Emperor Zhengde

Chapter 266: Da Vinci recites Tang poetry and opens up new routes
The large amount of spices, ebony, sweet potatoes and silver that Zhang Yanling brought back forced the Ming bureaucrats to believe that this marquis had actually made a long voyage.

Moreover, the bureaucrats of the Ming Dynasty also began to accept the concept of the earth, and as a result, more and more people in the Ming Dynasty began to accept this concept.

Especially after the explanation that people on Earth did not fall off because the Earth has gravity spread.

However, not all people in the Ming Dynasty were interested in paying attention to what gravity is and studying why the earth has gravity.

Most people still eat when they should eat and sleep when they should sleep.

Of course, there are exceptions. Wang Wensu is now struggling with the question of why the earth has gravity.

The prosperity of the Ming Dynasty and the emphasis that Emperor Zhu Houzhao placed on natural sciences such as Han Mohism enabled Ming scientists like Wang Wensu to have enough energy to study without having to worry about their livelihood or even their life ideals.

Boom!
In the Imperial University, on a three-story building with red walls and green tiles, Wang Wensu held an apple in his hand and let it go. The bright red apple fell into the clear pool below, creating ripples.

After the water surface returned to calm, Wang Wensu released another identical apple carved out of stone. The stone apple once again fell into the clear water pool downstairs, creating ripples.

"People don't fall from the earth because of gravity. Now we can see that when objects of different weights fall into the water, the waves caused are obviously different. It can be seen that the greater the weight, the greater the gravity of the earth on the object. I just don't know how to calculate this gravity."

Wang Wensu racked his brains to think, and then tried to throw two lumps of mud and stones of the same weight but different volumes into the pool.

There was another thud.

"Geese, geese, geese, singing with their necks bent toward the sky." Leonardo da Vinci, a sixty-year-old overseas student studying in the Department of Chinese Literature at the Imperial University of Peking, happened to be reciting Tang poems under the apple tree beside the pond. He was startled and turned around to see that it was Wang Wensu. He bowed and then took the copy of "Three Hundred Tang Poems" published by Hanlin Bookstore in the third year of Zhengde in his hand and prepared to go somewhere else to recite Tang poems.

But on the way, Leonardo couldn't help but sigh in his heart: "In this empire, artists and scientists are really rich and can conduct their own research seriously without worrying about hunger."

After Leonardo da Vinci sighed, he became more determined to learn Chinese and create art and science in the Ming Dynasty. Therefore, he recited Tang poetry again: "Geese, geese, geese, singing with their necks bent to the sky, their white feathers..."

Leonardo da Vinci found it difficult to learn Chinese, especially the ancient poems of the Eastern Empire. He had no choice but to pick up the book and read it again from right to left. He thought, "I heard that this poem was written by a Han Chinese named Luo Binwang when he was seven years old. A seven-year-old could write such a difficult poem. The intelligence of the Han Chinese in this empire is really terrifying! No wonder they can invent so many things!"

Although Leonardo da Vinci thought that the Han people were very smart, Wang Wensu did not think he was that smart. He found that he still could not determine the calculation method of force and gravity of the earth. As a mathematician, he had great doubts about his intelligence.

Wang Wensu had no choice but to ask for an audience with Zhu Houzhao again: "Your Majesty, please forgive my ignorance, so I have to bother you. I really can't find a way to calculate force. In this way, I can't be sure how to calculate the gravity of the earth. Please teach me, Your Majesty!"

Zhu Houzhao understood Wang Wensu's doubts very well. After all, it was only the twelfth year of Zhengde, and the founders of classical physics such as Galileo and Newton had not yet appeared. It was still the era of great geographical discoveries and a period of great development in astronomy. It had only been four years since Copernicus proposed the heliocentric theory, and Bruno had not yet been born. It was naturally impossible for Wang Wensu to think of all the calculation methods in classical physics at once.

"This is not difficult," Zhu Houzhao said casually.

"Isn't this difficult? I have been thinking about it for a long time but can't come up with a solution!" Wang Wensu thought so in his heart, and then he bowed and said: "Your Majesty, please enlighten me!"

"In that case, let me ask you first, can you be sure what this thing called force is related to?" Zhu Houzhao asked.

"I can be sure that the heavier the object, the greater the force it produces when falling from the same height," said Wang Wensu.

"That's enough. If that's the case, you can consider the force to be proportional to the weight of the object. This proportionality means that the heavier the object, the greater the force. Then you can create a symbol to represent it, like this."

Zhu Houzhao wrote F∝m on rice paper with a brush as if he was teaching a junior high school student: "This means that force is proportional to weight."

Zhu Houzhao had already promoted Arabic numerals, Latin letters and some special characters needed in natural sciences to the Imperial University of Peking, so Wang Wensu was not unfamiliar with this formula and just nodded obediently.

"Then you set a coefficient, expressed in g, and assume that g multiplied by weight is the gravitational force exerted by the earth on the object, isn't it F=mg? Then, can't you know the strength of the force just by knowing the weight of the object and the g?"

After Zhu Houzhao said this, Wang Wensu suddenly realized: "Your Majesty is wise!"

Zhu Houzhao only smiled faintly. He didn't think this was difficult. After all, a middle school student in the future could master it. However, he could understand why Wang Wensu was so shocked. After all, this way of thinking was indeed a great inspiration for the people of the Ming Dynasty at his time. After Wang Wensu was inspired by Zhu Houzhao, he knew that all he needed to do now was to determine how much g was. However, because of this, he became even crazier than before he went to Zhu Houzhao and began to think about how to measure g.

When Zhu Houzhao found out about this, he was very supportive and said that if Wang Wensu needed help, she could go directly to the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Education should not shirk its responsibility.

However, Zhu Houzhao did not directly tell Wang Wensu what the general acceleration of gravity is. He wanted Wang Wensu and other Ming Dynasty people to calculate it themselves. The significance of this is not only to let the people of the Ming Dynasty know the answer to the acceleration of gravity, but also to let them know how to find the answer.

After the concept of the earth was deeply rooted in the hearts of the people in the Ming Dynasty, people like Xia Yan thought of letting the Ming Dynasty seize global resources as soon as possible, while Wang Wensu thought of studying more in-depth physics. Zhu Houzhao not only supported the former, but also the latter. He knew that it was impossible to wait for Galileo and Newton to be born to establish classical physics, and that the Ming Dynasty's own scientists had to establish various laws of natural sciences such as physics and mathematics.

While Wang Wensu was still working on measuring the earth's gravitational force, Xia Yan and Zhang Yanling had already arrived in Haojing, Xiangshan County (Hong Kong), Guangdong and Guangxi in the early spring of February in the 13th year of Zhengde.

Today, Haojing has become the shipping center of the entire South Daming Sea.

Every May and June, countless official or private Ming Dynasty sailing ships would carry raw silk, cotton, silk, soap, glass, high-carbon steel knives, and springs purchased from the mainland to Japan during the monsoon. These goods would then be exchanged for silver and returned to Macau during the monsoon after November.

In the Ming Dynasty, the cost of raw silk, cotton and silk cloth had dropped to an extremely low level with the promotion of the mechanical spinning industry. Soap, glass, high-carbon steel knives and springs were considered high-tech products in that era, and only the Ming Dynasty could produce them, so the profits from selling them to Japan were very high.

Basically, the profits are above 100%, and some are even as high as 200%.

The profit of Ming Dynasty merchant ships from each trip was more than two million taels of silver each year.

Of course, in the past, this route was controlled by Portugal.

But after the Ming Emperor agreed to Lin Ting's choice of opening the sea in Guangdong and Guangxi and training a navy, which is now the navy, and especially after the Ming navy wiped out the small Portuguese fleet that attempted to occupy Malacca, this route belonged to the Ming.

From Japan to Malacca, there were basically only Ming Dynasty ships in the entire Ming Dynasty sea area.

Now with the opening of Macau as a port, this route has officially become a fixed route from Macau to Nagasaki, Japan.

However, with the opening of Songjiang as a port, the future route to Japan will undoubtedly change from Shanghai County, Songjiang Prefecture to Nagasaki, Japan, and thus Macau's shipping status will undoubtedly be affected.

Officials in Guangdong and Guangxi, who had benefited greatly from the opening of the port of Haojing, were deeply worried about this. The Governor-General of Guangdong and Guangxi, Wang Hong, even repeatedly submitted memorials to the court hoping that the Songjiang River would not be opened.

Of course, Wang Hong could not stop the court's decision.

Therefore, now that Songjiang has been opened as a port, officials from Guangdong and Guangxi have become more anxious. After Xia Yan arrived in Haojing, officials from Guangdong and Guangxi such as Wang Hong immediately asked Xia Yan if he had any solutions.

Xia Yan was the first to think of a solution, which was to open up a new route.

"My dear colleagues, the advantageous position of Haojing in going to Japan may be replaced by Songjiang Prefecture in the future, but this does not mean that Haojing will decline. Now I am here with the order of His Majesty to open up a new route for Haojing. Do you know where the biggest advantage of Guangdong and Guangxi is?"

Xia Yan asked.

Officials from Guangdong and Guangxi hurriedly said in unison: "Please let the minister make it clear!"

"The advantage of Guangdong and Guangxi is that we have the Haicheng Port in Malacca. We can open a route from Haojing to Haicheng and then to India to transport pepper, iron ore, copper ore, hematite, sandalwood, ivory, musk and other Indian products back to the Ming Dynasty, especially the ores. The Ming Dynasty is short of ores now!

In order to protect the Feng Shui (environmental ecology) and reserve resources of the Ming Dynasty, His Majesty the Emperor, coupled with the opposition of some stubborn ministers to quarrying, the ore in the territory cannot be mined at will, and we can only transport the ore from abroad back first! This is what the officials and people of Guangdong and Guangxi need to do. I believe that with this route, we can collect taxes in Guangdong and Guangxi that are not less than the current amount. Moreover, we can also transport the gold and silver mines in Cape Verde back via Goa, India in the future, and make more money at that time!"

After Xia Yan said this, all the officials from Guangdong and Guangxi present smiled. Wang Hong was the first to smile and said, "Of course it is. As long as the court is willing, if this route is opened, gold and silver will surely flow in like water. The officials and people of Guangdong and Guangxi will have no worries about not getting rich!"

Many thanks to my book friend Chaoxuexuechia for the reward of 100 book coins. According to Fan Shuzhi's "History of Late Ming Dynasty", the main trade route of Macau during the Jiajing period was from Macau to Japan. The data here is also based on this book. The author will continue to write, and I hope everyone will keep subscribing so that the author will have the motivation to keep writing.

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(End of this chapter)