Chapter 27 Gaining Knowledge

"I heard from Teacher Cai that this is your first time participating in a physics competition, right?"

After getting to know Wu Bin a little bit, Bi Wanqing smiled and asked today's core question.

"Yes." Wu Bin nodded.

"I believe Teacher Cai has told you everything you need to see and know. I won't say much more. Today, I will talk to you about some of the more interesting things in the physics competition. Come with me."

After saying that, Wan Qing took Wu Bin to an empty classroom, motioned Wu Bin to find a seat and then picked up the chalk and wrote three words on the blackboard.

【Hodgepodge】

After finishing writing, he clapped his hands and started talking.

"As for high school physics, no matter how hard you take the test, force and electricity will not come up. It is easy to lock in the scope when studying or reviewing, so it is not very strenuous."

Hearing this, Wu Bin couldn't help but complain in his heart, 'I'm afraid those physics scum will vomit blood if they hear this. ’

"But the physics competition is completely different. It contains many things. Some people can specialize in one thing, but if there are too many research directions, the brain will start to get confused. The physics competition can only be played by those who can't mess up. game."

After Bi Wanqing finished speaking, he turned around and started writing on the blackboard.

"The research scope of modern physics is really too large, and there are fewer and fewer points of interconnection between them. For example, those who work on condensed matter don't understand plasma, those who work on plasma don't understand black holes, those who work on black holes don't know how to repair radios, and those who work on radios don't know how to repair radios. They can build houses, but those who build houses don’t know how to put satellites in, but they all study physics.”

Having said this, Bi Wanqing tapped the chalk on the blackboard.

"And the competition requires you to know a little bit of everything."

"The purpose is to make us black hole research experts who can repair radios?" Wu Bin couldn't help but get angry when he heard this.

Bi Wanqing laughed after hearing this, "Actually, that's pretty much it. You don't have to be proficient, but you must understand it."

After laughing, Wan Qing asked Wu Bin: "Tell me, why do you want to participate in the physics competition?"

"Because it's interesting."

"Hahaha, is that interesting? It's indeed a very interesting answer."

Bi Wanqing walked off the podium with a smile and looked at Wu Bin, "Many people think that the biggest help the competition can give them is to advance to higher schools and be recommended. In fact, this is not the case. I think the biggest significance of the physics competition to you students is to give you a framework and a system. See the entire contemporary physics, including engineering and so on.

After Bi Wanqing finished speaking, he walked back to the podium and continued to pick up the chalk and write while talking.

"If you can perform well and enter the semi-finals or even the national competition, then you will be able to see what the scientific research in physics is like, what the paper is like, and by the way, how is your English score?"

"It's... not bad."

Faced with Bi Wanqing's sudden question, Wu Bin answered bravely.

"There is a document collection website called arXiv. You can go and browse it. It is a very interesting place. Many foreign mathematicians, physicists and scientists are accustomed to uploading their papers to arXiv first, and then Submit it to professional academic journals.”

"Why? Is this document collection website very authoritative?" Wu Bin asked.

"This process is more interesting."

Bi Wanqing wrote his name on the blackboard as he spoke.

【Paul Ginsbarg】

After finishing writing, Wan Qing knocked on the blackboard, "arXiv was established by this physicist in 1991. The original intention of the website was to collect preprints of physics papers, but later, other fields such as mathematics and astronomy also gradually was extended into it.”

"Oh~" Wu Bin nodded as if he understood.

Bi Wanqing smiled slightly: "Do you know what kind of impact this website had later?"

"I don't know." Wu Bin shook his head decisively.

“The existence of arXiv is one of the factors that created the so-called open access movement in the scientific publishing industry. Nowadays, mathematicians and scientists are accustomed to uploading their papers to arXiv first and then submitting them to professional academic journals. This trend has a great impact on the operation of traditional academic journals. The pattern caused an objective impact.”

"A bit like... a high-end version of Baidu Encyclopedia?"

"It's okay if you understand it this way, but this height is probably as tall as Yao Ming." Bi Wanqing said with some humor.

"Later, Paul Ginsbarg relied on this website to win the MacArthur Award in 2002. This is commonly known as the Genius Award in the United States. It is regarded as one of the highest cross-field awards and recognizes those who have played an important role in social development. creative talent.”

"It seems very powerful." Wu Bin, who didn't know how powerful he was, nodded.

Bi Wanqing nodded and continued.

"Now those scientists upload their papers to arXiv, firstly to prevent their ideas from being plagiarized before the paper is included, upload it to it for pre-inclusion, and finally use the upload timestamp to prove that it is his original work."

"The second is for the 'endorsement' system above. In the vernacular, it is peer review, which means that after the paper you submit passes the strict review of the administrator, another person with accreditation qualifications on the forum will endorse you. But it is interesting. Yes, some of the papers of Brian Josephson, the former Nobel Prize winner in physics, were rejected by administrators because his papers contradicted the orthodox views of string theory.”

"Then the big boss later won the award, is it a slap in the face?"

"Otherwise why would I say it's something interesting?"

Wu Bin laughed after hearing this, and found this teacher more and more interesting.

"In short, what I want to tell you is that arXiv is a very interesting website. You can learn a lot of knowledge there that is not accessible at school, such as Grigory Perelman's analysis of the Poincaré conjecture. The proof remains in preprint form."

"Oh..." Although Wu Bin was not very familiar with these big guys, he was already very curious about this website.

"So back to the question I started asking you, is your English good?"

After hearing Bi Wanqing ask himself again, Wu Bin understood that the teacher must have seen his scores in other subjects, so he had to touch his nose and say: "Not very good..."

"Hahaha, I'm not asking you this to embarrass you, but I want you to understand that English plays a huge role in learning any science right now, so you shouldn't go sideways."

"English is also helpful for physics?"

This is really ignorance that limits his imagination. He can still understand mathematics, which is very helpful for physics, but English can also be related?

Bi Wanqing smiled, turned around and wrote three words on the blackboard.

【knowledge base】

"Because the current knowledge base in the world is mainly in English, such as textbooks, online knowledge bases, the Baidu Encyclopedia you just mentioned, and foreign Wikipedia. These are knowledge bases shared by the world."

"Oh..." Wu Bin scratched his head, still a little confused.

"Don't you understand? Let me give you an example." Bi Wanqing said and picked up the chalk.