Study Monster Cultivation System
Chapter 243 - 242 Scholar Hooligan

In a small classroom, Jie Qifen smoothly closed the door, opened the window, took a seat on the podium, and lit up a cigarette.

This series of actions was done in one fell swoop, with none of the cultured air you’d expect.

This was probably the legendary "Study Scoundrel."

Li Zheng’s actions were the complete opposite: he neatly arranged his backpack, laid out his stationery, organized his notebook, and sat upright.

Jie Qifen looked at this routine and couldn’t help but purse his lips and sigh, "You’re just missing a national-level top student award."

"Ah? There’s a national level for that?" Li Zheng couldn’t help but get excited.

Jie Qifen laughed, "There is, everything, there’s even a global level. You’d go to Moscow for the evaluation, Lenin presenting the award."

"Boring," Li Zheng thought for a moment and quickly realized something was amiss, "That’s not right, what you’re talking about is the outstanding league member, isn’t it?"

"... You really are... quite serious," Jie Qifen said no more, took a drag on his cigarette and asked, "Which part of physics do you want to hear? Anything but Quantum Mechanics."

"Ah? I just wanted to hear about Quantum Mechanics." Li Zheng said, gathering his stationery and moving to the last row of the classroom to lessen the smell.

"Quantum Mechanics is just like a pyramid scheme; those guys don’t even know what they’re dabbling with," Jie Qifen firmly waved his hand, "Hurry, pick another."

"Then let’s go with your area of expertise," Li Zheng suggested.

Jie Qifen was even more resolute in his gesturing, "That won’t do either. You won’t understand what I do, and I’m too lazy to explain it till you do. Even if you did understand, it wouldn’t be of any use to your future."

Li Zheng complained, "Why’s it so troublesome just to have a lecture with you?"

"Any more nonsense, and I’ll start teaching you about perpetual motion machines."

"No, no, no..." Li Zheng scratched his head and said, "Then talk about fluid mechanics. I’m not too good with that part."

"Normal," Jie Qifen said through clenched teeth with his cigarette, "You know about Lagrangian description, Eulerian description, Bernoulli’s equation, right?"

"I know, but not deeply."

"So, what do these three things have in common?"

"Hmm..." Without needing much thought, Li Zheng replied, "They’re all mathematicians."

"Eh, that’s right!" Jie Qifen chuckled, snuffed out his cigarette, hopped down from the desk, and walked to the blackboard, "Turning physical laws into mathematical equations and slicing fluids into tiny pieces to solve with calculus - that’s fluid mechanics. Of course, that’s just Lagrange’s approach, Euler’s method is somewhat wilder. And just to add, in theory, all physics problems can be solved with this approach."

"Ah," Li Zheng’s eyes widened, "Isn’t that just... Jian Feng?"

"Right, I’ve heard about him from the mathematics department," Jie Qifen nodded, "His understanding of physical concepts is basically limited to high school textbooks, always solving problems with a mathematical approach. They’ve been inviting him to audit their courses, but he hardly goes."

"Sigh... let’s not talk about him," Li Zheng urged, "Please continue your lecture."

Jie Qifen thus began to draw on the blackboard, depicting a pool of water, dividing it into pieces with differentials, and then illustrating various forces acting on them.

"This is the most basic physical image of fluid analysis."

"We need to use this physical image as a pivot to connect to the mathematical world."

"Of course, top geniuses don’t need this stuff; their brains come equipped with a built-in translation system."

"Take Von Neumann, for example; he dabbled in this when he was building the atomic bomb with Fermi and Feynman. When the three did the calculations, Fermi, being older, used a slide rule, Feynman, the youngster, used a computer, and Von Neumann didn’t use anything, just mental math, and he would still finish faster than those two. "

"Then when the atomic bomb experiment succeeded, those two went home, but as Von Neumann did the mental calculations, he casually came up with ’Von Neumann stability analysis’, combining mathematics and physics into one. A shame that it all came about while working on the atomic bomb, so it was classified by the military of Magnesium Country for ten years."

"What a pity, old Von Neumann was gone in his fifties..."

Hearing this, Li Zheng couldn’t help but raise his hand and say, "Teacher Jie, even though I rarely listen to cross-talk, why do I feel like I’m at the Deyun Club?"

"Eh? You listen to Teacher Guo and Teacher Yu too? I listen to it all night long, has my speaking picked up their vibe?"

"Well... I don’t mind the vibe, but you said you’d only talk for fifteen minutes."

"Right, right, right, the time doesn’t count... look at this blob of fluid, three-dimensional, let’s differentiate in the x-direction for a moment..."

"Then in the y-direction, the z-direction..."

"Putting all three directions together, that’s the big equation, the continuous equation description."

"With this in place, you can apply any physical law you like and derive everything else."

"For instance, the velocity at a given moment, you might use the momentum theorem."

"For the first time, I’ll carry you through it; it’s really just these two expressions... combine them and then differentiate a bit more..."

"...and you end up with this equation, looks nice, doesn’t it?"

"Oh, yeah, this is the Navier-Stokes equation. You can memorize it and use it directly, or it doesn’t matter if you can’t, just blunder through it like me."

"Sometimes, I’m out of options too; too damn many equations, it’s more comfortable to derive them myself."

"Besides, you don’t necessarily have to use the momentum theorem; any physical law that can build a relationship between time and velocity will allow you to derive this equation. You can try it yourself when you’re free; I won’t go into it now."

"That’s it." Jie Qifen tossed the chalk, clapping his hands, "That’s the gist. Now you should be able to derive all the equations of fluid mechanics yourself. You’ll need linear algebra for some parts; if you don’t know it, go learn it yourself."

Li Zheng: "???"

"Hmm? Anything else unclear?"

"Uh..." Li Zheng drooped his head.

It wasn’t a matter of misunderstanding.

He simply didn’t even know what he was supposed to understand!

Li Zheng gathered his courage and asked, "For example... the problem of viscous fluid flow in a pipe."

```

"So I just need to apply a few forces, take the derivative, and that should be it?"

"Really? Let me take a look..." Li Zheng said, trembling as he picked up the pen.

"Yeah, start with the derivative, don’t ask if you don’t understand, just flip through the book and memorize the equations. I’ve taught everything I can. The ability to derive the entire picture from the simplest theory is the basic quality for physics research."

"Basic quality, indeed..." Sweat was already starting to bead on Li Zheng’s forehead.

Afterward, Jie Qifen left the small classroom and wandered off to the laboratory.

With no other choice, Li Zheng had to employ thought acceleration.

It was absurd, but Jie Qifen had indeed provided a study method—

Self-derivation.

Naturally, one must have a comprehensive grasp of Advanced Mathematics and Linear Algebra before having the qualifications to derive anything.

No doubt Gu Jianfeng had mastered it long ago.

And maybe in every competitive physics exam, that’s how he toughed it out.

No, it must have started even earlier.

Perhaps he had been deriving his way through all of middle school.

Or even earlier, in elementary school.

Or possibly since he first encountered numbers.

No doubt Gu Jianfeng, like Jie Qifen, chose this approach instinctively from the beginning and intensified their brains through thousands of derivations, ultimately becoming one-in-ten-thousand strong.

Of course, perhaps innate aptitude was the leading factor, but that doesn’t prevent training from playing a role.

Let’s try it.

Let’s try following the path of these twisted geniuses.

From then on, Li Zheng went all out and embarked on an academic journey he had never experienced before.

...

Half an hour later, when Jie Qifen returned to the classroom, he saw papers scattered all around.

"Holy shit, you actually tried to brute force it?" Jie Qifen walked over to Li Zheng in surprise, casually picking up a piece of scrap paper to look at, "Hmm... this is correct..."

Li Zheng had also emerged from thought acceleration, staring blankly, breathing heavily.

Using this study method for the first time in his life was extremely challenging in the first few hours. Most of the time, he could only apply brute force, trying various physical equations in hopes of deriving the necessary ones.

It was like giving a blind person a bunch of mismatched screws and nuts and asking him to screw them together; the blind person could only fumble and try each one until they luckily fit together.

But after the eighth hour, Li Zheng gradually gained vision, or rather, his sense of touch became sharper.

He could almost know what kind of screw was needed just by looking at the shape of the nut.

Thirty hours later, he could clearly see most of the details of the nut and was completely certain what size screw was needed.

Forty-five hours later, he knew exactly where each screw should be placed.

Fifty-five hours later, he closed his eyes again, reverting to the initial state, needing only a gentle touch on the nut to effortlessly produce the right screw.

At that moment, Li Zheng stared blankly ahead.

He didn’t feel like he had learned any new knowledge.

Yet he was confident he had grasped everything.

No matter what problem was thrown at him, he had a solution.

He felt an enigmatic confidence.

His entire scalp tingled.

It was a new realm!

Effortless mastery of the skill!

At this moment, Xu Zhu was not alone.

Feng Qingyang, Zhang Sanfeng, and Dugu Qiubai merged souls at this instant!

"I... I understand..." Li Zheng looked at Jie Qifen with tears of gratitude, "Thank you, Old Xie, thank you!!"

"..." Jie Qifen, holding the scrap of paper, stepped back in astonishment, "I... I didn’t do anything. Also, just call me Old Xie, ’xie xie’ is my nickname, only my mother can call me that."

"Thank you! Thank you!"

"..." Jie Qifen looked at Li Zheng with concern, then glanced briefly at two more pieces of scrap paper and couldn’t help but sigh, "It’s not easy to come up with so much... But you can tell your math is average at best, and your method is still rather unsophisticated. To be honest, our ways are not in sync... I’m not sure I can continue teaching you."

"No problem, this lesson was great already," Li Zheng nodded repeatedly.

"You have a good attitude... That’s comforting..." Jie Qifen then put down the scrap paper, raised his hand, and said, "Okay, as we agreed before, I’ll give you one last question. If you can solve it, I’ll continue teaching."

"Please!"

"Let’s just do a simple fluid dynamics question. I’ll say it once, so listen closely—" Jie Qifen’s mouth twisted into a sly smile, "How much electric charge can a single drop of water carry at most?"

Li Zheng waited blankly for a long while, seeing Jie Qifen only smiling and not speaking, before he finally realized.

"Is that it?"

"That’s it," Jie Qifen gestured, "You can set the conditions yourself, whether the drop of water is cubical or spherical, with or without gravity, just like that."

```

"Ah." Li Zheng’s mouth gaped open, "I can..."

"Can what? Get to calculating." Teacher Jie ruffled Li Zheng’s hair before walking out of the classroom with her hands in her pockets.

As she turned to close the door, she ran into Lu Yang.

"Teacher Jie, everything in the lab is pretty much wrapped up. Shall we let everyone head out for dinner?"

"Mm, lead them to it." Teacher Jie leaned against the classroom doorway, waving casually.

"You’re not going?"

"I’ll wait a bit longer."

"Oh..." Lu Yang glanced through the door window, struggling to spot Li Zheng at the back of the classroom, and then exclaimed in surprise, "Li Zheng is back?"

"Mm."

"Why isn’t he at the lab?"

"That’s because he’s not satisfied," Teacher Jie chuckled with a cigarette in her mouth, "He specifically asked for me."

"Ah!" Lu Yang shuddered, then looked back into the classroom.

It was filled with regret and pity.

Why put yourself through this, brother...

Teacher Jie’s classes are either like crackpot texts or skits—wouldn’t it be better to use your time wisely?

"Although this kid’s vibe clashes with mine, he’s quite interesting." Teacher Jie sighed while tapping on the glass, "All scientific research ultimately converges. Although I should probably prefer Gu Jianfeng, his approach, well, is also a path, I guess."

"!" Lu Yang shuddered again, "Teacher Jie... are you praising him?"

"Didn’t you hear how dumb I think he is?" Teacher Jie made a face, "How could I possibly teach high school students? I’m just messing with him. I gave him a problem he’ll definitely not be able to solve to rush him back home."

"Phew... that sounds more like it..." Lu Yang breathed a sigh of relief, "I was going to say, at most you’d teach the likes of Gu Jianfeng."

"That would still depend on my mood."

"Hee hee..."

"How come I never realized you were this annoying?"

"I’m leaving, I’m leaving right now..."

...

Inside the classroom, inspired by his recent level-up, Li Zheng quickly found a no-effort way to solve the problem.

How much charge can a single droplet of water carry?

Effortlessly, he began to outline a physical image in his mind.

First off, the surface of the droplet would be under tension causing it to contract.

Meanwhile, the charges on the surface of the droplet, repelling each other, would make it expand.

When the repulsive force is equal to the surface tension, the droplet can no longer maintain its shape and thus it will fragment.

The amount of charge producing this repulsive force is the maximum charge possible.

With the principle understood, Li Zheng began to write.

In a vacuum without gravity, let’s say the droplet is spherical with a radius of r, density of ρ, surface tension coefficient of σ, carrying a charge Q, and the dielectric constant of a vacuum is ε.

Then, according to the "sectional analysis method" he just learned, he took a small element from the droplet for a force analysis...

Infinitesimally...

Then infinitesimally again...

Nope, draw a geometric figure...

Damn it, consider curvature...

...

There it is!

The tension is 2σ/r!

Such a cool equation has to be right.

Then the repulsive force...

Section it, start differentiating.

Whatever, in fluid dynamics, differentiation is king.

Then calculate the electric field strength...

Mm... feels like this is where Gauss’s law comes into play...

So finally...

The repulsive force is 1/2·ε(Q/4πεr²)²!

Set the repulsive force equal to the surface tension, solve the equation...

There it is!

Q=8π√εr³σ!

It sounded simple, but Li Zheng was covered in sweat by the time he had truly finished, and Jie Qifen just happened to come back to the classroom, checking his watch.

He walked up to Li Zheng, squinting as he picked up the answer sheet.

Then, his eyes bulged in shock.

"I’m going to your mother, did you actually solve it?"

"Hmph, it wasn’t that hard..." Li Zheng adjusted his hair, looking like a lotus after a summer rain, "So, can you start telling me about your research now?"

"It’s not... that..." Jie Qifen couldn’t find any flaws after a long search and scratched his head in agitation, "I didn’t finish stating the problem, this is just the first question."

"??!" Li Zheng stood up in anger and shock.

Damn it! Study Demon!

"Don’t worry, don’t worry, the second question is also very simple," Jie Qifen soothed, "Listen well, the second question— please solve it using another method."

"???"

"Think outside the box for a moment, you have half an hour."

Jie Qifen then left the room again after closing the door.

Li Zheng was certainly furious.

He could naturally just walk away.

But wouldn’t that let the Study Demon gloat?

Can’t let that happen!

Solve!

Brute force solve!

So, for the first time with hatred in his heart, Li Zheng threw himself at the problem.

...

Half an hour later, Jie Qifen entered the classroom again, checking his watch and rubbing his stomach as he walked over to Li Zheng’s desk.

Upon picking up the paper, he exploded with anger.

"Fuck!! How could your dumb brain think of this??"

"Hmph." Li Zheng wiped the grease from his forehead and managed a cold sneer, "Just the principle of least action, ordinary undergraduate mechanics stuff."

"Third question!" Jie Qifen slapped the paper and said viciously, "Now conjure up another solution."

"Ha... hahaha..." Li Zheng gave a miserable smile, gazing out at the setting sun outside the window, and slowly pulled out a hidden piece of paper from his desk, "Sorry, I’ve already anticipated this step."

"?!" Jie Qifen was taken aback, and his entire worldview trembled.

He stiffly took the answer sheet and dropped his hand after one glance.

"This is still the first problem, pushing me to resort to the principle of hollow skill." Li Zheng smiled lightly as he packed his stationery, "I know you don’t want to teach me, just say it, and I’ll leave."

"You... you..." Jie Qifen, looking at the papers all over the floor, scratching his scalp, said, "Beg me again... maybe I’ll agree..."

"I won’t beg." Li Zheng slung his bag over his shoulder, full of pride, not needing to show anger.

I’m Study Demon, how could I bow to a Study Punk?

Jie Qifen’s face twisted away from that righteous gaze, "Just, just try saying a couple of nice words..."

Li Zheng frowned and declared, "Smoking is harmful to your health!"

"... Oh well, for your concern about your teacher’s health, I’ll reluctantly teach you two lessons," said Jie Qifen.

"..."

"Off we go, let’s eat first," Jie Qifen urged Li Zheng towards the door, "At your level, you might also understand my research."

"Let’s be clear, you’re the one who insisted on teaching me."

"Hey, we’ll talk over drinks."

"Drinks?"

"Let’s go, let’s go..." Jie Qifen pushed Li Zheng along and only then noticed a piece of paper stuck to Li Zheng’s buttocks.

He plucked the paper to take a look and exclaimed in surprise, "You even prepared a fourth solution???"

"It’s embarrassing to say..." Li Zheng fanned himself, "This one was a solution I sought outside the competition, I don’t understand it myself."

"That’s right, you shouldn’t understand it." Jie Qifen tapped the paper and snorted with laughter, "The perturbation method is the technique of a Nobel laureate in Physics; the person who helped you must have cheated off a paper, how despicable!"

"Shut up!" Li Zheng snapped.

"Ah?" Jie Qifen paused, then slapped his forehead, hurriedly correcting himself, "I got it, it’s not your buddy—he must have cheated off a paper too, brilliant!"

"Yeah."

...

Several kilometers away, Lin Yujing yawned, tossed away her draft, and slumped onto the desk.

This boot camp seems kind of interesting, doesn’t it?