They're already in university, and the primary school system is only just starting out?

After chatting with President Peng for another five minutes, Chen Lin finally hung up the voice call.

He leaned back in his chair, let out a long sigh of relief, and felt relieved.

I'm really lucky.

Peng Yifeng is the kind of person who has been navigating the social world for many years.

His calm and composed demeanor, along with his impeccable and considerate manner of speaking, made Chen Lin, a young man who prided himself on his rich social experience, deeply understand what it meant to be outmaneuvered.

Take changing your major as an example.

Chen Lin had this idea two days after receiving the title of "Little Mathematician".

But after excitedly checking the school's official website for the regulations on changing majors, he gave up immediately.

Yannan University's regulations clearly state that, in principle, students admitted as liberal arts students in the college entrance examination are not allowed to transfer to science and engineering majors.

This one thing alone has basically blocked the road.

Not to mention there's another strict requirement: students applying to change their major must have a GPA in the top 15% of their original major for all previous semesters.

Chen Lin recalled his dismal transcripts from his freshman and sophomore year semesters, which were filled with scores in the sixties. Forget about being in the top 15%, he would have been lucky to even be in the top 51%.

So he gave up without even thinking about it.

But after hearing what General Peng said, Chen Lin suddenly realized that his previous thinking was still too naive.

Rules are dead, people are alive.

Rules are always meant to constrain ordinary people. But having the title of "little mathematician," I am clearly no longer considered an ordinary person in the field of mathematics.

As Mr. Peng said, as long as he can find a suitable occasion to showcase his mathematical talents in their entirety, and as long as the school leaders and the professors and deans of the School of Mathematical Sciences haven't been brainwashed, they will definitely not prevent him from changing his major.

At that time, not only will the restrictions on crossing between arts and sciences be lifted, but even the GPA requirements will be completely circumvented.

What do schools want? Grades, honors, and a reputation that can make them famous in the academic world!

The greater the value you demonstrate, the more exceptions the school will be willing to make for you.

Having figured this out, Chen Lin felt a sudden sense of clarity.

I'll focus on doing well on my final exams this semester, at least to avoid getting too bad grades in my major. After the exams, I'll try to find an opportunity to connect with the leaders of the School of Mathematical Sciences.

Didn't Shen Yan say that she was appreciated by a mathematics professor and allowed to start graduate-level research ahead of schedule?

I wonder if we'll have a chance to meet at the exchange event in mid-July.

Chen Lin believes that the more professional a person is, the better they understand what their mathematical talent truly means.

With a clear plan in mind, Chen Lin felt much more relaxed.

He snapped out of his daze and looked at Sun Yu, who was staring at him longingly across the table, not even daring to take a sip of his lemonade.

"Did Mr. Peng send you a new design proposal?"

"Ah! Right, right, right!" Sun Yu suddenly realized, and quickly turned on his office laptop and logged into his company email.

Sure enough, an email marked "Important" was quietly sitting at the top of the inbox.

"Master, the email just arrived."

Chen Lin glanced at the time in the lower right corner of the computer screen; it was not yet 12:30.

"Okay, I happen to be free this afternoon," he stood up. "Let's go, let's hurry up and try to finish it for President Peng and send it over today."

He led Sun Yu to the third floor of the library with practiced ease.

There weren't many people studying at that time, so Chen Lin easily found an empty single study room.

After the two went inside, Chen Lin closed the door, cutting off all outside noise.

He pointed to the table and said to Sun Yu, "Just like last time, I don't quite understand your engineering design plan. First, summarize the problems in the plan into mathematical problems that need to be solved, and then explain them to me."

"Okay, okay, no problem!" Sun Yu was not surprised at all; he was familiar with the procedure.

He immediately turned on his computer, put on his headphones, and began to concentrate intently on studying the design proposal.

Seeing that Sun Yu had gotten into work mode, Chen Lin didn't sit idle either. He took out his laptop and the class notes he had just made that morning from his backpack, and then opened the PPT that Professor Wang had used in class on his phone, and began to review the key points for the final exam of "Appreciation of Chinese and Foreign Literary Trends".

For a moment, the small study room was filled only with the soft hum of the two laptop fans and the occasional tapping of Sun Yu's keyboard and the soft clicking of the mouse.

More than an hour later, Sun Yu took off his headphones, let out a long breath, and turned to look at Chen Lin.

"Master, I've finished my research, I can tell you now."

Chen Lin pressed Ctrl+S to save his newly compiled review notes, closed his laptop, and pulled up a chair to move closer.

"So, what's the problem this time?"

"This time it's about a large-scale cross-river pedestrian bridge project," Sun Yu said, pointing to a bridge design drawing on the screen that was extremely complex and full of smooth curves. "Our design institute is responsible for designing the prestressed concrete main beam."

"To ensure the safety and durability of the bridge, we must accurately calculate the theoretical elongation of the prestressed steel strands inside the main beam during the tensioning process."

Sun Yu switched between several documents and brought up a cross-sectional diagram of a steel strand.

"Simply put, the core issue is to calculate how much a continuously bent steel bar (which can be mathematically viewed as a space curve) will be stretched after being subjected to a huge tensile force P, that is, the total elastic elongation ΔL."

Chen Lin nodded, signaling him to continue.

"The most commonly used method in engineering is called the 'piecewise linear superposition method'," Sun Yu explained. "It involves manually dividing this complex curved steel strand into several segments according to its direction, some of which are straight lines and some are arcs."

"For a straight line segment, it's very simple, just apply Hooke's Law."

"The tricky part is the curved section. Because the steel strand is threaded through the pipe, it will rub against the pipe wall when stretched. So the tension will decrease after passing through a bend. We usually use an exponential friction model to calculate the decreased tension, and then use an approximate formula to calculate the elongation of this curved section."

Sun Yu's expression turned troubled: "Our design institute has always used this most conventional simplification method. However, as you have seen in the design drawings of this landscape bridge, for the sake of aesthetics, it contains several arc segments with particularly large radii of curvature, making its shape very unique."

"The theoretical elongation calculated using the old method has a systematic deviation of about 2% from the data measured by actual construction monitoring. Although it may not sound like much, it exceeds half of the allowable error range in national regulations, and the project will not pass the acceptance test."

"Later, we also tried a more refined method, which was to further divide the arc segment into more and smaller straight line segments and accumulate the calculations. The result was somewhat improved, but the deviation was still around 1.5%, and the amount of calculation increased dramatically, which seriously slowed down the project progress."

Sun Yu looked at Chen Lin and finally brought up the core of the problem.

"Expert, the bottleneck we're facing now is that both conventional simplification methods and more refined segmentation methods essentially approximate a curve with a bunch of straight lines, which inherently introduces errors. When the degree of bending of the steel strand is greater and the effect of friction is more significant, this error will be amplified to an unacceptable level."

He took a deep breath, looked at Chen Lin with expectant eyes, and said slowly and deliberately, "Therefore, we need a new mathematical model that can truly integrate along the curve path, which is more accurate and efficient enough for calculation."