Guide to Traveling through the Northern Song Dynasty.

Chapter 1158 Epilogue XIV: Return from the Round-the-World Voyage
Kaifeng, Imperial University.

Zhu Shirong finished his lecture and strolled around the campus back to his office.

He was the sixth-generation grandson of Emperor Taizu, and was from the Wangchuan Valley lineage. His grandfather's generation had no title. His grandfather was born out of wedlock, his father was also born out of wedlock, and even his great-grandfather only had a low-level title.

To put it nicely, he was a distant relative of the royal family.

To put it bluntly, his bloodline was so distant that no one gossiped about him when he became prime minister.

This is fine, there is no danger.

Two of the direct descendants of Taizu were killed during the Dingtai Dynasty, all because they colluded with officials to engage in commercial monopoly, bullying the market and refusing to pay taxes.

Of course, the real reason they were punished was that they wanted to get their hands on the Shaanxi section of the railway leading to the Western Regions, and in order to achieve their goal they secretly obstructed the official railway construction.

Emperor Dingtai had been tolerant enough towards them, and the final result was only to strip the two of their titles, and their descendants were not allowed to inherit the titles.

Today, Wangchuan Valley still exists, and many members of the royal family without titles live there.

But the academic center status of Wangchuan Valley has long disappeared.

All the land in the valley and tens of thousands of acres of land outside the valley were gradually annexed by the royal family. The farmers inside and outside the valley all became tenants of the numerous royal family members without titles.

There is no need to force a split because the royal family members have already separated.

As the number of descendants increases, the family property will continue to be divided and the land will be divided into smaller pieces.

None of them even had a title, and they were just landlords of varying sizes, and the court did not have to allocate funds to support them.

There were also a few ambitious people who moved away early after becoming Jinshi officials or Jishu officials, or took their money to do business in other places. In any case, they were unwilling to waste their time in their hometown.

"Sir, a letter from Luoyang." The assistant held a large envelope.

Zhu Shirong took it casually and opened it. He didn't pay much attention to it at first, but as he was reading it, he suddenly sat up straight, put down the letter and picked up the attached paper.

This paper is a transcribed copy.

Hydrogen and oxygen were named as early as the time of Taizu, and the names were given by Taizu himself.

It has long been a consensus in the chemical community that water is composed of hydrogen and oxygen. However, the hydrogen and oxygen symbols were created by Ming Dynasty chemists, and H and O were not used.

The contents of chemistry textbooks are already outdated, and the two major mainstream schools have already updated their theories.

Let’s take water as an example:

One school of thought believes that there are water elements and water atoms, and that water atoms are a type of composite atom composed of hydrogen and oxygen atoms. Composite atoms are not molecules as Taizu said, but a more complex type of basic atom.

True molecules are more complex substances that have multiple ratios. For example, copper oxide is a basic atom, while cuprous oxide, which has a multiple ratio to it, is a molecule.

The other school of thought believes that there is no such thing as water element or water atom, and that hydrogen atoms and oxygen atoms directly form water molecules. Only substances composed of a single atom are elements, and substances composed of two or more atoms are all molecular composite substances.

However, these two schools have a common misunderstanding, that is, the same type of atoms directly constitute matter.

If we take oxygen as an example, oxygen atoms directly form oxygen and it is impossible to form oxygen molecules.

To express it with the chemical symbols of another time and space, there is only O, and it is impossible to have O and O. The combination of O and O can only appear in complex atomic or molecular complexes.

Why did this consensus emerge?

Because most experiments to explore and measure atoms use electrolysis to obtain gases.

Inspired by electrolysis, chemists believed that every atom has an electric charge, and that if atoms want to combine, they must attract each other with opposite charges. Two or more atoms of the same type must repel each other with like charges, so O and O cannot appear alone.

Therefore, the group that acknowledges the existence of water molecules does not acknowledge the existence of oxygen molecules and believes that oxygen atoms directly constitute oxygen gas.

Zhu Shirong is different from the old man in Luoyang. He belongs to the water molecule school, while the old man belongs to the water atom school.

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.

It is normal for young people like me to make mistakes, and we can just correct them later.

It wasn't until he saw the oxygen molecules that Zhu Shirong frowned.

Nonsense!

How can there be oxygen molecules in the world?

Who taught this paper author named Xie Yan to be such an idiot?

Today's chemists haven't even figured out the differences between molecules and atoms, so it's naturally impossible for Xie Yan to use electrons and covalent bonds to explain them.

Xie Yan only acknowledged in his paper that the bonding of atoms is related to electricity (the basic consensus at present), but it does not necessarily follow the principle of like repels like. Atoms of the same kind can also be combined into molecules.

He also proposed the concepts of simple substances, mixtures, and compounds, and redefined elements, molecules, and atoms.

When Zhu Shirong read this, he felt that it seemed to make some sense, at least providing a hypothetical system and research direction.

But then, Zhu Shirong frowned again. Because Xie Yan also proposed 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 counterintuitive, as 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 they were too advanced.

Zhu Shirong put down his thesis, took out his pipe, shook in some tobacco produced in Southeast Asia, lit it and began to puff out smoke.

Zhu Shirong did not have the heavy academic baggage of the old man in Luoyang.

Because that old man has so many academic achievements and he is already over sixty years old.

What's the difference between asking such an old man to accept new theories and overturn most of the achievements of his first half of life and killing him directly?
After finishing half a pot of tobacco, Zhu Shirong began to write letters to his friends.

After writing to his friend, he wrote another letter to Xie Yan, inviting him to visit Kaifeng.

He did not know Xie Yan's age. He thought he was a young man at first, but after reading his paper, he thought he was a middle-aged scholar. Moreover, the address he left was the back house of the Tongpan Office of Huangzhou Prefecture. He guessed that Xie Yan should be the Tongpan of Huangzhou Prefecture or his family or teacher.

If Zhu Shirong knew that Xie Yan was still a student, he would have tried every means to recruit him to Kaifeng Imperial College as his apprentice. Even if Xie Yan's theory was wrong, this young man was worth training.

After finishing writing the letter, Zhu Shirong strolled 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 continued to increase.

That is, continuously increasing the arm length of the balance.

This method of improving accuracy has reached its limit, and a completely new way of thinking is required to achieve a breakthrough.

"It's difficult," Tian Shouyi sighed. "You chemists want to improve the balance, but don't we physicists want to improve it? There are so many physicists in the country, but we haven't made any progress in the past 20 years."

Zhu Shirong said: "Increasing the arm length of the scale has reached its limit. Do you have any other ideas?"

Tian Shouyi shook his head.

The two of them were silent, each taking out a tobacco and puffing away, 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, someone shouted, "Gentlemen, the circumnavigator is back. He is passing through Kaifeng and is about to go to Beijing. He just stayed at the post station outside Kaifeng City!"

Zhu Shirong stood up and asked with a puzzled expression: "Who is sailing around the world?"

"I don't know." Tian Shouyi was also confused.

The Ming Dynasty in this time and space has no need for global navigation.

Firstly, the domestic market is huge; secondly, we can be fully supported by Southeast Asia and India; 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 in America, few people went there to pan for gold because America was too far away and the risk of sailing there was extremely high.

Similarly, the development of firearms in the Ming Dynasty was extremely slow.

Because there is no demand!
The period when weapons and armor developed most rapidly was inevitably accompanied by years of war. How could the Ming Dynasty have so many wars to fight? Even if there was a war, the existing weapons were sufficient.

Decades ago, firearms technology had spread to West Asia and Eastern Europe.

But even with firearms, the armies of West Asia and Eastern Europe still could not defeat the Ming border troops.

The Ming Dynasty’s problems were always internal.

Many teachers and students of the Imperial College left the city and went to the post station, hoping to ask the sailors who had traveled around the world about what they had seen and heard.

Outside the post station, the leader of the global sailing team bowed to everyone and said, "Please understand, I went to sea four years ago on the orders of the late emperor. I didn't expect to hear the news of the late emperor's death in India when I came back. Many of my experiences cannot be spread for the time being. I need to go to Luoyang first to report to the new emperor!"

Someone shouted, "Then just tell me what you can say."

The leader of the voyage said, "America is very big, bigger than we imagined. It should be long and narrow, and we have to go a long way from the south to get there. Under normal sailing conditions, it would take two or three years to go around the world, but we were delayed halfway and it took us four years."

"Are there any states south of America?" someone else asked.

The chief said: "We have not had much contact with the natives, and we do not speak their language, so we do not know whether they have states. But they definitely have tribes, and they know how to weave, make pottery, and farm, but they do not 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 yet popularized.

Someone else asked, "After America, is there any land in the ocean?"

The leader of the voyage said: "To the east of America is the ocean. After crossing the ocean, we will reach the south of the Western countries (the Gold Coast of West Africa). When we arrived there, our ship was severely damaged, so we had to go to the Western countries to repair the ship first."

"I have read the 'Brief Records of Western Countries'. Do they still have an emperor over there?" people continued to inquire.

The leader of the voyage said: "There are those who have usurped the throne and claimed to be emperors, but none of them can convince the people, just like the Zhou emperor in the pre-Qin period. Well, that's all I can say, and you should all stop gathering here."

(End of this chapter)