"Hard work pays off" is a well-known saying. It tells people that as long as they work hard, there is nothing they can't accomplish.
For example, Sun Jing was a native of the Jin Dynasty. When he was studying every night, in order to avoid dozing off, he tied a rope to his hair and tied the other end to the beam. Whenever his head drooped, the rope would pull him awake, and he would continue reading after waking up. In this way, he became a famous person who used a hanging beam to prevent himself from falling asleep. There is also the prickly Su Qin, who has been looked down upon by others because he failed to seek an official position in the Qin State. So, he decided to argue. From then on, he studied diligently and forgot to eat and sleep. Whenever late at night, when everything was quiet, Su Qin was already dizzy and wanted to sleep. He immediately stabbed his thigh with an awl and woke up when he felt pain. This is the celebrity Su Qin who stimulated his buttocks to wake him up.
Another example is Kuang Heng of the Western Han Dynasty. His family was very poor, but he loved reading very much. But there was no oil to light the lamp in his house at night, and there was a lamp in the neighbor's room, so Kuang Heng dug a hole in the wall and used the light from the hole to read. This is the story of "cutting through the wall to borrow light".
There is also the modern Xu Beihong, whose paintings are famous both at home and abroad. When he was young, he was motivated to learn painting and used his diligence to win glory for the country and prevent foreigners from looking down on us Chinese.
Lincoln, the 16th President of the United States, is a world-famous speaker. His success lies in the fact that he has been practicing eloquence diligently since he was a teenager, and he has done more reading and listening. When he was young, he worked as a farmer, logger, store clerk, postman and land surveyor, etc. In order to become a lawyer, he often walked 30 miles to a court to listen to the defense statements of lawyers and watch how they argued and made gestures. While listening to the loud and impassioned speeches of those politicians and orators, he imitated them. He listened to those traveling evangelists waving their arms and delivering sermons that shook the sky. When he came back, he also imitated their example and practiced his speeches repeatedly in the woods and cornfields. The success of the speech enabled Lincoln to finally become an eloquent lawyer and eventually enter politics.
2. Li Bai, the great poet of the Tang Dynasty, did not like reading when he was a child. One day, when the teacher was not at home, he quietly slipped out to play.
He came to the river at the foot of the mountain and saw an old woman grinding an iron pestle on a stone. Li Bai was very puzzled and asked: "Old woman, what are you doing sharpening the iron pestle?"
The old woman said: "I am grinding the needle." Li Bai asked in surprise: "Oh! Why is the iron pestle so thick?" Can it be ground into a needle?" The old woman said with a smile: "As long as you grind the iron pestle every day, it will become finer and finer. Are you still afraid that it won't be ground into a needle?" After hearing this, the clever Li Bai thought to himself, Feeling ashamed, I turned around and ran back to the bookstore. From then on, he kept in mind the principle that "as long as you work hard, an iron pestle can be ground into a needle" and studied hard.
3. Churchill
Churchill, the British Prime Minister during the Second World War, was an outstanding speaker and was listed as one of the top 10 famous orators in the world. However, when Churchill gave a speech in Parliament for the first time, he stumbled into a big somersault - when he was halfway through his speech, he suddenly forgot the next part and couldn't remember it. He was so depressed that he had to interrupt his speech and awkwardly Return to your seat. But he was not discouraged, devoted himself to studying speech skills, and often exercised his oral expression skills. Hard work paid off, and Churchill finally became a famous orator and outstanding politician in the 20th century.
1. In September 1878, Edison decided to launch an attack on the fortress of electric lighting. He read a lot of books about electric lighting and was determined to make electric lights that were cheap, durable, safe and convenient.
He started with incandescent lamps. A small piece of heat-resistant material is placed in a glass bubble. When the current burns it to a white-hot level, it emits light due to heat. He first thought of charcoal, so he put a small piece of charcoal wire into a glass bubble, but it broke immediately as soon as he was powered on.
"What's the reason for this?" Edison picked up the carbon wire broken into two pieces and looked at the glass bubble. After a long time, he suddenly remembered, "Oh, maybe it's because there is air in it. The oxygen in the air helped the charcoal filament burn, causing it to break immediately!" So he used his handmade air extractor to remove as much air as possible from the glass bubble. As soon as the power was turned on, it did not turn off immediately. But after 8 minutes, the light still went out.
In any case, Edison finally discovered that the vacuum state is very important for incandescent lamps. The key is the carbon filament. This is the crux of the problem.
So what kind of heat-resistant material should be chosen?
Edison thought about it and decided that platinum has the highest melting point and strong heat resistance! So Edison and his assistants tried several times with platinum. However, although this kind of platinum with a higher melting point extended the lighting time of the electric lamp a lot, it still had to automatically turn off and then light up from time to time, which was still not ideal.
Edison was not discouraged and continued his experimental work. He successively tried various rare metals such as barium, titanium, and indium, but the results were not very satisfactory.
After some time, Edison made a summary of the previous experimental work and wrote down all the various heat-resistant materials he could think of. There were as many as 1,600 kinds in total.
Next, he and his assistants classified the 1,600 heat-resistant materials and began testing them. They tried many times, but platinum was still the most suitable. Thanks to improved extraction methods that create a higher degree of vacuum inside the glass bulb, the lamp life has been extended to 2 hours. But this kind of lamp made of platinum is too expensive. Who is willing to spend so much money to buy a lamp that can only be used for 2 hours?
The experimental work fell into a trough, and Edison was very distressed. One cold winter, Edison sat by the fire, looking at the blazing charcoal fire, and couldn't help but murmur to himself: "Charcoal..."
I have tried charcoal strips, what should I do? Edison felt hot all over and pulled off the scarf around his neck. Seeing the scarf made of cotton yarn, Edison suddenly had an idea in his mind:
Yes! The fiber of cotton yarn is better than that of wood. Can this material be used?
He hurriedly pulled off a piece of cotton yarn from the scarf and roasted it on the fire for a long time. The cotton yarn turned into charred charcoal. He carefully put the carbon filament into the glass bubble and tested it. The effect was indeed very good.
Edison was very happy, and immediately made a lot of carbon filaments made of cotton yarn, and conducted many experiments in succession. The life of the bulb was suddenly extended by 13 hours, and later reached 45 hours.
As soon as the news spread, it shocked the whole world. The price of gas stocks in London, England plummeted, and the gas industry was also in chaos. People had a premonition that lighting gas lamps would soon become a thing of the past, and the future would be the age of electric light.
Everyone congratulated Edison, but the cute Edison didn’t look happy at all. He shook his head and said, "No, we have to find other materials!"
"Why, it stayed on for 45 hours. Not yet?" the assistant asked in surprise. "No! I hope it can last for 1,000 hours, preferably 16,000 hours!" Edison replied.
As we all know, it is good to keep the light on for more than 1,000 hours, but what kind of materials are suitable?
Edison already knew what was going on. Based on the properties of cotton yarn, he decided to look for new materials from plant fibers.
So, the marathon experiment began again. Edison experimented with all plant materials he could find. He even used horse mane, human hair and beards as filament experiments. Finally, Edison chose bamboo. Before the experiment, he took out a piece of bamboo, looked at it through a microscope, and jumped with joy.
So, the carbonized bamboo filaments were put into the glass bulbs, and after being powered on, the bamboo filament bulbs lit up continuously for 1,200 hours!
At this time, Edison finally breathed a sigh of relief. His assistants congratulated him one after another, but he said seriously: "There are many bamboos around the world, and their structures are different. We should choose carefully!"
The assistants were deeply moved by Edison’s scientific attitude of striving for excellence, and they volunteered to inspect various places. After comparison, a kind of bamboo produced in Japan was the most suitable, so a large amount of this bamboo was imported from Japan. At the same time, Edison opened a power plant and set up wires. Soon after, the American people began to use this cheap, high-quality, durable bamboo filament light bulb.
The bamboo filament lamp has been used for many years. It was not until 1906 that Edison switched to using tungsten filament, which improved the quality of light bulbs and continues to be used today.
When people light up the electric light, they often think of this great inventor, who brought endless light to the darkness. In 1979, the United States spent millions of dollars on a year-long commemorative event to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Edison's invention of the electric light.
2. No coincidence. More than 60 years ago, a biologist named Michelson discovered that there was a kind of earthworm in the east coast of the United States and the west coast of Europe at the same latitude, but there was no such earthworm on the west coast of the United States. Why is this? This question attracted the attention of Wegener, a German geologist who was studying the origin of continents and coasts. Wegener believed that the small earthworm had limited mobility and could not cross the Atlantic Ocean. Its distribution just showed that the European continent and the American continent were originally connected together, but later split into two continent. He took the geographical distribution of earthworms as one of the examples and wrote it in his famous book "The Origin of Continents and Oceans".
Once, Newton went to the countryside to play, and then rested under an apple tree. Suddenly, an apple fell from the tree. He thought it was strange, why did the apple fall from top to bottom instead of from bottom to top? He returned home to study with this question. As a result, new related questions continued to arise, so he continued to study. Later, he discovered that the earth has gravity and can attract objects. Subsequently, "Newton's Physics of Gravitation" appeared.