Reborn and become a Great Scientist

Chapter 403 142 Another new element

When Stockholm Prince's College started construction, it had already chosen an auspicious day.

This incident was not caused by Chen Muwu's deception, but by Prince Gustav, Crown Prince of Sweden, who felt that he had gained a deep understanding of some traditional Chinese cultural knowledge and knew that Chinese people have the habit of choosing a good day before starting work.

So when the construction started, the Swedish Crown Prince specifically asked Chen Muwu.

Chen Muwu didn't know anything about Feng Shui or the almanac, so he could only make up a random date for June 6, saying that the month number and the date number were both six, and the number six represented success in the Chinese context.

Unexpectedly, Chen Muwu got it right, and the Swedish Crown Prince was very satisfied with the date he proposed.

Because June 6th also has a very good meaning in Sweden. On June 6th, 1523, Gustav Vasa was elected King of Sweden, officially marking Sweden's withdrawal from the Swedish-Danish United Kingdom. , became an independent country located in northern Europe.

On June 1809, 6, Sweden adopted its first modern constitution.

Therefore, in the 6s, some people in Sweden began to celebrate June 6 as a holiday.

Finally, in 1916, the Swedish Parliament officially passed a resolution designating June 6 as Flag Day.

Later, this day became Sweden's National Day, but that had to wait until decades later in the 1980s.

Chen Muwu didn't expect that he was just making up such a date casually, but there was actually a lot of detail behind it.

Now two years have passed, and the first phase of the Prince's College located on the outskirts of Stockholm is about to be completed.

The Swedish side also wants to end on a good day like when the motor started.

In Chen Muwu's initial thoughts, since the school was named after its patron, Prince Gustaf, Crown Prince of Sweden, then the completion time would best be related to His Royal Highness the Crown Prince.

Regarding the Crown Prince of Sweden, Chen Muwu's first thought was to complete the project on his birthday.

But Chen Muwu suddenly remembered a past event.

When Prince's College started construction, because the date was set for June 6, Chen Muwu told the Crown Prince of Sweden that six means success. The more the same number is repeated, the higher the degree of success.

After he said this, His Royal Highness the Crown Prince was very interested in the Chinese numerical theory proposed by Chen Muwu.

He told Chen Muwu that his birthday was on November 11th and asked if this number also had other meanings in China.

Hearing what the Crown Prince of Sweden said, Chen Muwu's first reaction was that it would be an online shopping mall in the future that would first increase prices and then lower prices, and would have to invest a lot of energy in collecting and grabbing coupons every day for a month in advance, and would treat customers like monkeys. .

Later, he thought that the origin of this Double Eleven online shopping festival was a spoof of the "Singles' Day" on the Chinese Internet.

However, because the marketing of these shopping websites is so successful, more and more newcomers only know about Double Eleven and don’t know about Singles’ Day.

As the name suggests, because the Arabic numeral 1 looks like a stick in handwriting, and four sticks come together on November 11, single people like to call this day Singles' Day.

And Chen Muwu felt that the word "bachelor" was completely a curse word and a derogatory term. It was certainly impossible for him to inform the Crown Prince of Sweden of this meaning.

Fortunately, Chen Muwu was smart enough and used a euphemistic but flattering way of saying it.

At that time, Chen Muwu said to the Crown Prince of Sweden: "Your Royal Highness, the image of the Arabic numeral 1 in China is like the stem of a lotus. An ancient man named Zhou Dunyi once said when praising the lotus, the stem of the lotus is in Straight to the outside, without spreading, it represents the noble character of a gentleman.

"So the Arabic number 1 is the same, it means that you are a very upright and noble person, and the four numbers 1 put together mean that you are much more upright and noble than others."

This statement satisfied the Crown Prince of Sweden, and Chen Muwu also used his wit to successfully deceive the matter.

Now that he remembered this past event, he naturally remembered the birthday of the Swedish Crown Prince.

It is clear that the Stockholm Prince's College can be completed in the summer, but it is not worthwhile to postpone it for half a year just for a birthday present.

——And it’s not necessary, because Chen Muwu feels that his school must recruit students as soon as possible and put it into use.

Since November 11th doesn’t work, then we need to choose another date.

If the school can be completed a week ahead of schedule, it might be possible to catch up with Sweden's founding anniversary on June 6, which is also the day when the foundation stone of Prince's College was laid two years ago, which is quite commemorative.

However, the news from the construction site management staff was that the construction site would need an extra week, and it would be impossible to complete the work on June 6, so Chen Muwu also ruled out the choice of this date.

After even thinking about it for two days, Chen Muwu couldn't find any other more suitable day.

Fortunately, he has young Marcus from the Wallenberg family by his side, who is more familiar with the local customs and customs of Sweden.

He made a suggestion to Chen Muwu: "Dr. Chen, how about we extend the completion date ten days back to June 6?"

Chen Muwu asked in confusion: "Mr. Wallenberg, is it possible that you have something to say about this day in Sweden?"

Little Marcus smiled and said: "Dr. Chen, you only know one, but not the other. Since you can think of His Royal Highness the Crown Prince's birthday, why can't you think a little further and ask about the current King of Sweden? When is your birthday?"

Chen Muwu suddenly realized that since little Marcus said this, it means that the birthday of King Gustaf V of Sweden should be on June 6th.

The suggestion that little Marcus put forward to him was probably the idea of ​​​​choosing this day to flatter the Swedish royal family. After Chen Muwu heard this suggestion, his idea was to go further.

Maybe Gustavus V would be very happy after learning about this date, and he could even allocate funds from the royal family to support the construction of the school.

So Chen Muwu and Marcus Jr. reported the date they selected to the Crown Prince of Sweden. After learning about it, His Royal Highness the Crown Prince also felt that this date was chosen well.

So on June 1928, 6, the first phase of the Prince's College located on the outskirts of Stockholm was completed. The next step was to study how to recruit teachers and when to open the school. , officially put into use.

In China, the Swedish Embassy in Jihai has scheduled the exam in July.

In addition to the grading and selection, as well as the time it takes to travel from China to Sweden, if nothing unexpected happens, the arrival of the first batch of Chinese students will probably be around September or October in the autumn.

Chen Muwu suddenly felt that he could set the start time of the school's first year not according to the mainstream time of Swedish schools, but on November 11, the birthday of the Swedish Crown Prince.

This school would never have been established without the support of His Royal Highness the Crown Prince.

Moreover, the completion of the school is only the beginning. In the future, in Sweden, we will need to rely on the prestige of the Swedish Crown Prince, and there will be talented people in the government who can serve as officials.

So it is better to just give him such a smooth favor, which will not only give the Swedish Crown Prince spiritual satisfaction, but also cause no actual losses to Chen Muwu and the school.

The completion ceremony of Prince's College was very lively. Under the operation of young Marcus and Chen Muwu, there was even a lion dance team that traveled all the way from London's Chinatown to Stockholm.

There were noisy gongs and drums, and firecrackers were blasting. Celebrities from all walks of life in Stockholm, as well as ministers from various countries stationed in Sweden, came to join in the fun at the completion ceremony.

Since the school is named after a prince, the Swedish Crown Prince’s speech on stage must be indispensable.

In his speech, His Royal Highness the Crown Prince repeatedly mentioned his good friend Chen Muwu and repeatedly praised him, saying that without Chen Muwu's support for him, the Prince's College would not have been successfully constructed.

However, Chen Muwu, whose name came out of the mouth of the Swedish Crown Prince many times, did not appear at the completion ceremony to accept everyone's greetings.

This is because at the same time, not only Prince's College was completed, but also the cyclotron accelerator built by Chen Muwu and five others in the physics laboratory inside Prince's College was in the final stage of completion.

After assembling all the parts ordered from factories in the UK and Sweden, and adding an extra layer of vacuum cover on the outside, the world's first true cyclotron - excluding the five at the end of last year The cyclotron model with a radius of fifteen centimeters that I personally built in Stockholm was born.

If it is just successfully built without being used, it will be nothing more than a pile of scrap metal.

The next thing everyone has to do is to verify whether the accelerator can accelerate particles, like the model of the original member accelerator, or whether there is a problem in some aspect that causes the acceleration to fail.

This time, Frederick felt that he finally no longer had to go to Uppsala, a town north of Stockholm, to borrow an alpha particle generator from Uppsala University like he did when the model was just built last time. Natural radioactive sources.

Because he knew that at the end of last year, when he, his wife Irena, and the British Cockcroft returned to China for Christmas, Chen Muwu and Dr. Zhao Zhongyao, who stayed in Stockholm, had already seized the time to build a A particle source that can extract protons or deuterium nuclei from gases.

Now you only need to fill the particle source with hydrogen and start it, and the protons you need can be continuously released from it, and the protons can be loaded into the cyclotron and accelerated.

However, what Frederick did not expect was that Chen Muwu still asked him to go to Uppsala University again, still to borrow a natural radioactive source that releases alpha particle beams to the outside world.

Frederick really didn't understand why Chen Muwu still asked him to borrow such a thing despite the proton source.

But soon he had greater doubts, because Chen Muwu not only asked him to borrow natural radioactive sources, but also asked Frederick to go to the Department of Chemistry, Department of Geology and Department of Minerals at Uppsala University to see if there were any There is no pure element of element 83, bismuth.

Inexplicably, what does Chen Muwu want bismuth to do?

Frederick was confused.

I don't understand, but since Chen Muwu is the commander-in-chief of the cyclotron project, it is incumbent upon Frederick to make a trip.

Fortunately, the completion ceremony held by Prince's College was fully publicized in Swedish newspapers.

This time Frederick did not leave any stone unturned. He simply said that he was from Prince's College, yes, and conveniently lent him the natural radioactive source, and also helped to find and refine a small piece of bismuth. Metal.

Frederick fulfilled his mission and returned to Prince's College from Uppsala University with these two things. He wanted to see what Chen Muwu was going to do with these two things.

During the time that Frederic was traveling to and from Uppsala University, three other people in the physics laboratory of Prince's College also accelerated the protons emitted from the proton source according to Chen Muwu's intention, proving that they had created The cyclotron came out without any problems and can be used normally.

Whether it is Zhao Zhongyao, Cockcroft, or Irena, they all have the same idea as Frederick, and they all want to know the use of Chen Muwu's natural radioactive source and bismuth.

In fact, Chen Muwu's idea was very simple. He initially wanted to use a cyclotron to imitate the historical process of the original time and space. He was the first to bombard the cyclotron with the 43rd element on the periodic table, thus becoming the first artificial element in the history of chemistry. Discoverer of synthetic elements.

But the two raw materials needed for bombardment are the metal molybdenum, element 42, which is easy to obtain, but the other is not a proton, but a deuterium nucleus separated from the hydrogen isotope deuterium. .

The specific equation of this reaction is, Mo+D→X(Tc)+n.

However, there is no factory in Sweden that produces liquid deuterium. If you want liquid deuterium, you can only import it from the UK or the nearby cryogenic factory of Leiden University in the Netherlands.

If this experiment were done a few years later, after the heavy water plant in Sweden's neighbor Norway is completed and put into operation, we can also choose to import heavy water from Norway and then obtain deuterium through electrolysis.

It was precisely because it took too long to wait for them to ship the liquid deuterium he needed when placing an order with the United Kingdom or the Netherlands that Chen Muwu focused on another element that had not yet been discovered by scientists.

(End of this chapter)