Chapter 1: Chapter 1: Newton’s Thanks
[Isaac Newton]: Everyone, why is there always a significant discrepancy between the speed of sound I calculate based on Boyle’s Law and the results I actually measure in the gallery of the Royal Society?
[Galileo Galilei]: @Isaac Newton, what are your initial conditions? Have you considered the air’s humidity, temperature, and even wind direction? If the error isn’t large, could it be due to the precision of your instruments?
[Isaac Newton]: No, the value I calculated is 979 ft/s, but the measured value is 1142 ft/s. That’s a full 16% difference! This absolutely cannot be explained away as mere ’error.’ It’s as if God has hidden some variable within the air...
Jiangcheng Seventh Middle School, Senior Year, Class (2).
Li Dong sat in the back of the classroom, looking at the group chat messages on his phone and shaking his head helplessly.
’These guys are way too into their roles...’
He stuffed his phone under a textbook and looked again at his math test, on which he had only scored an 87.
The test was out of 150 points, with 90 being a passing grade. Once again, he had failed to cross the passing threshold. A glorious defeat—my ass!
The phone under his textbook vibrated twice. It was a WeChat group he had joined a month ago called the "Cyan Dragon Study Group."
Back when he had just started his senior year, Li Dong had resolved to change his ways, feeling he couldn’t keep slacking off.
To get into a decent university, he had searched all over the internet for study groups, hoping to find a few academic aces who could guide him and let him experience the atmosphere of striving for Qingbei.
Instead, he had stumbled into this group by mistake.
The group only had a dozen or so members, but their IDs were more impressive than the last, and their avatars more vintage than the next.
Besides the [Isaac Newton] and [Galileo Galilei] who had just spoken, the member list also included names like [Gauss], [Faraday], and even an [Einstein] who had been lurking for what felt like an eternity.
They were all the legendary figures from the black-and-white photos hanging in history books.
This wasn’t a study group at all; it was clearly a large-scale rehabilitation center for people with eighth-grade syndrome.
He had originally thought the group would discuss things like predicting trends in past exam questions.
But what did he get instead?
They didn’t spend all day discussing college entrance exam math problems. Instead, it was all wave-particle duality of light, the derivation of the mass-energy equivalence equation, the 3n+1 conjecture, and the like.
Li Dong recognized every word individually, but when strung together, they were complete gibberish to him.
’A bunch of posers.’
Li Dong was already in a bad mood today, and watching this group of people act out their roles so seriously only irritated him more.
Newton was here asking about the speed of sound. What was next? Was that Faraday guy going to put on a show and touch a live socket with his bare hands?
Just as he was about to leave the group, his eyes scanned over Newton’s message again.
’Calculated value 979, measured 1142...’
Even though Li Dong was a slacker, he was still familiar with those two names.
Newton was the guy who sold apples with Jobs.
And Galileo, well, he was the guy who dropped things from a tall tower.
He’d learned about them in his textbooks.
’If you’re all going to role-play, then I’ll play along.’
Li Dong switched out of WeChat and opened "Douzhi AI."
He typed into the input box: "Why was there an error in Newton’s calculation for the speed of sound? Why is the actual measured value higher than the calculated value?"
Just two seconds later, a large block of text popped up.
Li Dong glanced at it. It was filled with words he didn’t understand at all, like "thermodynamics" and "adiabatic compression," but he couldn’t be bothered to care. He just copied and pasted it.
[Senior Year Grind]: @Isaac Newton, you might have gotten one thing wrong. The propagation of sound in air is an adiabatic process, not an isothermal one. So, you need to include the adiabatic index in your calculation, or there will definitely be a discrepancy.
As soon as the message was sent, the group suddenly fell silent.
Galileo, who had been discussing with Newton whether wind speed was affecting the measurement, also went quiet.
One second, two seconds, ten seconds...
Li Dong felt a strange sense of unease.
’What’s going on? Did the AI get it wrong?’
Just as Li Dong was about to retract the message and pretend nothing had happened, that Newton guy finally spoke up.
[Isaac Newton]: An adiabatic process? Do you mean to say, sir, that no heat is exchanged during this process?
[Isaac Newton]: How is that possible? Air is a fluid. Vibrations must be accompanied by compression and expansion. How could there be no heat conduction? Could you please elaborate, sir? What is this "adiabatic index"?
Li Dong looked at the screen and raised an eyebrow.
’Oh, so he’s really getting into it, huh?’
He switched back to Douzhi AI and typed: "Explain the adiabatic index in detail and its application in calculating the speed of sound."
This time, however, the normally responsive AI lagged and then displayed a conspicuous red exclamation mark.
[Network connection timed out. Please try again.]
"Damn it!"
Li Dong cursed under his breath and quickly tried again several times.
This time, there was no error message, but the answer that appeared was full of complex calculus formulas and a jumble of Greek letters that looked like gibberish, things like gamma = C_p / C_v, and partial differential equations.
Li Dong tried a few more times, asking the AI for a simple explanation, but it started spouting nonsense, jumping from quantum mechanics to advanced theories in fluid dynamics.
You have to remember, this was early 2022, a time when AIs frequently hallucinated.
’This artificial idiot!’
Li Dong started to get anxious.
Meanwhile, in the group chat, Newton also seemed to be getting anxious.
[Isaac Newton]: @Senior Year Grind, Sir? Are you still there? If you could elaborate, I would be most grateful!
Li Dong had no interest in such verbal thanks, but the problem was, he was only halfway through his act. He couldn’t just back down now, could he?
Li Dong gritted his teeth, his mind racing.
He tried his best to extract anything he could understand from the AI’s answer.
Since he couldn’t explain the complex principle, his only option was... to act profound!
[Senior Year Grind]: The mechanical velocity of sound propagation is far greater than the molecular velocity of heat transfer.
After sending that, he felt it wasn’t quite enough. To cover up his own uncertainty, he added another line.
[Senior Year Grind]: Figure the rest out yourself. One must not become lazy in their studies.
After sending that message, Li Dong felt like a true educator.
The group fell silent once again.
Just as Li Dong was waiting for a response, he felt the light above him suddenly dim.
Li Dong stiffly raised his head and saw his math teacher, Old Yang, his face etched with disappointment.
Old Yang’s voice wasn’t loud, but the surrounding students could still hear him.
"You’re on your phone day in and day out. You should reflect on why your math score is so terrible."
Old Yang shook his head and walked back to the teacher’s desk, his hands clasped behind his back.
A few suppressed snickers came from the students around him.
Li Dong’s face flushed bright red. The sense of superiority he’d felt from posturing in the group chat vanished in an instant.
Jiangcheng Seventh Middle School was, to be honest, a very average school.
The students’ grades here were generally not very good. The college acceptance rate was frankly embarrassing; last year, only a little over 100 seniors met the minimum score for an undergraduate program, and over 70 of them were art students.
Here, the teachers had only one requirement for their students: just don’t disturb others.
That was why Old Yang turned a blind eye to students bringing their phones to class.
After all, a student quietly reading a novel was much easier to manage than one who talked during class.
Li Dong watched Old Yang’s retreating back, feeling a pang of guilt.
The truth was, Li Dong studied quite hard, often staying up late to grind through practice problems. But some things really just came down to talent.
He was the type who studied hard, but his grades remained stubbornly mediocre.
If he were at a top-tier high school, he might be able to get into an ordinary Tier 1 university by giving it his all.
But here at Seventh Middle School, his ceiling was probably an ordinary Tier 2 university, and even that would require him to work himself to death.
It was a matter of educational resources, and a matter of fate.
’Whatever, I’m not going to think about this anymore.’
Li Dong sighed, ready to put his phone away and take a good look at his test corrections.
Just then, the phone in his palm vibrated twice more.
He glanced at it subconsciously.
[Isaac Newton]: @Senior Year Grind, Sir, are you saying that the essence of heat conduction is the motion of molecules? And not caloric fluid?
Li Dong read the line and thought the guy was just way too deep into his character, still rambling on about "caloric fluid" at a time like this.
’I can’t be bothered with you. Whatever, think what you want.’
He decided to ignore the group and focus on his studies.
Just as he was about to lock the screen,
[Isaac Newton]: Your idea is very novel. Although it subverts my previous understanding, my intuition tells me you are correct. I will verify it. Thank you for providing this line of thought.
Immediately after, a red packet suddenly appeared on the screen.
[Isaac Newton has sent you a direct red packet]
A red packet?
The instant the red packet appeared, Li Dong’s finger had already tapped on it.
However, what he received wasn’t a few yuan and jiao, but...
[You have received Isaac Newton’s thanks.]
[Item Acquired: Concentration +1]
[Description: This is a token of gratitude from a titan of science.]
[When he thought, the world stood still. He was once so focused that he threw his pocket watch into boiling water instead of an egg.]
[Now you will experience this same Concentration, powerful enough to pierce through to the truth.]
[Duration: One hour (can be activated at any time)]
Li Dong froze. Before he could even react, a blue option box appeared out of thin air in front of him: [Use Now: Yes/No].
’For real?’
His finger lightly tapped "Yes."
A countdown timer immediately appeared before his eyes...
59:59
59:58, 59:57, 59:56...
Li Dong swallowed, looking back at the "Cyan Dragon Study Group" in disbelief.
[Isaac Newton]: I hope to receive your guidance again in the future.
A jolt of electricity shot up from the base of his spine to the top of his skull.
This...
Could it be that this group wasn’t for role-playing?
Could it be that those people weren’t just playing scientists, but were actual scientists?
So, a moment ago... did he really just lecture Newton, telling him "one must not become lazy in their studies"?
