Chapter 15: The Essay of Fu Di Demon (1)

　Joseph was not too concerned about winning or losing the betting match with Napoleon. He remembered that in the movie he saw about Napoleon in his previous life, there was something about Napoleon submitting an article to the French Academy of Sciences. It seemed that Napoleon had written an article about analyzing social issues at that time, and after submitting it, it sank without a trace. Therefore Joseph felt that it was at least unlikely that he would lose this bet.

　　This essay, however, still needed to be prepared in detail. If it was a normal research, the first thing that needed to be carried out was naturally an experiment. But for Joseph, who had traveled across the world, this matter could be put off for a while. The first thing he had to prepare was to prepare some mathematical tools for the later arguments and calculations.

　　In this way, the problem was complicated, because the two or three decades from the 1870s to the beginning of the 19th century were the time when mathematics, especially French mathematics, took a great leap forward. During this period of time, France produced a series of mathematicians that make Joseph until now to think about it to inhale a breath of cold air, half a day of fear and trepidation. Even after becoming a traveler, as soon as he thinks of them, Joseph immediately remembers the fear of being dominated by Fourier, Laplace, and Lagrange, and a wave of cold air rises from his tailbone, all the way to the back of his neck. And Fresnel's ability to perfectly explain double-slit diffraction was inextricably linked to the achievements of these great and terrible guys. If one were to directly replicate Fresnel's argument, one would pretty much have to make several key mathematical breakthroughs first.

　　"It's really a case of 'in order to solve Korea, we need to solve Manchuria; in order to solve Manchuria, we need to solve China; in order to solve China, we need to solve the United States.' When did my approach become like those brainless Showa staff officers who are used to solving a small problem by creating a bigger one?" Joseph couldn't help but mock himself twice. But considering the impact this experiment left on history, under the influence of vanity, Joseph still planned to just write about it. Of course, whenever possible, he was still going to try to solve the problem as much as possible with the math that was already available now. In principle, it wasn't unfeasible, it was just that the whole process of justifying it would be incredibly unwieldy and cumbersome. It's like a problem that could have been solved by multiplication, but you're trying to turn it into something that can be done by addition.

　　As it turned out, after trying to do it for a few days, Joseph realized that if he really wanted to completely bypass these mathematical tools that weren't there yet, I'm afraid it would take a lot more space.

　　"Some of the necessary math tools still have to be developed, otherwise, we can't really use addition to calculate multiplication." Joseph thought like this.

　　After spending close to a month in this way, using relatively bulky means to bypass some high-level tools, and incidentally inventing some "low-level" tools, Joseph finally finished his thesis. Looking at this thesis which was so thick that it looked like a book, Joseph nodded with satisfaction and said: "Finally, I managed to compress the length by half. A thesis that not only has breakthroughs in physics, but also in math, this is really a superb experience. The only pity is that it didn't get real-world feedback."

　　Joseph transcribed another copy of the paper and mailed one of them. The other copy was held out to Armand.

　　As soon as he saw the pile of mathematical symbols in the paper, Amang frowned, "Joseph, I said what have you been busy with all this time, so this is what you've been doing. Well, I can barely understand the front of this, you think light should be a wave, not a particle - that's not quite the same as Sir Isaac Newton's view. Your experiment is also very interesting, the back of these things, all the symbols I recognize, but put together what is the meaning of, to be honest, I do not understand. Surely ... you don't mean this for me to see, but for my uncle?"

　　"Yes," said Joseph, "and I should like to hear what Mr. Lavoisier has to say about it."

　　"Well, then, to-morrow is Sunday, and I will bring this paper over to him."

　　...

　　"Good morning Mr. Lavoisier, can I get you anything?" A waiter said to Lavoisier, a member of the French Academy of Sciences and a famous chemist, while he was busy pulling open the door.

　　"Ah, Mabeuf, is Mr. Laplace in today?" Lavoisier asked while handing his cane to that attendant.

　　"Yes, Mr. Lavoisier, Mr. Laplace is in his office." The attendant replied.

　　"Very well, please bring me a pot of black tea to his office in a moment." Lavoisier said as he walked down the corridor, striding towards Laplace's office on his left.

　　"Yes sir, I'll bring it to you right away."

　　Ravasi walked up to the door of Laplace's office and reached out his hand to knock gently on the door, there was no sound from inside. Ravasi smiled slightly and knocked gently on the door again, however, there was still no sound from inside.

　　Ravasi pushed the door gently and it opened. He stepped inside and saw that Laplace was sitting at his desk, head down, shaking his quill and calculating something. Used manuscript paper was thrown all over his desk in a disorganized manner.

　　Lavoisier didn't say anything, but just walked over, pulled over a chair, sat down opposite Laplace's desk, and waited quietly.

　　At that moment Mabeuf, carrying a pot of black tea, came in.

　　"Ah, Mabaev, just leave it here and pour me a cup." Ravasi said.

　　Ma Baifu placed the teapot on the table next to him, poured another cup of tea, and brought it to Ravasi.

　　"Well, it's all right here. You can leave now." Ravasi took the tea and smiled.

　　Mabaev then bowed slightly, and then gently walked out, closing the door gently and falsely with his hand.

　　Lavoisier sipped his tea as he watched Laplace calculate; and Laplace, who had not looked up all the while, did not even realize that there was a man sitting across the desk from him.

　　After a few more moments, Laplace reached the quill in his hand into the ink bottle once more, and then failed to write the numbers on the manuscript paper as he had hoped - the ink bottle had run out.

　　"Bloody hell! I should have gotten a bigger size ink bottle." Laplace said, while looking up and spotting Lavoisier sitting across the table.

　　"Mr. Lavoisier, what are you doing here? How long have you been here?" Laplace asked.

　　For quite some time, Laplace had been working as an assistant to Lavoisier, and together they had determined the specific heats of many substances.In 1780, the two of them proved that the amount of heat required to break down a compound into its constituent elements was equal to the amount of heat given off by those elements to form the compound. This can be seen as the beginning of thermochemistry, and it was, moreover, another milestone in the move toward the law of conservation of energy, following Braque's work on latent heat. So the two were quite close.

　　"Ah, I've been here for a while. Why, it seems to me that you're checking that 'Bonaparte's light spot'?"

　　"Yes, Mr. Lavoisier." Laplace stood up and said, "You've already read that paper? It's so counter-intuitive to our intuition. But, damn, it actually does observe ... in experiments which means that if his entire derivation is correct, then light really must be a wave. Well, Hooker would be rolling in his grave with joy."

　　Lavoisier said, "Yeah, I read that paper, yesterday morning. The thesis was written by my art-loving nephew, well, you've met him, by one of his classmates called Joseph Bonaparte. He gave me this thesis to read through Armand. I have to say, the conclusions of this thesis are a bit counter-intuitive, but those two experiments are really impressive. Especially that 'Bonaparte light spot'. Hmm, I think this youngster submitted this paper to the Academy of Sciences as well, wanting to get the prize money. Well, all else aside, for the two experiments alone I think it's worth six hundred francs, if not more."

　　"The few new mathematical tools he has created in this paper alone are worth it." Laplace said, "But the wave alone is a conclusion that many people will only find hard to accept."

　　"Hard to accept? Just because Sir Isaac Newton said light is a particle?" Lavoisier said in disbelief, "Aristotle had a whole bunch of mistakes. Is Sir Isaac Newton the Pope who never makes mistakes? But you know, I always have a lot on my plate. And there are too many mathematical calculations in this thesis, even though he figured out some tricky ways to do it. I have my research too, so yesterday I just verified his experiments and then looked at his arguments in general, as for the specific mathematical details, I haven't had time to go into them in detail. You know, mathematically, I'm not as good as you, and if we're talking about the speed of calculation, there's no one in this world, I think, who's better than you. That's why I was planning to find you to verify it in detail. I didn't realize you were already doing this."