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

Chapter 50
Several people worked together to explain to Cixi what a gramophone is. Cixi listened to the opera with peace of mind, and was very satisfied with the singing voices of Yang Xiaolou and Jia Honglin in it.

"Why haven't I heard of it, which troupe is it?" Cixi asked.

Li Yu replied: "Queen Mother, the singers are called Yang Xiaolou and Jia Honglin, both of whom belong to the Tongqing Troupe of the Jingzhong Temple, and Yang Xiaolou is Tan Xinpei's adopted son."

Cixi often listens to Tan Xinpei's opera, and he is now a big celebrity in the Shengping Department of the Southern Palace of the Imperial Palace.

"That's right, Lizi, tell the Shengping Department, let him show up next time."

Li Lianying said: "Lafayette's supreme kindness is the blessing of that kid."

"As for this foreign gadget, it's a good one. The Ai family kept it."

Pu Lande was secretly happy, knowing that it was Cixi who gave the steps, he immediately said happily: "Dear Empress Dowager, I will definitely present you with more records to relieve your worries."

Cixi said: "You should have this kind of heart!"

While the supreme rulers of the Qing Dynasty were still ecstatic about a phonograph, several scientific journals in Britain and Germany had already published Li Yu's latest papers.

Lord Kelvin set a low tone at the beginning of the article, which suddenly raised everyone's expectations for the content of the article.Li Yu did not live up to everyone's expectations, and everyone who read it said it was good!
In the end, although the content of Boltzmann's letter was extremely admirable, it was a pity that he was not well-known at the time, and he only had some influence in Austria.

However, the quality of the article was really high. Coupled with the endorsement by Lord Kelvin and the Royal Society, soon the entire European academic circle began to discuss Li Yu’s paper. After all, thermodynamics is a hot topic, and almost everyone understands it.

The first to express his opinion was Thomson, the discoverer of electrons. He is now famous and the director of the Cavendish Laboratory at Cambridge University. This person is an absolute supporter of atomism. He soon wrote: "There is no doubt that , this article uses the Boltzmann equation and deduces it through mathematical methods, which is worthy of reference for every physicist."

At this time, the academic atmosphere in the UK was relatively relaxed and inclusive, but Germany, Austria-Hungary and other countries were obviously conservative.

Mach, who was in Austria, read the thesis, especially when he saw Boltzmann's cover letter at the end, he was very angry: "Heretics! If you have the ability, please give me an experiment to let me see atoms!"

He immediately wrote an article to refute the article, and tried again to use his "energies" to explain thermodynamic phenomena.

Boltzmann was not idle this time. After seeing Mach’s post, he quickly counterattacked: “History will prove that my research with Mr. Maxwell is correct. To explain thermal phenomena, we must use molecules and Atoms! So the foundation and extension of the thesis are correct!"

Unexpectedly, Li Yu's thesis once again ignited the debate on whether the atomic theory is correct in the European academic circle.

Several bosses fired first, followed by younger brothers.

Ostwald is a loyal supporter of Mach, and quickly followed the firepower for the second round of output.He is actually a chemist, and later won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. His main research area is catalysts.

But he is also the person who competes with Boltzmann the most, and the two can be called deadly rivals in the academic field.Although the debate between them was not as shocking to the world as the academic debate between Einstein and Bohr later, it was definitely a small focus of the academic circle during the communication in the [-]th century.

Ostwald supported Mach and opposed Li Yu's paper in Acta Physica under the title "Overcoming Scientific Materialism", claiming that "energy is the only real reality, matter is not the bearer of energy, but It's just a manifestation of energy."

When Li Yu read his article later, he actually felt a little bit hard to say, but he also knew that it was absolutely impossible for him to understand the string theory that has not been widely accepted in the 21st century.There is an argument in string theory that claims that matter comes from energy, but Li Yu can't distinguish this unproven thing.

Planck and Rutherford arrived late after the first round of gunfire. It wasn't that they didn't dare to fire, but it was because they were all small-caliber guns at that time, and they couldn't be compared with the big guys.

Now Planck is not famous, and his relationship with Boltzmann is not very good.But Planck's cognition in the microscopic field obviously goes a step further, and even the Boltzmann constant was actually derived by Planck.

Planck is best at laying flat and Buddhist, and he doesn’t want to engage in any debate at all. He only expressed his views in a small newspaper: “As usual, a new scientific truth cannot convince opponents, and can only wait until the opponents Gradually die, so that the new generation can only be carried out when it becomes familiar with the truth."

Look at people's attitude...

Rutherford is only a small role now, and he speaks out mainly because his mentor Thomson has stood up, and he has to follow closely.

In short, anyone who knows a little about thermodynamics is now arguing, and even European universities are openly discussing this topic.

Among them was Barkla of the University of Liverpool, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1917.However, he is currently studying in university, and he can be said to admire Li Yu's thesis at the level of a fan.

His field of research is X-rays. After seeing Li Yu's proposal that X-rays are likely to be electromagnetic waves and that diffraction experiments can be done, he was obsessed!

And many years later, he won the Nobel Prize precisely because of the X-ray scattering experiment. In interviews with him later, he mentioned more than once the important inspiration of Li Yu's papers when he was studying in his early years.

So although he is not very proficient in thermodynamics, and he is not good at mathematics, but since the "spiritual leader" has spoken, what else is there to say!And if experiments are to be performed, crystals must have a neat arrangement of atoms.

In class, Rocky, a professor of physics at the University of Liverpool, asked the students to discuss Li Yu’s views freely. When other students opposed Li Yu’s article with Ostwald’s views, Bakla was the first to stand up for it. Li Yu:

"Electrons have been discovered, why can't there be atoms? The Cavendish Laboratory of Cambridge University has already had evidence of iron. You can't say that electrons are also made of energy!"

But the students' questions are also very sharp: "If you can't verify it, at least you can't say it is right."

"If all matter is made of atoms, why are there so many different shapes?"

Barkla argues: "Then tell me, can energetics be verified? If you can't, why do you insist that atomic theory is wrong? Besides, whoever said that atoms are all the same, is your chemistry class wasted?" "

Well, if this Barak participates in the debate, he will definitely be an excellent second debater.

(End of this chapter)