.”

It took only a few seconds for Fan Xiren to make up his mind: "Okay, I want this paper."

It's too bad to bargain!

The man wrapped it up for him immediately, and said sweetly: "I wish the guest officer to study hard and go to high school as soon as possible."

"What kind of high school? I don't want to go to the Jinshi exam now. It's a high school if I can get into the Beijing Normal University."

Only now did Fan Xiren realize that Li Yu beside him was standing still at all, "What's the matter, brother Li, this is the best store in the whole capital."

It is because this is the best store!

Li Yu thought to himself, 500 sheets of paper would be close to one tael of silver, enough for him to eat mutton noodles for a month!His current net worth is only 2 taels of silver, and he let Ding Weiliang pay in advance. He can't buy some paper and spend half of it.

He instantly understood the reason why Zeng Guofan spent 4000 essays on "The Complete Book of Zhu Zi".

Of course, the diary expert also has records of such a large cost of paper. In his diary, he once recorded that he spent 2000 articles on buying posts.

——What are you talking about "poor" scholars? It was not easy to be a scholar in ancient times!

Li Yu faltered and said, "I... want to buy smaller and thicker manuscript paper."

The clerk was very clever, and immediately said: "Do you want letter paper, sir? Of course we have it in our store! Look at this, it's high-quality letter paper, produced in Tianjin, Zhili, 1400 Wen per ream."

Well, this one is more expensive because of its smaller size.

Li Yu looked puzzled: "Is there any manuscript paper with smaller grid spacing and horizontal arrangement?"

"The guest officer wants paper from foreigners!" said the clerk, seemingly not as enthusiastic as before. "We don't have anything from foreigners in our store."

Li Yu was relieved, and he didn't know the price if there was one.

Fan Xiren felt it was a pity, and persuaded: "Brother Li, the thickness of the letter paper is actually acceptable, after all, this is something from Rongbaozhai..."

Li Yu quickly waved his hand: "Thank you brother, I'm just used to it."

The two went to several stores, but they couldn't find any one that sold this kind of manuscript paper.Not only manuscript paper, but even pens are not for sale.

There was no other way, so Li Yu had no choice but to take advantage of the time when the Tongwen Library was still empty, and went to find some.Most likely it was used by foreign teachers before, so I took a small stack by hand.

As for the pen, fortunately, I still have a pencil.

Back in the West Third Courtyard of King Qing's Mansion, Li Yu sat at the table and began to think about what kind of article he wanted to write.

Last year, in 1901, the first-ever Nobel Prize had just been awarded, and the Physics Prize went to Roentgen for his discovery of X-rays.

X-rays are the hottest thing in Western academia now. Almost all universities and laboratories have developed X-ray machines, which can shoot this and that.

It's so interesting to shoot at people, and a skeleton frame will come out with a swipe!

Li Yu decided to start with it and get a wave of traffic!
Spreading out the manuscript paper, Li Yu held a pencil and quickly started writing in beautiful English characters:

"X-rays were discovered six years ago. As a pioneer of radioactivity, they are great. Here, I would like to make the following analysis of the properties of X-rays from my personal point of view."

"..."

Although people now know about X-rays, the top scientists at that time did not know what X-rays were, or even whether they were electromagnetic waves or particles.

Moreover, at this time the atomic model had not yet appeared, and even the original raisin pudding model had not yet been born, so it was impossible to fundamentally explain the cause of X-rays. Li Yu could only write about its related properties in layman's terms.

In the article, he first discussed the principle of X-ray imaging, because the density of human tissue is different, and the degree of absorption of X-rays is different.

Then I wrote in detail how to make a set of simple X-ray equipment, and drew a sketch.

These are all acceptable to everyone, and they are all tenable.

Then he used the "existing theories" at that time, such as Maxwell's equations, and the theories of Faraday and others, to deduce and predict that X-rays are an electromagnetic wave!

Li Yu also calculated the frequency and wavelength of X-rays, and gave a method on how to verify his theory: Since the frequency of X-rays is extremely high and the wavelength is extremely short, he proposed that atoms arranged in crystals can be used for diffraction experiments.

Finally, Li Yu focused on explaining the harmfulness of X-rays, because at that time, no one really knew how much its powerful energy could harm the human body.

He strongly appealed to all scientific researchers to control the direction of the rays as much as possible to avoid irradiating the human body!
In short, I have written [-] to [-] words without knowing it.

Fortunately, these things are not difficult for him. After all, any high school student now knows that X-rays are electromagnetic waves, but how to verify and deduce them is more troublesome, and he has to avoid the atomic model theory as much as possible. A lot of space.

After Li Yu finished the draft, he was very satisfied with the article in his hand. He transcribed it again in beautiful continuous print, and it was almost evening when he finished.

(End of this chapter)