Chapter 304 Electrical and Electronic Instruments

"My educational experience is different from yours. I was admitted to Yichun Normal College, which was not a very good school in physics. At that time, I had a senior brother who was very important to my future academic career. It had a huge impact.”

In the office, Academician Chen Xianhui was sitting on the sofa and slowly narrating his story to Wu Bin.

"He had experienced a lot of majors at that time, such as lasers, condensed matter physics, theoretical physics, and surface physics. It can be said that he went from deriving formulas and programming software to drawing his own drawings and meeting all levels of processing machinery."

"But why do you think he bothers with so many majors?" Academician Chen Xianhui suddenly asked Wu Bin with a smile.

"Curiosity? Or...like to try?" Wu Bin thought for a while and replied.

After hearing this, Chen Xianhui shook his head, "It's because many people at that time had not so simple motives for studying, including my senior brother."

Looking at Wu Bin with a somewhat confused expression, Chen Xianhui continued with a smile: "We were college students in the early 1980s. Life at that time was different from now. Except for a few of our college students who came from particularly well-off families, many of our classmates had the experience of starvation. You can’t expect a starving student to have lofty ideals. That’s why he wanted to go abroad when he was an undergraduate, because going abroad would give him enough to eat.”

"As for why I am suddenly telling you this, in addition to wanting you to understand that the superior scientific research environment is hard-won, I also want to share with you why this senior's later experience will have a huge impact on my academic career."

Hearing this, Wu Bin couldn't help but feel a little flattered. Not only did a big-name academician have no pretensions, he even shared his experience in scientific research with him. This couldn't be more people-friendly.

"I have met many students of all kinds during my years at HKUST, but I have never seen someone as special as you. This specialness not only refers to your academic excellence, but also to your lack of The confusion that many undergraduates feel.”

After taking a sip of hot tea, Academician Chen Xianhui continued: "Just like the speech you gave at your own graduation ceremony, independent search for knowledge is a concept that many first-year students cannot adapt to for a while, but from your resume, But I don’t see any of the discomfort you felt when you first entered college, and on the contrary, you feel a little comfortable.”

"Later, Academician Pan told me that you planned to further your studies in China, which made me feel your specialness even more. This special feeling even made me feel that being your tutor is very stressful."

Wu Bin quickly waved his hand and said, "Professor, you are serious."

"It's not important, it's not important." Chen Xianhui shook his head: "What is the purpose of a teacher? It is to teach students to become talents, but you are already a very outstanding talent, so how can we make students like you reach a higher level? It puts me under a lot of pressure. To be honest, this is the first time a student has caused me such trouble, and it is also a rare and novel experience for me."

Wu Bin: "Professor, what you said made me very stressed. Really, my calves are shaking now."

"Hahaha." Academician Chen Xianhui laughed twice, "This is the effect you want. Let me see how you plan to turn this pressure into ten times the motivation."

After laughing, Academician Chen Xianhui said seriously: "When my senior brother was studying condensed matter physics, there was only one X-ray machine in the entire university, and it was an instrument from the Department of Earth and Space Sciences. It can be said that the conditions for doing condensed matter physics at that time were really good. Very bad.”

"At that time, he felt that the conditions in condensed matter physics were so poor that it would definitely not work, so he quickly found a way to transfer to a doctorate in theoretical physics. However, before he could get a doctorate in theoretical physics, he had another one and went to Germany. The opportunity to study for a Ph.D. in experimental physics, as I said before, for this senior, going abroad was his biggest purpose in studying at university, so he decisively chose to go to Germany."

"After that, we often exchanged letters. He told me that his mentor's laboratory had four STMs (scanning tunneling microscopes) at that time, but the STMs at that time were actually very rough. After a week, I was lucky enough. You may not be able to scan out two pictures.”

"But my senior brother didn't know that at the time. His instructor gave him four experimental directions and asked him to consider choosing one. But he didn't understand those four experimental directions. After all, the experimental conditions in China were too poor before. He’s done neither.”

"So he could only ask one of his German senior brothers. The German senior brother said that there was a very old surface analysis instrument, which was photoelectron spectroscopy plus some plasma plus mass spectrometry. The previous senior brother had already been tinkering with it. You haven't graduated in six or seven years. As long as you don't choose it, everything else will be fine."

"So the next day he went directly to my instructor and told him that the other three were fine, as long as he didn't choose the old surface analysis instrument."

"puff……"

Wu Bin couldn't help laughing when he heard this, this is too straightforward...

Hearing Wu Bin's laughter, Academician Chen Xianhui also shook his head and said: "Yes, until now, every time when we talk about it, he will laugh at himself for being so stupid."

"You can imagine how speechless his mentor was when he heard it, so he directly said to him, 'Then you can choose this old one.'"

"He was so depressed that he wrote three letters in a week to express how miserable he was, but then he suddenly stopped writing until three months later. I was wondering if he would When I was forced to drop out of school, I received a letter from him again."

“In the letter, he told me how much of an impact the old instruments had on him, because we had almost never played with the instruments in China, so he still used the method of studying theoretical physics, first looking for relevant textbooks, and studying in one breath I took a nine-volume German version of "Electrical Engineering and Electronics" back to my dormitory to read."

"It turned out that there was a sentence in the preface of that book that had a great impact on him and me. Today, I will also teach you this sentence."

"All electrical and electronic instruments just output current and voltage in some way."

After hearing this, Wu Bin suddenly fell into deep thought.

"Can you understand?" Academician Chen Xianhui asked Wu Bin.

"I can probably understand it a little bit." Wu Bin nodded.

"Okay, then you explain."

"It's almost like when you encounter electrical and electronic instruments, you don't care what their names are, STM, AFM, photoelectron spectroscopy, etc. Anyway, they just output current and voltage in a certain way."

"What a comprehension!" Academician Chen Xianhui clapped his hands, "That's right. In fact, the graph we got in the laboratory is just the current and voltage output by a certain instrument. So do you know... what does this mean?"