California Institute of Technology.
Classroom.
"You can try!"
Howard looked at Sheldon defiantly.
"Fine."
Seeing this, Sheldon gave up on packing his bag and making a quick exit. He looked at Howard. "Without an exact solution, how would you determine the ground state of a quantum system?"
"I'd arbitrarily guess a ground-state wave function, then alter its parameters to find the quantum state with the lowest energy."
Howard answered immediately.
"Hmm."
Sheldon was astonished. Folding his arms, he finally got serious. "Do you know how to calculate the integral of x squared times e to the negative x without looking it up?"
"I'd use Feynman's trick!"
Howard replied calmly. "Differentiate under the integral sign."
"Not bad."
This time, Sheldon truly saw Howard in a new light.
No matter what Sheldon asked next, Howard answered it.
Even Leonard and Rajesh beside them gave him sidelong looks.
Though they did not look down on engineers as openly as Sheldon did, being higher up the disdain chain, they more or less had a tendency to look down on engineer Howard deep inside.
"How did you suddenly get so good?"
Leonard could not help praising him.
"I'm not you, and Bernie isn't Penny!"
Howard was half smug and half complaining. "Bernie likes physics so much. As a grown man, I can't just sleep afterward without saying anything, can I?
The first time she brought up physics, I didn't know anything.
If she brought it up a second or third time and I still didn't know anything, wouldn't that mean I'd been hanging around you guys for nothing?
Besides, I'm in the physics department too!"
"And that was all it took?"
Rajesh's gaze abruptly filled with grief and indignation.
"I can hardly believe it!"
Sheldon said in shock, "Could it be that motivation through the