Chapter 183: A Gold Mine
Translator: Henyee Translations Editor: Henyee Translations
In an apartment building near the University of Shuimu, Beijing…
An old man held an English magazine in his hand and he was reading it on the sofa.
He suddenly smiled and placed the magazine down before he said, “This kid really is a genius.”
This old man was no other than the god of mathematics, Qiu Chengtong.
The magazine in his hand was Nature Weekly and the article he was reading was written by the British female journalist, Belinda, who interviewed Lu Zhou.
In the interview, the magazine mentioned the identity of the University of Jin Ling master’s student as well as the fact that he was a member of the LHCb China Cooperation Group.
As per what the high-ranking academician from LHCb China Cooperation Group said earlier, this intern greatly helped China’s reputation at CERN.
China would soon create overwhelming coverage of this young scholar.
This glory was well-deserved.
“Yeah,” whispered the old man sitting opposite Professor Qiu as he drank tea.
This was Wang Yuping, who helped Lu Zhou back at Princeton.
Although Professor Qiu had a poor relationship with the University of Yan, he still had a few good friends from the said university.
Professor Wang Yuping was one of them.
Professor Wang paused for a second. He then sighed and said, “After the Princeton conference, I thought that this kid was talented in mathematics. I didn’t think that he would be so talented in particle physics as well. I’ve met a lot of young scholars, but none are like him.”
Professor Qiu Chengtong smiled and said, “I’ve seen one.”
“Who?”
“Tao Zhexuan!”
Professor Wang Yuping was stunned. He then smiled and asked, “Your evaluation of him is that high?”
Tao Zhexuan was the first Australian to receive the Fields Medal, and he was the second Chinese ethnicity person to win this award. He was currently teaching at UCLA and considered a genius in mathematical analysis.
Although applied mathematics was not in mathematical physics, his research covered almost all of mathematics. From harmonic analysis to nonlinear partial differential equations to number theory and topology.
Many people called him the Mozart of mathematics because there was no explanation as to how one person could achieve so much in mathematics.
In China, people called Lu Zhou as the “Young Tao Zhexuan”.
Professor Qiu smiled and said, “High evaluation? I think that he can accomplish more than his predecessors!”
Professor Wang Yuping was surprised and he could not help but ask, “Are you serious?”
“Of course,” said Professor Qiu as he nodded. He then added, “When I saw him chose Polignac’s conjecture to be his research topic, I had this feeling in my heart. Now with this article, I’m even more certain.”
Professor Wang Yuping smiled and asked, “Do you think he can solve this conjecture?
“Hard to say. He solved the twin prime conjecture. If I had the energy, I might even try to challenge this problem,” replied Professor Qiu. Suddenly his eyes sparkled and he looked at his old friend before he said, “How about we make a bet?”
Professor Wang Yuping smiled and asked, “Bet about what?”
“I bet that he can solve this conjecture in two years.”
“Not possible,” said Professor Wang Yuping as he shook his head. He added, “I know you have a high opinion of him, but his research problem right now isn’t number theory, but mathematical physics. If he concentrates on number theory, he could solve this conjecture… But as I see it, two years is too short!”
Professor Qiu shook his head, “Research direction isn’t the problem. I think he has the talent to solve the problem. Since we disagree, should we bet on it?”
Slapping his thighs, Professor Wang Yuping said, “Sure, let’s bet! I’ll bet a hundred yuan. It’s not much even if I lost.”
Professor Qiu smiled and said, “Look at you, already talking about losing. How boring, the bet is off!”
…
“Achoo!”
Lu Zhou sneezed and rubbed his nose as he continued to write at his desk.
He had already read Professor Lu’s class schedule.
However, he was still on his summer holiday, and the class would not start until next month.
Lu Zhou did not really leave his dorm over the past few days. He locked himself in his room and tried his best to design experiments using the battery data on his computer.
He had to read a large amount of literature to design the PDMS film.
The reason he was this motivated was money.
With such a large gold mine laying there, he would not be able to sleep if he did not crack at it a little.
There was no exaggeration to compare this technology to a gold mine.
20 years ago, lithium metal was abandoned by the industry because of the dendrite growth short circuit. This turned the battery into a bomb.
However, lithium metal still attracted countless material science laboratories. They were still doing experiments on this topic.
IBM even did a super-calculation of the lithium-air battery project and they assigned a path for each gas molecule to enter the battery unit to avoid gas blockage… However, they were burning money too fast and the project was then cut off.
At the national level, the energy minister from the Alabama team and the Chinese American who won the physics Nobel prize in 1997, Mr. Zhu Yuwen, had been a fanatic supporter of lithium negative batteries for quite some time… However, he was persuaded by a group of people.
As for why lithium batteries were so fascinating, it had to do with its energy density.
The so-called energy density was the energy contained per unit volume. The most important performance indicator of a battery was its energy density. This had been the pursuit of the battery industry.
In the 13th Five-Year China Plan, they clearly stated that their battery technology level should be synchronized with the international level by 2020. One of the most important factors was to increase the battery energy density to 300-350Wh/kg.
So far, the lithium-sulfur battery looked the most promising.
However, if the lithium dendrite problem was solved, then all of the other materials would have to give way to the lithium negative battery.
Those who had studied chemistry would know that the lithium metal anode had the lowest electrochemical potential of -3.04V and an energy capacity of up to 3861mAh/g.
That meant that by using lithium as the negative electrode, it could theoretically reach ten times the energy capacity of graphite batteries.
The most attractive part was that once the growth of the lithium dendrite was solved, there would be no other major design changes that needed to be made to batteries. They only had to replace the graphite anode material!