Training the Heavens

Chapter 321 Miracle Year

Zhang Xingjiu's paper was extremely convincing, but it encountered strong resistance from the academic community because it contradicted the wave theory of light expressed by James Maxwell, which had been rigorously tested theoretically and proven through precise experiments, and it could not explain the refractive and coherent properties of light waves.

Regarding the former, only experiments are needed to verify the correctness of the photoelectric effect; regarding the latter, it can also be explained, and the wave-particle duality of light can perfectly solve this contradiction.

However, Zhang Xingjiu was not in a hurry to publish these two results. The experiment had certain requirements for equipment and it was difficult to complete it now. It was also a bit early to publish the wave-particle duality theory now, so it would be better to wait until the future.

So Zhang Xingjiu allowed the two sides to engage in a war of words in magazines. Sometimes it was okay to have a quarrel, but the more they quarreled, the greater the impact of the photoelectric effect would be. When he used experiments to prove that his theory was correct in the future, it would cause a bigger sensation. At that time, the Nobel Prize Committee would continue to have a headache. This theory was worthy of a Nobel Prize anyway.

In addition to the criticism, there were also many people who supported Zhang Xingjiu. They also wrote letters to communicate with Zhang Xingjiu. The first group was naturally old acquaintances such as Lippmann, the Curies, and Lang Zhiwan. The Curies also thanked Zhang Xingjiu for his nomination in the letter. They both won the Nobel Prize in Physics last year.

Zhang Xingjiu won the first Nobel Prize in Physics, and the second prize was shared by German scholar Roentgen, Dutch scientists Lorentz and Zeeman. Roentgen was at a disadvantage, as he originally won the prize alone, but now he only got half of the prize money.

The third winners were Becquerel and Curie of the Sorbonne University. The former won the award for discovering natural radioactivity, and the latter won the award for their joint research on the radioactive phenomenon discovered by Becquerel.

So in the distribution of the prize money, Becquerel received half of the prize money, and the Curies shared the other half, which was the same distribution pattern as before among Roentgen, Lorentz and Zeeman.

Some scientists whom he had met during lectures and academic exchanges also wrote to him, and even some scientists who had never dealt with him before also enthusiastically communicated with him through letters.

The most active among them was Robert Andrew Millikan, an assistant professor at the University of Chicago. When Zhang Xingjiu went to the University of Chicago to communicate with Michelson, he happened to be out for something and did not meet him. Not long ago, he saw the paper in Nature and immediately became very interested in the article. He immediately asked Michelson for Zhang Xingjiu's mailing address and wrote him a letter.

In the letter, he praised Zhang Xingjiu's wild imagination, expressed great support for his photoelectric theory, and volunteered to verify the theory through experiments.

Zhang Xingjiu originally planned to do this experiment himself, but seeing that he was so enthusiastic, he provided him with some ideas and suggested that he use several different wavelengths of monochromatic light to measure the photocurrent under different voltages, and calculate the blocking voltage of the cathode under a certain wavelength of light from the relationship curve between photocurrent and voltage.

If the theory of photoelectric effect is correct, the curve of the stopping voltage obtained from these sets of photocurrent curves changing with the light frequency should be a beautiful straight line, and the value of Zhang Xingjiu's constant h can be calculated based on the slope of this straight line.

In the original story, Millikan used this experiment to verify the validity of the photoelectric effect, and for this achievement, he won the Nobel Prize in Physics two years after Einstein. Now, with his enthusiasm, Zhang Xingjiu felt a little embarrassed to snatch the prize from him. After all, there would be many opportunities to win prizes in the future, so he left this to Millikan. At that time, the sailing time from Shanghai to San Francisco was about 22 to 26 days. Zhang Xingjiu's reply letter first drifted at sea for over 20 days, then took a train from the West Coast to the Great Lakes region, and it took more than an hour before it was delivered to Millikan.

After reading the letter, he was very impressed with Zhang Xingjiu's plan and immediately began to prepare for the experiment. Unfortunately, during the preparation process, he discovered that with the current level of experimental equipment, it was not possible to complete this experiment for the time being. He could only collect information while trying to design the experimental equipment himself and report the information to Zhang Xingjiu from time to time.

Just when he was replying, Zhang Xingjiu came up with another heavyweight paper. He first proposed a new method for measuring molecular size in "A New Method for Determining Molecular Size".

Before the scientific community could react, another paper signed by Zhang Xingjiu was published in the journal Nature. He supplemented the previous paper with "The motion of suspended particles in static liquids required by the kinetic molecular theory of heat."

Immediately afterwards, the fourth paper came out and shocked the entire scientific community. This paper, "On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies", dispelled one of the two dark clouds in physics: "the determination of the zero drift of the ether wind by the Michelson-Morley experiment."

Non-physics researchers may find this name unfamiliar, but ordinary people only need to know a little bit: this article first proposed the concept of special relativity.

Physicists throughout Europe and the United States were excited. They hurriedly wrote letters to communicate with Zhang Xingjiu. Before their letters arrived in Shanghai, another new paper was published, "Is the inertia of an object related to the energy it contains?" In this paper, Zhang Xingjiu proposed a famous formula: E=mc, where E represents energy, m represents mass, and c is the speed of light in a vacuum.

Before the previous letter was delivered, many scientists took out paper and pen and began to write new letters. The entire physics community was shocked by Zhang Xingjiu's high productivity. For an ordinary scholar, if he could only publish one such high-quality paper in his lifetime, he would be remembered by future generations. However, Zhang Xingjiu actually published five papers in just one year, which was simply too exaggerated.

However, their surprise did not end there. When the December issue of Nature came out, they saw Zhang Xingjiu's name again. This time the title of the paper was "On the Theory of Brownian Motion."

In this article, Zhang Xingjiu imagined that millions of tiny particles, that is, atoms, collided with larger pollen grains, but at each time interval, there was always some imbalance that caused the larger particles to move slightly. Over time, this effect created the trembling motion that Brown observed in the pollen grains, that is, Brownian motion.

It is not known which scholar started the comparison, but the physics community began to compare this year with 1666, when Newton returned to his hometown of Woolsthorpe, Lincolnshire, to avoid the plague. Within a year, he single-handedly laid the foundations of four major disciplines: calculus, classical mechanics, optics, and astronomy (celestial mechanics). Later physicists called this year the Miracle Year.

Now Zhang Xingjiu has also made many heavyweight achievements in the same year, so can this year also be called a miracle year in the physics field?

(End of this chapter)