Reborn and become a Great Scientist

Chapter 96

After leaving the observatory every night and returning to Mrs. Brown's house, Chen Muwu was occasionally harassed by his roommate Dirac.

In a recent lecture given by Professor Ebenezer Cunningham, Dirac finally learned about Maxwell's equations, which he had never encountered before.

It thrilled him that with a few simple equations he could explain the results of various electrical, magnetic and optical experiments he had done in Bristol, among many other phenomena.

At the same time, after knowing this equation, Dirac also understood why his other idol, Einstein, has been ridiculed by everyone since he proposed the photon theory, because it does not conform to Maxwell's equations!
But fortunately, this year finally came out an oriental knight who saved the photon theory, that is, his roommate Chen Muwu.

He used experiments to prove that the light in gamma ray scattering exists as particles, and there are many contradictions with the electromagnetic waves in Maxwell's theory.

Because Maxwell's theory did not leave a deep impression on Dirac's mind, he did not accept this new photon theory like those physicists who refused to admit it.

Now, Dirac often asks Chen Muwu some questions about classical electromagnetism, Bohr's atomic model, and photon-wave-particle duality at night.

When Chen Muwu told him that electrons may also have the nature of fluctuations, Dirac did not show fuss like Rutherford did, but accepted it readily.

His interest in the theory of relativity was subtly shifting to the physics of the microcosm.

Originally, the work that guided Dirac's work from relativity to quantum should be done by his mentor Fowler.

But now that the butterfly's wings have been flapped, the role of quantum mentor has also been transferred to Chen Muwu.

……

After half a month of Eddington's one-on-one training, Chen Muwu finally got the opportunity to independently use the Norland Berger Telescope at the University of Cambridge Observatory.

After calculating the orbit before, he quickly found the somewhat dim planet X in the telescope.

Chen Muwu would take a picture of this planet every weekend. In order to confuse the audience, he would also adjust the telescope to several other specific directions, and also pretend to take a few pictures of Li Gui.

Chen Muwu decided to save a few more photos until the position change of Planet X can be clearly shown on them, and then the result will be announced.

Although progress was made quickly in the observatory, in the Cavendish Laboratory, Chen Muwu's electron diffraction experiment was not going smoothly.

The diffraction glass tube he designed had already been blown by workers. As for the target crystal for this diffraction, Chen Muwu chose gold foil.

Although the Cavendish Laboratory is poor, it has a lot of gold leaf. After all, Rutherford started his business by experimenting with gold leaf.

Chen Muwu put the cathode for generating the electron beam, the accelerating electric field, the thin gold film, and the photographic film into a glass tube one by one.

After assembling this set of equipment, he connected the vacuum pump and applied Vaseline on various joints. Then Chen Muwu started the machine, watched the mercury liquid level on it, and moved it little by little to the mark. to the point of lowest pressure.

However, as he expected, this experiment was not successful. On the photosensitive film, the expected concentric circle diffraction pattern did not appear at all.

This shows that the vacuum produced by the Sprenger pump in the Cavendish laboratory to four decimal places of Pascal is not enough for Chen Muwu's electron diffraction experiment to achieve results.

There are only two paths before Chen Muwu.

If you want to continue to verify the volatility of electrons, you must either spend a lot of money to buy a vacuum pump with higher precision to continue the experiment, or passively wait for others to do this experiment first.

It's really hard for a penny to beat a hero.

……

Not long after taking the first photo of Planet X, Chen Muwu received a letter from Paris, France.

He felt a little strange about this, because since crossing, except for abandoning the ship and landing in the port of Marseilles, he has not had any other intersection with France.

The only one who passed several letters to each other was Zhang Xiuyou, a special correspondent of Yishibao in France.

And the handwriting on the envelope was not consistent with the usual letters from Zhang Xiuyou.

And this envelope reveals exquisiteness from the material to the printing, and there is a strange coat of arms printed on the corner.

After opening the envelope, Chen Muwu discovered that the person who wrote the letter was an "old acquaintance" whom he had never met, just like Bohr.

Although France has no kings and emperors for a long time, it has retained a large number of noble titles.

And it was such a nobleman, Louis Victor de Broglie, who wrote the letter to Chen Muwu.

No wonder there was a mark on the envelope, it should be the crest of their de Broglie family.

Unlike Compton at the University of Chicago who suffered from being dumb, Chen Muwu was finally approached by the master this time.

However, De Broglie did not accuse him of plagiarizing his own ideas in his heart. On the contrary, he felt that he and Chen Muwu had a "smart understanding", and he felt complacent that he could think of going with this rookie in physics.

In his letter, he unreservedly expressed his praise for Chen Muwu's idea that "electron is a kind of wave".

In fact, de Broglie's idea of ​​matter waves in his brain has only just taken a rudimentary form, and his doctoral thesis is still a long time away from being completed.

Not long ago, de Broglie reported new ideas in his brain at a regular meeting of the French Academy of Sciences.

After the meeting, someone told De Broglie that his "new" idea had already been published in the German journal "Annals of Physics".

So de Broglie found Chen Muwu's thesis to study carefully, the concise formula derivation, and the conclusions matched seamlessly with Bohr's atomic model.

This is not a long paper, almost every letter and every symbol pokes into De Broglie's heart.

He didn't expect that he had just had a concept in his mind, but it had already been enriched and perfected by others.

De Broglie has known for a long time that there is another person like Chen Muwu, because at the beginning of this year, the physics world was stirred up vigorously by Chen Muwu's re-introduction of the photon theory.

This photon theory, verified by gamma-ray scattering experiments, also inspired de Broglie, which in turn gave him the idea of ​​matter waves.

So in his heart, De Broglie had a feeling of admiration for Chen Muwu, so he wrote this letter, wanting to get acquainted with Chen Muwu, and personally praise and congratulate him. How wonderful is this theory that electrons are also waves.

After receiving this letter, the first thought in Chen Muwu's mind was not to collect another Nobel Prize winner in physics, but to think, generally speaking, are nobles very rich?
Two thousand pounds may be considered a huge sum of money to myself and the Cavendish Laboratory, but to De Broglie, who is well-clothed and well-fed, is it just equivalent to sprinkling water?

And the big money masters behind Tycho, Galileo and Gauss that I have been thinking about in my heart, are they finally going to appear this time?
Therefore, Chen Muwu had a bold idea. He put down the work at hand and devoted himself to writing a reply to de Broglie.

"Dear Mr De Broglie:

"I am delighted to hear from you and thank you for your support of my electronic hypothesis.

"It can be seen between the lines of this letter that you must have a great love for physics and a keen intuition in it, so you have the same idea as me.

"I will now report to you the new progress I have made so far on the hypothesis that electrons are waves.

"In the Cavendish Laboratory, I have successfully assembled a set of instruments, intending to use high-speed electron beams to conduct diffraction experiments through the gold simple film, but unfortunately, this experiment did not succeed in obtaining the diffraction pattern.

"However, I don't think there is a mistake in the theory. After the analysis after the experiment, I think that the vacuum in the diffraction tube has not met the requirements, which is not enough to provide a long enough free path for the electrons, so that it can successfully complete the diffraction process.

"Next, I plan to modify the vacuum pump in the Cavendish Laboratory until it can reduce the vacuum to about ten to the seventh power Pascal, and then proceed to the next experiment.

"This process seems to be very difficult. After all, this vacuum pump is an old thing developed more than ten years ago. I don't know how long it will take to transform it. It may never be able to lower the vacuum degree, but As soon as the experiment makes progress, I will write to report to you as soon as possible.

"Your sincerity, Chen Muwu."

Such a straightforward reply letter was sent by Chen Muwu to De Broglie in Paris according to the address on the envelope.

I don't know if this letter can successfully catch De Broglie. Will the little prince know the elegance after listening to the string song, and sponsor him a newest vacuum pump from General Electric out of his own pocket?
(End of this chapter)