Diqin Designer

Chapter 247: Leading to the Study of the Investigation of Things
Arriving outside several classrooms, Li Nian said, "This is where you take your music and painting classes. There are no hard and fast test requirements for these two classes, but if you can learn well, it will be beneficial."

The painting class was added by Li Nian later, with the aim of strengthening students' ability to draw, recognize and make maps.

They will need drawings when they join Daqin's industrial construction in the future. Even if they do not become Daqin's industrial builders, drawings will be very useful when they go to the battlefield or become navigators.

For example, when sailing on the sea, if you encounter unknown plants and animals and don’t have a camera, you have to record them by drawing them yourself.

Li Nian pointed to several other classrooms and said, "That is where you will take some of the courses on the study of things in the future. The course on the study of things does not mean that you can figure out the principles behind something just by looking at it. Instead, you need to observe it yourself and even operate it in order to understand its principles, know its causes, and know how it can be used."

"Like bamboo, if you move a chair and sit there, staring at it, can you understand why it grows from a shoot to a bamboo, and why it has this shape and structure?"

Li Nian looked at the students and saw them shaking their heads. He then continued, "So you need to grow bamboo yourself, cut it open, and use the tools to observe its details. Let me ask you a question. Do you think bamboo is a grass or a tree?"

This question...all the students, including the teachers who accompanied them, thought about it. From their usual experience, bamboo is obviously a tree, so how could it be a grass?

But since he asked this, it was definitely not the answer they were thinking of. However, bamboo was actually a kind of grass, which was really too unbelievable and overturned the common sense they had learned over the years.

Li Nian did not wait for their answer and said, "As for whether bamboo is a tree or grass, according to your usual perception, you would subconsciously think it is a tree. After all, in your opinion, grass should not grow too tall, but bamboo can grow tall and strong. If it is classified according to height and strength, bamboo can indeed be classified as a tree."

"But if you look more closely at bamboo's habits and structure, you'll find that it's more similar to grass and should be classified as such."

"I tell you this question because I hope that you will not substitute your daily feelings and experiences into your future studies and take them for granted. The world is constantly changing and moving, so knowledge should also keep changing with it to be more accurate, and not stick to the old ways."

An older student who was obviously from a royal family thought for a while, bowed to Li Nian, and asked, "If it is true as you said, the world is constantly changing and moving, and knowledge should also keep changing with it, doesn't it mean that what we learn today will be useless tomorrow, and what we learn tomorrow will be useless the day after tomorrow?"

"If this goes on, what's the point of what we're learning today? How can we find accurate knowledge? Everything is changing anyway, and we will never be able to find the most accurate truth."

Li Nian said: "That's a good question, but movement and change are a property of the world. If we want to find the exact reason, we must understand the cause of movement and change."

"But this process is extremely difficult and time-consuming, so we can only get closer to the correct truth step by step, but we can't get there directly."

“Therefore, there will be errors and omissions in this process. That is, what we learn today and think is correct will be found to be not completely correct after new discoveries tomorrow. We should correct and improve it, so that we can get closer to the most accurate truth step by step.”

“So your words, ‘What we learn today is useless tomorrow, and what we learn tomorrow is useless the day after tomorrow,’ are indeed wrong. What we learn today may indeed be considered wrong and discarded tomorrow, but it is the ladder for us to reach the correct truth.”

“Without today’s mistakes, how can there be tomorrow’s correct answers?” These words did not make many students think, but they did make Zhuang Huang, Li Shiqi and others who were accompanying them think deeply. The first thing they thought of was the theories they had learned. Do these also need to be gradually revised as the world changes in order to reach the most perfect and accurate state?
Being able to learn a lot from Li Nian is the main reason why Zhuang Huang, Li Shiqi and others are willing to stay with Li Nian and be appointed as teachers by Li Nian.

Li Nian added: "But there are things in the world that never change. For example, we are all the people of the Qin Dynasty. Our ancestors are Yan and Huang. This is the inheritance of the spirit of civilization. You must remember it."

The student bowed to Li Nian and said, "Thank you for clearing up my doubts!"

Leaving the teaching area, we arrived at the cafeteria, which was modeled after the cafeterias of later schools. Li Nian said, "This is the cafeteria. We serve three meals a day, breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Everyone needs to get their own meals here."

The students saw that there were many tables and chairs in the cafeteria, but they were all long tables and long chairs, which could obviously accommodate several people sitting together. There were also some words they didn't recognize painted on the walls and pillars of the cafeteria, and there were strange symbols on the words.

The characters should be the new characters mentioned by this person, and the symbols should be the "pinyin" that is rumored to help people recognize words quickly, but what is written?

What is actually written is such sayings as "Every meal should be appreciated as it is not easy to come by; every piece of silk should be remembered as it is not easily produced by any means" and "When the sun is at its highest point in the sky, I am hoeing the field and my sweat drips onto the soil; but who knows that every grain of rice on the plate is the result of hard work?"

Just as Li Nian was about to take the students to visit their dormitories, a guard came to report: "Sir, everything is ready!"

Li Nian nodded and said to the students who were watching the cafeteria, "Everyone, follow me to see something interesting."

What's ready, anything fun?

Full of curiosity and confusion, the students returned to the playground under the leadership of Li Nian, but there were other people and horses on the playground now.

There were four hemispherical shells placed on the ground in the middle. Someone was fiddling with them. When they saw Li Nian coming, they all saluted.

Li Nian nodded in return, pointed at the sphere shell, and said to the students: "These four hemispheres can be combined to become two spheres. You can all go over and take a look. It's okay to touch them. Something unexpected will happen later."

After listening to Li Nian's words, some interested students walked over to take a look. The four hemispherical shells were all made of copper. There were several buttons on the surface of the shells, and a layer of something made of unknown material was placed in the middle of the shells. It didn't feel special to the touch, and was just an ordinary hollow copper ball.

But someone next to them asked them to put the spherical shells together and try to see if they could be separated. Could it be that after these hemispherical shells were put together, they could not be separated?
However, after the students put the spherical shells together, they separated them again easily. This made the students who tried very confused. There was nothing special about it. How could they be separated?
But the people around him just smiled and said nothing.

This is a reproduction of the famous Magdeburg hemisphere experiment. Its purpose is to open the eyes of today's enrolled students, let them know that the world is big and magical, and stimulate their interest in learning about the world!
Of course, in this world, there should be no Magdeburg hemisphere experiment, but instead there will be the Liuying Palace hemisphere experiment.

(End of this chapter)