Chapter 73
The "low-temperature optical tweezers" laboratory was a mess, with various parts scattered around, making it look like a repair shop.
Ye Shi, Deng Yi, and Liang Zi squatted in a row, their eyes fixed on Ji Zhixing's hand movements.
“An 80x80μm microsphere lens,” Ji Zhixing said, extending his left hand.
Deng quickly found the parts Ji Zhixing needed among the scattered parts and handed them over.
As Ji Zhixing embedded the objective lens into the optical control module, he said, "Find me a low-noise single-frequency laser with a wavelength of 2647 nm and a topological charge of 39."
"Okay!" Liang Zi started searching around on the ground.
Ye Shihou watched in horror as Ji Zhixing disassembled the 950,000-dollar Aresis Nano high-speed multi-light trap nanomicroscope into pieces, then replaced various parts and reassembled it.
Because their experimental design completely overturned the traditional optical tweezers principle, there was no suitable optical tweezers instrument available on the market, and they could only modify the existing instruments.
Ye Shi had originally contacted technicians to come to the lab and make the modifications on-site according to their requirements, but after understanding their needs, the technicians said, "We can't do it!" This kind of instrument modification based on new principles is quite complicated; it's not as simple as connecting a section of nanotube or welding a new objective lens.
The technicians ran off without looking back, and Ji Zhixing went straight back to his dormitory that day and entered the laboratory in the system space to start disassembling the instruments. This laboratory had everything, including all the instruments needed for traditional optical tweezers experiments. He planned to try and modify them himself to create what they needed.
After adjusting the time flow rate, he had plenty of time in the system space to experiment and make mistakes.
Later, Ye Shi contacted technicians from several major instrument manufacturers, but none of them were willing to take on such a troublesome order. Meanwhile, Ji Zhixing, after countless disassemblies and reassemblies in the system space, had gained full confidence in modifying the instrument, so he volunteered to Ye Shi.
Ye Shi was surprised that Ji Zhixing, who seemed so steady and cautious, was actually the boldest member of their group. After thinking it over, she still didn't dare to make a decision on her own and went to Professor Gao Xiao to ask him to make the decision. Professor Gao Xiao agreed without asking any further questions.
"Made instruments for under one million without hesitation, but be careful with those over one million."
Because of Professor Gao Xiao's trust, Ji Zhixing didn't waste anything to conceal his modification skills, and directly proceeded with the modifications according to the final plan determined in the system laboratory. Ye Shi and the others squatted aside as his assistants.
In fact, only the lighting and control light paths needed to be modified, so Ji Zhixing completed the modification in just 4 hours and spent another half hour debugging, finally getting the key instruments needed for the experiment working.
Ye Shi was half uneasy and half excited. He carefully touched the nanomicroscope and asked, "Where did you learn this skill?"
Ji Zhixing said vaguely, "Didn't I spend some time in Professor Yan's lab before? I even worked on a zero-gravity seat."
"Oh, oh." Ye Shi filled in the information that Ji Zhixing had deliberately omitted in his words. The protective gel and the zero-gravity seat were both innovative products. Ji Zhixing must have tinkered with and modified them like this before for experimental purposes.
He didn't press further about the connection between the protective gel, the zero-gravity seat instrument, and the optical tweezers instrument. After all, he's a genius; isn't it normal for him to make connections between different things?
With the right instruments, the "low-temperature optical tweezers" team began their experiment once again.
This time it went very smoothly. Ji Zhixing's carefully designed experimental plan was completely feasible, and the experimental progress was advancing ahead of schedule every day.
This smooth sense of accomplishment delighted Deng Yi and the others. With tireless efforts and concerted work, the feasibility of the new plan was fully verified in just half a month.
Ji Zhixing compiled the technical details into a booklet and went with Ye Shi to report to Professor Gao Xiao. Deng Zhi and Liang Zi chose to stay in the lab and continue playing.
On the worktable sat a clove of garlic, which Deng had saved from eating in the canteen. He peeled the garlic clove into a thin slice, separated the cells, and then placed it under a modified high-speed multi-light trap nanomicroscope. Using optical tweezers, he pulled out a 30-micrometer field cytoplasmic filament from the garlic cell.
As soon as the light source is turned off, the filaments retract, just like Play-Doh.
"Haha, this is fun!" Deng Yi manipulated the button to pull the filament back and forth, sometimes winding it into an N shape, sometimes into a B shape. As soon as he released the button, the filament would shrink back into the central bubble without any heat damage.
"My turn! My turn!" Liang Zi held a glass shard, eager to try.
After the experiment was successful, they spent the next two or three days enthusiastically researching how to use optical tweezers to grab things faster and in various creative ways.
Just as Liang Zicai had placed the slide, Professor Gao Xiao arrived, and he had no choice but to give up his observation position.
After Professor Gao Xiao personally verified it, he showered the four members of the group with praise, leaving them completely flattered. While praising him, he sighed inwardly, thinking, "If only this kid had come sooner, this project could have saved at least 50 million yuan." He had ample funding, but thrift and diligence are the true nature of us working people.
Gao Xiao smiled and said, "Now that the thermal effect of traditional optical tweezers has been solved, I'll give you a week off starting tomorrow to rest. When you come back, you can be reassigned to other groups."
Especially Ji Zhixing, having such a person in a research group is like a catalyst in a chemical reaction, which can greatly improve the efficiency of experiments. Gao Xiao naturally hopes that he will do more work because he is capable.
He said to Ji Zhixing, "Later, all the groups will have a meeting together, and you can explain the principle of the new optical tweezers technology."
The "remote object retrieval" project was divided into several research groups, some of which were responsible for solving thermal effects, some for accuracy, some for sensitivity, and so on.
However, all the research groups' experiments were based on traditional optical tweezers technology. Now that Ji Zhixing's new optical tweezers technology is effective, other groups' experiments naturally need to be adjusted accordingly.
This meant that some groups' experiments had to be scrapped and started over. However, the students that Professor Gao Xiao had personally selected were all of good character. They not only did not complain about Ji Zhixing, but also started a competition to have Ji Zhixing join their groups.
Ji Zhixing ultimately chose the "Alchemy Furnace" group.
This group's research focuses on developing the optimal platform for microfluidic technology experiments using optical tweezers, with a current emphasis on silicon-based materials. Silicon-based platforms are easy to integrate, and different silicon-based waveguide structures can overcome the diffraction limit, enabling various manipulation functions of particles, including trapping, transporting, sorting, storing, and sensing.
During his week-long vacation, Ji Zhixing thoroughly studied the knowledge about silicon-based materials from the systematic courses and searched for many of the latest papers as supplementary reading materials.
While he was freely immersing himself in the sea of knowledge, people in the education field, both at home and abroad, were kept extremely busy because of him.
Because of the groundbreaking historical progress in the Navier-Stokes equations, all current textbooks that mention fluid mechanics must be revised accordingly.
This matter has actually been discussed since the International Congress of Mathematicians, but most people still feel that we should be more cautious and wait two years, like the Clay Mathematics Institute, to let time test the authenticity and reliability of the new academic results.
However, in the past six months, researchers in various fields such as physics, engineering, astronomy, and meteorology have been eager to apply the general solution of the Navier-Stokes equations to solve their experimental needs. Various research results have emerged one after another, and a wide variety of academic papers have been accepted by major journals.
Consequently, some leading figures in the education sector began to speak out, stating that since Ji Zhixing's research findings on the Navier-Stokes equations had been accepted by the academic community and fully verified in a wide variety of experiments, knowledge education, as the cornerstone of science, should not be outdated and hinder the learning of "scientific seeds."
It's important to understand that some teachers simply read from the textbook in class, showing no interest in how the world is developing. Others, constrained by education regulations, dare not impart knowledge to students that hasn't yet been recognized by the Ministry of Education.
University students are highly proactive and can independently obtain the latest academic information from news and academic literature. However, many students below the level of higher education are not interested in knowledge that is "beyond the curriculum."
For example, the Poincaré conjecture, one of the seven millennium problems, has been solved, and the Clay Mathematics Institute also finalized the conjecture in 2010. However, many students whose knowledge is limited to textbooks are still unaware of this.
Therefore, many educators who care about basic education have called for textbooks to be revised as soon as possible to convey the latest academic breakthroughs to students.
Originally, Ji Zhixing had no idea that such a storm had been brewing in the education sector. But he received letters, emails, and phone calls from various textbook publishers at home and abroad, requesting him to write prefaces for the revised textbooks.
Ji Zhixing considered the request to write a preface for a long time.
After all, scientific knowledge is as vast as the stars in the sky, and the Navier-Stokes equations are just one of them; however dazzling they may be, they cannot overshadow the brilliance of the stars. Therefore, to write a preface for comprehensive books such as "History of Physics" or "Mathematical Theory" would be to invite ridicule from the sages of the past.
However, he was equally unwilling to let go of this opportunity—an opportunity to have the names of Chinese people appear in foreign textbooks.
Chinese textbooks contain the names of many foreign scientists, but conversely, foreign textbooks rarely contain the names of Chinese scientists. This is partly due to the relatively late start of science in China, but it is not always the case.
For example, the "Huang Minglong reduction reaction method" is the only organic chemical reaction named after a Chinese person.
Although this reaction method, improved by Huang Minglong, is widely used in countries around the world, many foreign organic chemistry books still retain the original name Wolff-Kishner reaction when referring to this reaction, and rarely or never mention Huang Minglong.
Whatever the reason, Ji Zhixing felt that he should at least seize this opportunity to make more Chinese names appear in foreign textbooks, so that foreign students could be influenced by them.
Therefore, he selected some specialized books on fluid mechanics and wrote prefaces for them.
This incident has also sparked widespread discussion online.
"The pinnacle of my academic career was when a prominent figure cited my paper in a presentation. And Ji Zhixing's name and achievements are already in textbooks..."
"No comparison, no comparison. Another day of just coming to Earth to make up the numbers."
"So, after the Malva nut and thermal underwear, Ji Zhixing has released new merchandise again?" (doge.jpg)
"My friend keeps saying when Ji Zhixing will enter the entertainment industry and release some real merchandise."
"Only fake fans would think that way; real fans are all studying!"
...
Ji Zhixing had no time to pay attention to the online discussions. After a week of vacation/study, he and Deng Yi reported to the "Alchemy Furnace" group and were assigned a task—to explore the logical manipulation between the polarization direction of light and the different paths of particle guidance.
Ji Zhixing and Deng Yi collaborated to experiment on the polarization-sensitive characteristics of slit waveguides on a 1mm thick silicon-based structure. Because of the "sensitivity," the experimental procedures were extremely delicate.
However, Deng was not yet used to meticulously crafting "a single grain of rice," so various mistakes inevitably occurred during the experiment.
"Hiss!" Deng Yi's face scrunched up. "Sorry, it's 'burnt' again." He reluctantly threw the piece of waste silicon-based material into the waste bin.
Ji Zhixing asked, "What exactly happened? Let me record the raw data."
Deng, head drooping, said, "I was just micro-controlling the light particles as they traversed the silicon-based evanescent field, but I didn't control the light source properly. The plasma on the silicon surface was 'neutralized' by the light particles and disappeared."
Ji Zhixing was taken aback: "Disappeared?"
Seeing Ji Zhixing stunned, Deng Yi felt even more ashamed. He didn't want to be a bad teammate either, but his hand movements just couldn't be as meticulous as Ji Zhixing's.
Ji Zhixing had no time to comfort Deng Yi. He picked up the small silicon-based material from the scrap bin and examined it carefully under the quantum resonance analyzer for a long time. When he looked up again, his eyes were full of disbelief.
"Wh...what's wrong?" Deng Yi was somewhat at a loss because of his strange reaction.
"Miracles can happen from waste liquid tanks! The ancients were right!" Ji Zhixing's blood was boiling. Perhaps, a breakthrough in a technology that China was being held back by would be achieved here!
A note from the author:
The research description in this article refers to "Optical Micromanipulation Research of Silicon-based Near-field Optical Tweezers" and "Structure of Silicon Trimer Nano-optical Tweezers and Methods for Capturing and Moving Nanoparticles".
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