My IQ has been increasing year by year.

Chen Zhuo's gaze slowly began to fall on the first question.

The title is very short, only two lines long.

【Question: A rocket of mass M is launched vertically in a medium filled with a drag coefficient of k.】

Assuming the fuel injection velocity *u* is constant relative to the rocket, and the rocket's mass decreases linearly with time *t*, find the mass ratio of the rocket when it reaches its maximum velocity.

This is a quality issue.

This is a modified version of the legendary Tsiolkovsky formula.

In standard junior high school physics, mass m is always a constant.

But this problem immediately eliminated the constant m.

It became a variable, a function m that was constantly consumed over time.

This means that Newton's second law, F=ma, fails here.

We must introduce the differential form of the momentum theorem: F = dp/dt

Chen Zhuo pushed up his glasses.

Is this what Lao Zhou meant by perverted?

That's really weird, especially putting this kind of question in a junior high school physics book.

However, Chen Zhuo was very happy.

It was a genuine joy, an unconscious, inner joy that came from the brain as it prepared to absorb new knowledge and unravel new problems.

Chen Zhuo picked up a mechanical pencil and wrote down the first formula in his notebook.

There was no hurried rustling sound.

He writes very slowly.

Every stroke looks like it's being carved onto the paper.

Think for five minutes, then write for half a minute.

His brain began to enter that familiar, demanding work mode.

The surrounding air seemed to become viscous.

The humming sound of the air conditioner disappeared.

The sound of Old Zhou turning the pages of the newspaper has disappeared.

The sound of Li Hao turning the pages of the test paper also disappeared.

In his world, all that remained was the rocket rising alone in the resistance medium, and the Greek letters that represented truth.

He established a coordinate system in his mind.

The rocket was no longer just words on paper; it had transformed into a silvery-white metal cylinder, its tail spewing flames.

As fuel decreases, mass decreases, speed increases, and drag increases non-linearly.

This is a dynamic game process.

Differential equations.

Chen Zhuo wrote down lines of calculations on the paper.

This is the true face of the physical world.

Chaotic, nonlinear, and full of uncertainty.

The pen tip glides across the paper.

He doesn't need a computer.

Those complex integrals flowed naturally through his mind like water.

Old Zhou sat on the podium, holding a copy of the evening newspaper from the day before yesterday, drinking tea as he read.

He would occasionally look up and glance at the classroom through the edge of his reading glasses.

The two in the front row were sweating profusely, which is normal.

The one in the back row remained completely still, which was a pleasant surprise.

A barely perceptible smile appeared on Old Zhou's lips as he lowered his head to continue reading his newspaper.

Four o'clock in the afternoon.

An hour and a half passed.

The battle at the front lines appears to have reached a fever pitch and also hit a bottleneck.

Li Hao got stuck.

A classic rigid body rotation problem in physics competitions, involving rotational inertia and non-inertial frames of reference.

The problem presents a rotating disk with a slider on it, and asks you to analyze the trajectory of the slider under the action of the Coriolis force.

Li Hao had already drawn five force diagrams and listed three equations on the draft paper.

but.

Can't figure it out.

That differential equation was too complex. His math toolbox only contained middle school and a little bit of high school math material, which was simply not enough to solve this kind of dead end.

"hiss......"

Li Hao gasped, then slammed his pen on the table in frustration.

Sweat streamed down his temples, dripping onto the exam paper and spreading into a blot of ink.

He felt like his mind was a complete mess, and a sense of defeat was slowly consuming him from the bottom of his heart.

He glanced at Zhang Wei beside him.

Zhang Wei had long since given up and was now hunched over the table, poking holes in an eraser with a compass, clearly having entered a state of post-coital reflection.

Li Hao was unwilling to accept this.

He's ranked first in his grade; he's aiming for the provincial first prize.

He gritted his teeth, picked up the test paper, and decided to go to the podium to ask Old Zhou.

Even getting scolded is better than wasting time here.

He stood up and walked to the front of the podium.

Old Zhou is refilling the teacup with water.

"Teacher, this question..."

Li Hao pointed at the exam paper, his voice a little hoarse.

Old Zhou glanced at it.

"Non-inertial frame of reference?" Old Zhou said casually. "This question is beyond the scope of the curriculum. Use the law of conservation of energy to solve it. Don't try to analyze the forces; you'll only get yourself confused."

"Conservation of energy?"

Li Hao was stunned for a moment.

"Add rotational kinetic energy to potential energy, then subtract the work done by friction," Old Zhou pointed out. "Go back and calculate it again."

Li Hao nodded, seemingly understanding but not quite.

He took the test paper and walked back.

As if by some strange twist of fate, his steps slowed as he passed the back row of the laboratory.

The nine-year-old child in that corner is still sitting there.

The posture remained almost unchanged.

He rested his chin on his left hand and twirled a pen in his right.

The tattered red book was open.

But he wasn't writing.

He just stood there, lost in thought.

Li Hao was a little curious, and also a little unconvinced.

Why are we fighting tooth and nail here while you just stand there doing nothing?

Didn't Lao Zhou say this book is difficult?

Chen Zhuo seemed completely unaware that someone was approaching, still staring blankly at a certain page in the book.

Li Hao took the opportunity to glance at it.

Just one glance.

Li Hao froze in his tracks.

He saw the contents of that page.

Those were not Chinese character questions he was familiar with.

It was a bunch of tadpole-like letters with barbs and circles.

He knew this script.

Russian.

That's not even the scariest part.

The most terrifying thing was the draft paper next to Chen Zhuo.

There is no picture above.

There were only lines of equations that made his scalp tingle.

The integral symbol ∫.

Differential symbol d.

And then there's the natural logarithm, ln.

He had heard of these symbols in his junior high school math enrichment class. The teacher said that these were things that were only learned in high school or even college, and that they were used to calculate the area of ​​a curve and the rate of change.

But in Chen Zhuo's writing, those symbols are like addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, arbitrarily combined together.

The final formula he derived was so long it made him dizzy.

What is this?

Is this supposed to be middle school physics?

Li Hao felt his worldview waver.

He was just scratching his head over a problem about Coriolis force, and even needed the teacher to remind him to use the law of conservation of energy to avoid the complex force analysis.

He originally thought he was the best physics student in the school, someone at the very top of the pyramid.

He thought that the competition was about using the formulas from junior high school physics to their fullest potential and creating something unique.

But at this moment, he suddenly realized...

The pyramid you're desperately climbing might just be a stepping stone for someone else.

He is doing a math problem.

Chen Zhuo was doing research.

He was calculating how many centimeters the buoyant ball would sink.

And this kid is calculating... a rocket?

Li Hao swallowed hard.

"What the hell are you watching...?"

He screamed wildly in his heart.

Li Hao subconsciously looked up and glanced at Chen Zhuo's profile.

Chen Zhuo remained motionless.

His gaze was empty, not focused on the book, but rather on a point in the void.

There seemed to be a rocket flying at high speed, accelerating and deforming in accordance with his thoughts.

Chen Zhuo seemed to sense something at this moment and turned his head slightly.

Their eyes met for a second in mid-air.

Chen Zhuo's eyes were calm, even a little unfocused, a kind of bewilderment that came from being interrupted after deep thought.

He didn't speak, nor did he cover the draft paper. He just glanced at Li Hao briefly, then turned his head back to continue staring at the integral symbol.

It was as if Li Hao was just a speck of dust in the air.

Li Hao felt his face getting hot.

It wasn't shame, but an indescribable feeling of powerlessness after being defeated in a lower dimension.

Li Hao walked away silently.

He went to his seat and sat down.

After sitting down, he looked at the buoyancy problem in front of him that had just driven him crazy.

Suddenly, this question doesn't seem so difficult after all?

After all, compared to that red book full of scribbles, this is at least something that humans can understand.

At least you don't need to look up that Russian word that looks like a bunch of gibberish.

Li Hao took a deep breath and picked up his pen again.

This time, he pressed harder with his pen, as if he wanted to vent all the shock he had just experienced onto the exam paper.

Even test-takers should have the dignity of test-takers!

......

Five o'clock in the afternoon.

The bell rang on time to signal the end of get out of class.

"Ring ring ring—"

The shrill sound of the school bell shattered the tense atmosphere in the laboratory.

Li Hao and Zhang Wei breathed a sigh of relief almost simultaneously, like two drowning people finally surfacing.

The two slumped in their chairs, feeling completely drained.

Two hours of intense problem-solving killed countless brain cells.

"carry out an assignment."

Old Zhou's voice rang out at just the right moment.

He had finished reading the newspaper and was now holding a teacup, looking out the window at the scenery.

The two quickly stood up and respectfully placed the test papers on the podium.

"Alright, get lost."

Old Zhou waved his hand.

"We'll be reviewing next Tuesday, so go back and prepare your notebook of mistakes."

"goodbye teacher."

The two felt as if they had been granted a pardon, and they carried their schoolbags and fled from this oppressive place as if they were escaping.

As he reached the door, Li Hao couldn't help but glance back at the corner.

Chen Zhuo was still sitting there.

Still looking at that page.

He seemed to have only turned two pages of the book that afternoon.

Only Lao Zhou and Chen Zhuo remained in the laboratory.

Old Zhou put down his teacup and lit a cigarette.

"Feed".

He shouted.

Chen Zhuo seemed to wake up from a dream, slowly raising his head, his eyes still lingering with the bewilderment of being immersed in the maze of thoughts.

He took off his glasses and rubbed his sore nose.

A deep sense of exhaustion washed over me.

That's a side effect of the brain operating at full power for two hours.

My stomach feels a little empty.

He took a White Rabbit milk candy out of his pocket, unwrapped it, and popped it into his mouth.

The sweet taste melted on the tip of the tongue, giving the brain, which was about to give up, a little more fuel.

He closed the book.

It was a very soft "snap".

Some of the dust on the book cover seemed to have been shaken off.

"How much did you understand?" Old Zhou asked, exhaling a smoke ring.

Chen Zhuo thought for a moment.

Three questions.

Chen Zhuo answered honestly.

One afternoon, two and a half hours.

The first problem, a variable-mass rocket, took an hour to derive the differential equations.

The second nonlinear spring oscillator took forty minutes to understand the phase diagram.

The third step, particle collisions under relativistic effects, wasn't fully calculated; it got stuck on the final step of energy conservation.

"Three paths?"

Old Zhou raised an eyebrow, seemingly a little surprised.

He originally thought that it would be good enough if the kid could finish one dish in an afternoon.

After all, this book was the training manual for the Soviet national team in the Olympiad back then, prepared for those Russian geniuses who wanted to build satellites.

Some of the questions even touch upon theoretical mechanics taught in the second year of university.

"Okay. Pretty fast."

Old Zhou nodded, his tone neither praising nor mocking, but a hint of satisfaction flashed in his narrowed eyes.

"Can I take this book with me?"

"Take it."

Old Zhou waved his hand, "Don't lose it, this is a unique copy. You probably can't find another one like it in the whole province."

"I won't lose it, goodbye teacher."

Chen Zhuo nodded, picked up the book with one hand and carried the water bottle with the other.

He turned and walked towards the door.

I pushed open the door and walked out of the teaching building.

The sun outside had already begun to set, leaving only a magnificent sunset glow spread across the horizon, dyeing the entire campus in a golden-red hue.

The heat in the air subsided somewhat, and a cool evening breeze blew by.

Chen Zhuo walked down the corridor.

The setting sun cast a long shadow of his, stretching all the way to the end of the corridor.

He squeezed the hard, red book in his hand.

He felt that this kind of afternoon, where he didn't need to talk, socialize, or pretend to fit in, but simply sit in a corner, listening to the scratching of other people's pens, and then wrestling alone with top-level knowledge in the wilderness of his mind, was a wonderful experience.

very perfect.

This is what life is all about.

This is what intensive training should look like.

Chen Zhuo pushed up his glasses, stepped down the stairs, and his figure disappeared into the twilight.

Behind me, through the window of the second-floor laboratory.

Old Zhou stood behind the curtains, watching the thin figure from behind, picked up the teacup, and drank the last sip of cold tea.

"Three questions..."

Old Zhou smacked his lips, a somewhat ferocious smile appearing on his face.

"This is fucking a monster!"