Lao Lin shuttled between the cafeteria and the kitchen.
After a while, he came over with a cloth bag and threw it on the table with a loud bang.
After finishing the porridge, they stared at the cloth bag and looked at Lao Lin curiously.
Lao Lin: “Stretch out your hand.”
Then the little hands opened up.
Lao Lin opened the cloth bag, took out something from it and put it in their hands without saying anything.
The yellow, round particles are actually soybeans.
"Count them." After saying that, Lao Lin continued to work.
The four of them all held a handful of soybeans and looked at each other, somewhat puzzled.
But since the master asked him to count, he decided to count, so Pei Zhi started counting first.
The first handful had a small number, and soon everyone had counted them.
Lao Lin had just finished wiping the table and came back with a rag in his hand. He asked, "What did you get?"
"I have 12 soybeans!" said Lu Zhihao.
"I'm 9!" This is Hanajuan.
Lin Zhaoxi was very happy: "I have more than you, I'm 13!"
Pei Zhi said nothing. He arranged the soybeans in a row and looked up at Lao Lin.
Lao Lin didn't say anything. He continued to give each person a handful of soybeans, then turned around and went back to work wiping the table.
"What did you gain?" Lao Lin would ask this question every time he came back from a round, but they didn't have any serious answers.
Lu Zhihao carefully arranged the soybeans that Lao Lin had distributed in the order of 1 soybean in the first row and 2 soybeans in the second row.
Pei Zhi sorted the soybeans that Lao Lin gave him into groups of 10, 10 in a row.
After ordering the flower rolls, you can throw soybeans into the empty bowl of porridge as you please.
The bag of soybeans was finally empty.
Lao Lin finally finished his work and sat back down: "Have you finished counting the soybeans?"
Nodding is like shaking garlic.
"Now, suppose none of you can add, but I want you to tell me right now how many soybeans each of you has?"
Lin Chaoxi lowered his head and was just about to consciously calculate the total number of soybeans each time when he heard Lao Lin say this.
She then quickly counted how many rows of soybeans she had. She had arranged them in rows of 10 soybeans, 11 rows in total, and 3 soybeans missing, so 113 soybeans in total.
"125." Pei Zhi has already reported the answer.
Lin Chaoxi went to see Pei Zhi, who had already arranged a square array of 10 soybeans horizontally and 10 vertically, with a total of 100 soybeans. The remaining 2 rows were 5 soybeans.
Lu Zhihao stared at his soybean triangle for a long time, but he had no choice but to start counting them row by row, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.
Huajuan held her chin with one hand and could only stare in a daze at the pile of soybeans he threw into the bowl of porridge.
"Congratulations, you have reenacted the process of the earliest birth of mathematics." Lao Lin smiled, "Should you give yourself a round of applause?"
Lao Lin's joke was very cold. Each of them looked at his own soybean array, too frozen to speak.
It wasn't until Huajuan burped that everyone woke up a little.
Lao Lin asked, "What's the problem?"
"Ah?" Lu Zhihao raised his head, "What did you just say?"
"I said that the process of the birth of mathematics was very great and ingenious. Can you cooperate and applaud yourselves?"
Including Pei Zhi, everyone remained in a daze.
"Come, let's imagine the very beginning of the development of human society, when everyone was still wearing tiger-skin skirts and dancing around the fire. Of course, there was no addition, subtraction, multiplication, or division at that time, and there weren't even numbers like 123456789..." Old Lin imitated a savage and patted his chest, causing the children to giggle.
"Every day, primitive humans had to go out hunting, otherwise they couldn't survive. At first, everyone hunted casually, not caring how many small animals they killed every day, but suddenly one day, Huajuan realized that this was not okay. He said, "I have to keep a record of how many prey I have every day, otherwise what if Lu Zhihao next door comes to my house and steals food?"
"So he started carving words on the wall, each 丨 representing how many prey he had hunted that day."
As Lao Lin said this, he placed a soybean in front of Hua Juan, imitated the movements of carving, and dubbed in the voice of Hua Juan: "Today, there are so many chickens."
He put down a few more, representing a few more engraved 丨: "Tomorrow, so many ducks."
After repeating this several times, there were so many soybeans in front of Huajuan that he couldn't count them all.
"Oh, here comes the problem! Suddenly one day, Hanamaki wanted to know how many prey he had killed. When he got home, he saw the whole wall of 丨丨丨丨丨... and he collapsed."
As Lao Lin spoke, he shook Huajuan's bowl of soybeans, making them rustle in the bowl, symbolizing the disordered counting method of the whole wall of the wild man Huajuan's house.
"Uncle, you are so childish!" Huajuan protested.
Of course it’s childish, Lin Chaoxi thought, this is the story I heard when I was five years old.
Lao Lin put down the bowl and suddenly became serious: "The problem of flower rolls is not just a problem of flower rolls, it also occurs in many families in the tribe. Primitive humans always face various problems involving counting in daily production and life, but they are not as lucky as you are now. They don't even have ready-made numbers to use." Lao Lin touched Lu Zhihao's head, "So, in order to solve the many problems of 'unable to count' and 'inaccurate memory' in production and life, they began to create."
Lao Lin moved his hand to the soybean triangle in front of Lu Zhihao, and touched each row of soybeans with his fingers. His tone was very solemn and dignified: "The process of the generation of numbers is roughly like this." Lao Lin said, "If you are lucky enough to see the clay tablets from the ancient Babylonian period, you will find that he used a pen with a triangular cross-section to carve, which we now call cuneiform. People at that time used one notch to represent the number '1', two notches to represent the number '2', and so on. But when it came to '10', they came up with a new counting symbol."
Lao Lin drew a “＜” on the table.
"It looks like this. Please pay attention, students. This is a great leap forward for human civilization. Using symbols to count represents a greater arithmetic that is about to emerge..."
Lao Lin was speaking excitedly, gesticulating with joy, and was about to turn his attention to the third group of soybean squares that changed rows every 10.
At this time, Lu Zhihao suddenly asked: "Uncle, have you seen that clay tablet?"
Lao Lin's hand suddenly stopped in the air. He recovered for a while before looking down at Lu Zhihao and angrily asked, "Is this the main point?"
"I think he's amazing." Lu Zhihao looked at Lao Lin with longing, "I really want to meet him."
"I think so too, it's amazing~"
These words did not come from the four of them. At some point, a few children whom they did not know gradually gathered behind Lao Lin.
At first, the children were watching what Lao Lin was doing, but gradually, they all quieted down and listened to Lao Lin's story seriously.
The incandescent lights in the cafeteria were still bright, and in front of them were still the countless soybeans and bowls of porridge that had not yet been put away.
But Lao Lin stripped mathematics of its seemingly difficult outer layer and turned it into a pure and simple process that uses creative thinking to solve problems and is closely related to the evolution of human civilization.
Lao Lin kept telling stories, from the birth of counting to the birth of calculation, from decimal addition and subtraction to multiplication and division. Each time, he simply fiddled with the soybeans in front of him to restore the concrete behind the abstract numbers.
In the end, he even led them to use non-drying glue to make a cube made up of 1,000 soybeans.
Extremely perverted.
Finally, Lao Lin said: "In fact, when mathematics was first born, it was closely related to the countless real-life problems facing mankind. Without so many advanced tools, it would be like counting soybeans without addition or dividing things without division. It's like there are always long and mighty rivers in front of mankind, blocking their way forward. What to do if they can't get through? That's very simple - build a bridge. So numbers appeared, arithmetic appeared, algebra, geometry all appeared..."
Lao Lin started to clean up the soybeans on the table with a smile.
"For tens of thousands of years, our ancestors have built bridges that have led us from the era of raw meat to the civilized society of today. The countless formulas, axioms, definitions, and proofs they discovered have become the mathematical tools we use today."
"It's the thing our teacher used to tease us!" a chubby little boy behind Lao Lin interrupted.
"That's right!" Lao Lin flicked his forehead with his finger and asked with a smile, "Do you like cars?"
"like!"
"Do you like driving?"
"I can't drive!"
"If you don't know how, you have to learn." Lao Lin put all the soybeans back into the bag. "You are now in school, taking classes, doing exercises, and learning how to drive."
"What if I have no interest in learning to drive?"
"That's totally fine," said Lao Lin, "but you need a good teacher to teach you how to drive a car, try a few good cars, drift on a curve, and try everything before you say you don't like it, right?"
Lin Zhaoxi curled his lips: "You mean, the most important thing is to have an excellent old driver."
Lao Lin patted his chest and said, "Of course."
"What about Mathematical Olympiad?" Pei Zhi asked.
"Mathematical Olympiad." Lao Lin blinked and said to him, "Here is my personal opinion - Mathematical Olympiad is to let you give up those advanced tools when facing difficulties, and try to solve problems with breakthrough thinking like countless sages, just like a warrior fighting a dragon with a small wooden sword. Then, every process of solving a problem is amazing enough."
"What's even more interesting is that one day, when you have gone a long way in mathematics, you will see a long river that belongs to you. At that time, you may need to take out your own axe, cut wood and build a bridge, and be the first person to build that bridge and cross that river. And all these trainings will make you here." Lao Lin pointed to his head and then to his hands, "more capable of commanding here."
Lao Lin should have stopped talking here, but he still said: "But please don't take the last 'maybe one day' as the meaning of your learning Olympiad mathematics. That will lose a lot of fun. After all, the main reason why mathematicians study mathematics now is because..."
"Because I'm bored..." Hanamaki drawled
Lao Lin was surprised: "How do you know?"
"I was just talking nonsense!" Huajuan spat.
All the children present burst into laughter.
——
They were chased away from the cafeteria.
Lao Lin carried a simple luggage, and the canteen manager arranged a temporary dormitory for him, which was not in the same direction as the small villa where they lived.
After the rain, the night was fresh, the moon was bright and the stars were sparse. His figure swayed and disappeared at the end of the path.
Huajuan walked for a long time with his head folded behind his back, and suddenly remembered something: "Oh no, I was fooled by the uncle all night and didn't even look at the content of the test tomorrow!"
"Are you going to read again when you go back?" Lu Zhihao asked.
"Aren't you sick of it yet?" Huajuan was shocked.
"Now... I feel like I can still take another look?"
"Then charge!" Lin Zhaoxi shouted, "Go fight the evil dragon!"
After she shouted, she found that no one was looking at her quietly.
“What…what are you doing?”
Lu Zhihao: "Lin Zhaoxi, your joke is a bit cold."
Hanamaki: "It's shameful that you could even say that."
"Indeed." This is Pei Zhi.
As soon as Pei Zhi finished speaking, the three of them looked at each other and started running wildly.
The laughter of the young boys could be heard in the night. Someone turned around and shouted to her, "Let's see who gets to the dormitory first!"
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