My IQ has been increasing year by year.

Chapter 67 Ignored Arrogance

The half-hour blind test has ended.

Wang Huashao looked at the draft paper in front of him, which was a mess of corrections, with the lines intertwined into a knot.

Frustrated, I grabbed a handful of my hair.

Zhou Kai, who was standing next to him, did not move.

He maintained the same pen-holding posture, his eyes fixed on the half-written nonlinear algebraic equation on the paper.

The pen tip stopped on the paper, and the ink spread out as a tiny black dot.

He knew he had entered a dead end, but the inertia of his brain made him want to keep looking for a way out.

Chen Zhuo was lying on the third experimental table.

He was not asleep.

She simply buried her face in her crossed arms.

He closed his eyes.

My nasal cavity was filled with the smell of old wood and pine resin, the kind of smell that comes from a laboratory where sunlight never shines.

His right hand hung limply at the edge of the table.

Professor Wang did not urge him.

He left the podium and walked down the aisle, taking away the two sheets of paper belonging to Zhou Kai and Wang Huashao.

As Professor Wang walked to the front of the classroom, he also stacked the two sheets of paper that Chen Zhuo and Lin Yi had handed in earlier together.

Six sheets of paper.

They all ended up in Professor Wang's hands.

He walked back to the podium.

He pulled over the chipped wooden chair and sat down.

He didn't rush to look at the paper in his hand.

Instead, he rolled the paper into a tube and held it in his hand.

The laboratory was very quiet.

All that could be heard was the occasional chirping of cicadas outside the window, and the rustling of the wind through the leaves of the sycamore trees.

"Zhou Kai".

Professor Wang spoke up.

The voice was calm, without any sarcasm, just an objective statement.

Zhou Kai raised his head.

"You wrote down four equations on the paper."

Professor Wang unfolded the paper tube in his hand, pulled out a piece of paper, and glanced at it.

"You're trying to use Kirchhoff's laws to calculate node voltages and reverse-engineer the topology."

"The idea is very advanced. If the box is full of pure resistors, you might even be able to solve it."

Professor Wang looked at Zhou Kai.

"But there is a diode inside."

"The direction of the diode is unknown. When you assume a current direction to build an equation, if that direction is reversed and blocked, your entire network topology will change."

"1

"Every unknown you introduce is a lie to yourself."

Zhou Kai pursed his lips into a straight line.

He didn't speak.

There was no exaggerated reaction.

He simply reached up and rubbed his temples slowly.

Upon hearing Professor Wang's analysis, the anxiety he felt from not being able to solve the problem suddenly subsided.

Instead, there is a profound sense of helplessness.

He knew where he went wrong.

They complicate simple problems and use high-level mathematical tools to mask the neglect of the underlying physical logic.

This is the arrogance that they are most prone to making.

Professor Wang put Zhou Kai's paper aside and took out the second one.

The drawing above looks like a tangled mess.

"Wang is a man of few words."

The boy whose name was called shrugged slightly.

He was lying face down on the table, with only half of his head showing.

"Four terminals, including positive and negative terminals, for a total of twelve directional variables."

Professor Wang's tone remained calm.

"You're just poking around with the watch pen."

"When you got to the fifth one, did you still remember the positive and negative terminals and the resistance value of the first one?"

Wang Huashao buried his face in his arms and let out a soft, frustrated sigh.

"People shouldn't blindly trust their own brains."

"Especially when you are extremely tired and processing disorganized information."

"You're running around like a headless fly, not because you're not smart enough."

"It's because you have too much faith in your cleverness and disdain using the more rudimentary methods to record things."

Professor Wang put down the paper that Wang Shuoshuo was referring to.

They took out the third and fourth cards.

"Miao Shi'an, return home."

Professor Wang glanced at the two boys.

"You two, for the first twenty minutes, were just like them."

"But in the last ten minutes, you chose to give up."

Miao Shi'an paused for a moment as he pushed up his glasses.

He Gui clutched the hem of his clothes somewhat awkwardly.

"One started by honestly making a list, while the other used the most rigid method to check each item one by one."

"Although you are slow."

"But in this desperate situation, you have found the safest bottom line when facing an unknown system."

"Record, and exhaustive search."

Professor Wang put down all the draft paper in his hand.

He stood up.

Pick up a piece of chalk from the chalk box.

Turn around and face the blackboard.

The chalk made a crisp, tinkling sound as it swept across the blackboard.

A horizontal line. A vertical line.

Three horizontal lines. Three vertical lines.

A neat, 44-square matrix table appeared in the center of the blackboard.

A big X is drawn on the diagonal.

The row and column coordinates are marked A, B, C, and D next to it.

Finished drawing.

Professor Wang turned around and pointed to the grid on the blackboard with his chalk-dust-covered hands.

"Some people think that making a list and testing each item is a stupid method with no technical skill involved."

Professor Wang's gaze swept over the boys below.

Finally, the object of the attack landed on Chen Zhuo, who was still slumped over the table.

Chen Zhuo opened his eyes when he heard the sound of chalk.

But he didn't sit up.

He remained in that prone position, chin resting on his arm, looking at the blackboard through his glasses.

"In physics, this is called black box detection."

"This table is called a transfer matrix."

Professor Wang tapped the blackboard twice heavily with his finger.

"When you are faced with a completely unknown and complex system."

"Don't try to guess what's inside. Don't gamble with your gut feeling."

List all inputs and exhaustively list all outputs.

"A complex, brain-overloading physical topology problem."

"Reducing the dimension to a pure, data-driven fill-in-the-blank question that requires no thought."

The laboratory was so quiet that only breathing could be heard.

"As long as your grid is full enough, and as long as your execution is as rigid as a machine."

"All nonlinear components, all hidden short-circuit points."

"They'll all be exposed in this form."

"The truth will reveal itself in the data."

Wang, who spoke little, slowly raised his head.

He looked at the extremely simple 44 grid on the blackboard.

He just bit his lower lip in frustration.

Zhou Kai sat there.

He reached out and took a clean sheet of draft paper.

Remove the pen cap.

Silently, stroke by stroke, he drew the grid from the blackboard onto the paper.

Draw a horizontal line.

Draw vertical lines.

He is experiencing it.

Experience the clarity of cutting a tangled mess into structured data.

I am convinced.

Professor Wang observed their reactions.

He didn't say another word of nonsense.

He walked back to the podium and bent down.

wow~

A dull thud of metal colliding with plastic.

A huge, dusty cardboard box was dragged out from under the podium by Professor Wang.

The cardboard box was moved to the lectern.

It was packed full.

It was full of discarded old radio motherboards, tangled breadboards, and electronic components with oxidized and blackened surfaces.

It smelled strongly of old electronic waste.

"Alright."

Professor Wang patted the dust off his hands.

"You've regained your rationality, haven't you?"

He glanced at the clock on the wall.

It was exactly 3 p.m.

"There are still two and a half hours until dinner."

Professor Wang pointed to the large cardboard box.

"Now, come up and get the board."

The boys below were stunned for a moment.

"Use this stupid method that you just learned and look down on."

Professor Wang's tone left no room for negotiation.

"Find out all the hidden short circuits and cold solder joints on these boards, one by one."

"Don't guess with your brain, draw tables on scratch paper, and fill in the data with a multimeter."

"Practice until you develop muscle memory."

A helpless sigh echoed in the laboratory.

Chen Zhuo, slumped over the table.

My shoulder slumped.

He slowly and reluctantly sat up.

He reached out and rubbed the side of his face where a red mark had been pressed.

Then, I picked up the multimeter on the table.

The first table.

Professor Wang walked over and tapped the table lightly with the paper tube in his hand.

Lin Yi, who was lying there, was interrupted from his sleep.

She turned over reluctantly, like a fish out of water.

Then, he slowly got up.

Her hair was messy, with a few stray hairs sticking up on top of her head.

She rubbed her eyes, and there was still a red mark on her cheek from the zipper of her canvas bag.

"Huh? Dinner's ready?"

Lin Yi mumbled something in a daze.

Professor Wang ignored her and took out an old motherboard with complicated circuitry and covered in dust from the box, throwing it directly in front of Lin Yi.

"Get up and get back to work once you've rested enough."

"Intuition is a gift from God, but you also need to improve my basic skills."

Lin Yi looked at the dirty board in front of him.

I could smell that musty, dusty odor.

She let out a vivid, exaggerated sigh.

There was no resistance.

Unzip the canvas bag and take out a pen.

Resigned to his fate, he began to work.

The next two and a half hours.

The previous anxious and blind panic was gone from the laboratory.

Six people.

Six experimental platforms.

Each person had a piece of draft paper covered with grids laid out in front of them.

Throughout the entire room.

There was only a slight friction sound when the metal tips of the probes touched the solder joints on the motherboard.

The clicking sound of the gear selector knob turning.

And the scratching sound of a ballpoint pen recording data on paper.

The sunlight shifted slightly.

As I stepped out of the corridor window, the light in the laboratory began to dim.

The scent of pine resin in the air grew stronger and stronger.

This was an extremely tedious, industrial-assembly-like mine clearance operation.

The process is repeated continuously: locate, power on, record, switch nodes.

Chen Zhuo sat in a chair.

Looking at the rows of data on the draft paper.

The web of my right hand is a little stiff.

He put down the pen, shook his hand, and picked up the pen again to write down the resistance value.

Lin Yi propped his head up.

The black probe is placed on a solder joint, and the red probe moves on the other end.

While looking at the pointer of the multimeter, draw an X on the paper.

Then move on to the next point.

The movements were slow, but very rhythmic.

Occasionally, when she encounters a place with a thick layer of dust, she will casually wipe it with her thumb, completely unconcerned that her fingers will get smudged and black.

5:30 p.m.

The outside light had turned a deep orange-red.

"Time's up."

Professor Wang's voice sounded like a pardon.

In the laboratory.

Almost simultaneously, six heavy exhalations were heard.

The pen was thrown on the table.

The draft paper was pushed aside.

The boys looked like puddles of mud that had been drained of moisture.

He slumped into the chair.

"Clean up, get out of class dismissed."

Professor Wang rolled up the attendance list, put his hands behind his back, and slowly walked out of the laboratory.