Damn it, I'm in the garbage book I wrote

Chapter 421

Just as Xia Lin was working on the vast black soil in Northeast China, two shocking events were slowly unfolding in Fuliang.

The first one was invented by a bunch of young idiots from the School of Engineering of Ehu Academy. The reason was that two months ago they planned to use the leftover materials from the sawmill, such as sawdust and other things from the peeling, to make straw paper.

That's toilet paper.

Making paper is not difficult. It is nothing more than grinding these things into pulp and then drying them. Straw paper does not need to be snow-white. As long as it does not make the leather swallows suffer from itching, it is good paper.

Then, these kids, whose average age was seventeen, struggled for a long time because a fat boy who was in charge of drying the paper was careless and did not preserve the collected papers properly. It happened to be the rainy season in the south at that time, so all the straw papers stuck together.

When the sun came out and the weather was good, they planned to verify their results, but found that the papers had already turned into hard cardboard.

Of course, the little fat guy was scolded by his companions, but at this moment one of them suddenly came up with an idea and said, "Hey, you said, we have paper armor now, but I think it's average. Do you think we should try making paper armor?"

When this idea came out, a group of people responded immediately. Then they began to study the paper armor of the Fuliang Arsenal. These paper armors were actually very good, but the problem was that they were not strong enough, and they were not fireproof or resistant to penetration. They were okay in defense against swords, but the rest was just average.

So these guys thought about every step of the process day and night, and finally found that there was a big problem in these paper armors, that is, the pulp was not ground finely enough, resulting in large gaps between the final cardboards, which caused the low strength of the paper armor.

But grinding pulp is indeed a huge engineering challenge. However, no matter how difficult the task is, it can withstand the clever thinking of these kids.

It was the same fat boy. His family ran a ceramic workshop, so he said, "I have a very large water-mill at home. Even ore blocks can be ground into pulp. Wouldn't it be easy to use it to grind paper?"

When the few people heard this, they stole the huge water mill jar and the roller underneath it from the kid's house overnight. The fat boy must have been beaten up the next day, but his father was open-minded. After beating him up, he just asked him to return it after use.

So these guys started from making wood pulp and tried little by little. After repeating it for more than ten times, the result was still not satisfactory. But as the saying goes, the world's problems cannot withstand the kids' active thinking. They tried to add all kinds of things to the pulp, such as wood glue, fish glue, tung oil and so on.

Then the pulp with different ingredients is placed in a dustpan and dried, and what you get is an irregular piece of cardboard.

This cardboard is amazing, harder than stone, fireproof and waterproof, light and strong. But there is still one last step before they can make it into shape, that is, the shape of this thing is not regular, how can it be used to make armor?
So these dozen people got together and discussed for three whole days, and finally they began to use the gypsum grouting method in the Fuliang porcelain making process, using the water absorption of gypsum to shape the armor. However, the things made in this way would crack, so they thought of another trick and added cotton thread to the paper pulp. What's more... the cracking problem was actually solved.

The results of the first batch were not very good, so they adjusted the formula of various ingredients and removed as many impurities as possible in the early stage. In the end, the fineness of the pulp was almost as good as milk, which meant that they had achieved their established goal.

After they had made a set of armor, they took it to the head of the arsenal and asked him to test it.

The head of the Fuliang Arsenal is a seventh-rank official. Normally, he would not pay attention to these brats. But what a coincidence! The new head is also a senior from the academy's engineering department. When he saw that his junior brought a strange thing to test, he decided to let them test it.

You won't know if you don't test it, and you'll be shocked when you test it. Although its toughness is relatively poor, its strength is really amazing. It won't rot in water or be damaged by fire. Swords, spears, halberds, axes, hooks and forks have very limited damage to it. Even a shotgun without a single-headed bullet cannot penetrate it at a distance of ten meters.

The key is that the weight of this thing is less than a quarter of the current Xialin composite armor. Although the process is complicated, if it is done step by step, the yield rate will be extremely high.

He was immediately excited, and without saying a word, he organized the regular army to carry out a wave of improvements and trial-production according to the formula of his junior brothers, and then compared them with the current normal armor. Facts have proved that the protective power of the paper armor produced in this way is not inferior to the current battle armor, and even the current armor of the same weight is far inferior to these paper armors.

After several rounds of improvements, these cardboard armors were distributed to military camps for multiple tests. The frontline soldiers generally gave them high praise, saying that they were lightweight and had excellent shock absorption effects.

With such feedback, the arsenal has to do cost accounting. If you don't calculate it, you won't know. Once you calculate it, you will be shocked to find that the price of these cardboards is less than one-third of the normal deck. If mass production can be achieved in the later stage, the cost may be further reduced.

The first thing the director of the arsenal did was to report the project to his superior unit, which was the Gong Yamen, one of the three subordinate yamen under Fuliang County. The yamen sent someone to verify it that same day.

What a coincidence! The official in this yamen was a classmate of the factory director, and they both majored in engineering. But although they were classmates, this elder brother graduated with full honors, so no one said anything when he became his immediate superior.

"Fushan, if we can pass this time, this year's innovation award should be given to me, right?"

"Why are you in such a hurry? Besides, isn't this the way for the junior brothers? If you let people know that you took credit for something, do you still want to do it?" "Look at what you said. They have already asked me to be recruited into the military industry in advance. Hahahaha... You came here directly after graduation. What? You are not considered my person?"

"Oh, you're so smart." Director Fushan quickly followed him to the arsenal. After a careful inspection, he picked up a set of armor and walked back: "Boheng, put it on file and classify it as top secret."

"Okay, let's do it right away." Director Bo Heng took two quick steps to catch up with his old classmate: "Fushan, just decide whether this year's innovation award should belong to me!"

"It's only the middle of the year, you should kneel down in front of your old lady's head and burn incense every day."

"Hey, you! When we were classmates, you ate the food I brought to you every day. How can you be so inhumane!"

The two of them left in a tantrum, and just two days after the cardboard was released, a major incident occurred in Fuliang...

However, this was not done by a student from the Institute of Technology, but by a teacher in an academy. His real name was Qiao Yi, and his pen name was Fei Ma. He was originally a poor scholar in the capital, and he came to Fuliang and found a job in an academy teaching low-grade children to read.

But Fei Ma's mind was not on the teachings of Confucius and Mencius at all. After coming here, he was like a fish returning to the ocean. There were chemistry classes in the School of Engineering, so when he had nothing to do, he used his position to study the textbooks on his own, and asked teachers and students if he didn't understand something.

In the process of learning, he realized what energy, combustion, action and reaction are. This enlightenment teacher who taught Three Character Classic and Thousand Character Classic every day turned into an incineration master after get off work. He always squatted in the garbage dump alone to burn all kinds of strange things, and then recorded the burning time and efficiency of these things.

The efficiency is mainly recorded by boiling water, and how long it takes to boil a pot of water with the same weight...

Then he discovered that white sugar burned incredibly well... Although it was difficult to ignite and required various media, once it burned, it was more intense than most other things.

So he went to ask those who studied engineering, and learned that combustion also requires a combustion aid. Then the burning master began to try to add various things to the sugar to burn it...

Until one day he got some potash fertilizer produced by a fertilizer factory.

The sugar exploded...

Then this man toyed with this thing day and night, and finally he came up with the optimal ratio, which was three sugars and one fertilizer mixed with a little calcite powder. Even just a handful of these blocks could produce jet-like flames as bright as day at night.

Then he thought, if he put this thing in a sealed iron pipe and let it spray backwards, would the iron pipe be able to fly?

However, something went wrong on his first attempt. The iron pipe did fly, but it flew too fast and with completely no pattern, and crashed into the cowshed next door, killing two bulls, three cows, and a calf, and also burning the cowshed.

At that time, the man who raised cattle was dragged to the government office by his entire family, young and old. He had no money to compensate them, so he just stood there with his neck shrunk, looking honest.

Later, of course, he was thrown into jail, but the news soon reached the Industrial Office. All the people there were professionals, and they were all surprised when they heard this.

They pulled the man out of jail overnight, and then used public funds to compensate the victim.

When they were asked this question, they were overjoyed... Fuliang's core secret weapon was the rocket, but the formula Xia Lin gave was too complicated and they were completely unable to replicate it.

But this guy just added some calcite powder into it and actually achieved the same or even better effect. This made the people who were originally developing it in secret think that their formula had been leaked. But a closer look showed that it was completely different. This brother's method was simpler and easier to achieve.

For a moment, he didn't bother to teach him the Three Character Classic and immediately pulled him into the R&D team.

From that day on, at night, in places far away from the crowds in Fuliang, one could always see a fire dragon soaring into the sky...

(End of this chapter)