The Most Important Thing Was the Attitude

Shen Qi and Ou Ye have moved into their assigned apartment. The 150-square-meter apartment is fully furnished with furniture and appliances. The 90-square-meter apartment upstairs has been simply furnished and is currently empty, so that any relatives or friends who come to visit can stay upstairs.

Shen Qi and Ou Ye were chatting in bed when Shen Qi reported on the family's finances, "We brought back National First Prize. Adding the $25,000 bonus you just received, our current assets are equivalent to about 35.38 million RMB. This is liquid cash, not including the house and car."

"You're quite good at making money," Ou Ye commented after listening to Shen Qi's report.

The $5.03 million brought back from the United States was earned by Shen Qi alone, including bonuses, salary, and sales revenue from academic monographs.

After returning to China Ou Ye also joined the donation drive, contributing $25,000.

"You're good at math, so you'll be in charge of the money from now on." Shen Qi handed the bank card to Ou Ye and instructed her, "Our wedding money is all in here. It's hard-earned, so we need to be careful with it."

"You have a high level of awareness." Ou Ye was satisfied with Shen Qi's performance. For a man, attitude is the most important thing.

After taking Shen Qi's bank card and feeling it, Ou Ye handed it back to Shen Qi, saying, "You have more social experience than me, so you should manage the money."

"I see. Then I'll keep it safe for you." Shen Qi readily agreed.

"Don't spend it recklessly," Ou Ye reminded her.

"Who would dare to squander the money for a wedding?" Shen Qi had almost saved enough for his wife. He had a house, which was allocated by the government, and a car, which was a gift from Ou Ye's father. With over 30 million yuan, he could afford a wedding of any style, whether Chinese or Western, without feeling too stingy.

With a successful career and a fulfilling love life, Shen Qi is seen by others as a winner in life.

Shen Qi was not complacent; he recognized that he still had shortcomings in many areas and needed to continuously improve.

The 973 Program, "Expanding the Application of Defect Topology Research in Condensed Matter," has finally been approved. The higher authorities have allocated 5 million yuan in funding to Shen Qi meet his needs.

Shen Qi purchased basic Condensed Matter Physics experimental equipment such as X-ray Diffractometer, spectrometers, and laser devices. He handled the selection, inspection, and debugging of the equipment all by himself. Shen Qi was the most capable person in the entire center.

Shen Qi set up a laboratory on the third floor of the mathematics building. He has been spending all his time in the laboratory lately, conducting experiments and collecting real data.

Shen Qi continues his research on the origin mechanism of complex oxide q2DEG.

Condensed matter encompasses a wide range of substances and is not limited to complex oxides.

Shen Qi simultaneously conducted research on nanoscale Amorphous Alloy, selecting a typical zirconium-based Amorphous Alloy as the experimental material, with a nominal composition of Zr41.2Ti13.8Cu12.5Ni10Be22.5 (atomic percentage).

To obtain an effective small-angle X-ray scattering signal, the sample needs to be prepared as a thin strip with a thickness of approximately 20 μm.

Preparing samples of this specification requires a high-vacuum single-roller spinning and quenching machine, which is quite expensive and Shen Qi cannot afford it for the time being. He entrusted the Yanjing University Physics Department to help prepare the samples, as the Yanjing University Physics Department has such a machine.

Doing physics research really costs money; 5 million RMB won't last long, which is less than 1 million USD.

Shen Qi knew very well that $1 million was basically not enough to do anything at the Princeton Physics Department. The Princeton PPPL Plasma Laboratory burned through nearly $1 billion every year, while Yenching University's annual research funding was only 3 billion RMB.

For his first physics project after returning to China, Shen Qi was too embarrassed to ask the government for too much money. Five million yuan was fine; he figured he could accomplish great things with a small amount of money, the key was who was using the money.

Experimental research on zirconium-based Amorphous Alloy is a meticulous and tedious task. Shen Qi repeats the same things every day: adjusting the receiving angle range of the 1W2A beam to -3.5 to 0 mrad horizontally and (0.36 ± 0.18) mrad vertically, setting the incident X-ray wavelength to 0.154 nm, the angular resolution to 0.5 mrad, the energy resolution (ΔE/E) to approximately 10^-3, the luminous flux to 1 × 10^11 cps, and setting the distance between the sample and the detector to 1 meter...

After checking the experimental equipment and preparing for the experiment, the morning was over.

We can only get down to business in the afternoon. We start the machine and perform small-angle X-ray diffraction on the zirconium-based Amorphous Alloy sample.

Once the machine is turned on, Shen Qi has to stay in the laboratory to prevent a fire or sabotage by saboteurs.

The experimental machine emitted a regular vibration sound.

At room temperature, the sample is stretched until it breaks, and the detector begins to collect real-time data, measuring the scattering intensity patterns. Each pattern is exposed for 5 minutes.

Shen Qi used FIT2D software to process the original scattering data in the laboratory. First, he normalized the scattering data of the sample and the background, and then subtracted the background scattering data to obtain the scattering data of the amorphous sample.

Finally, some mathematical refinement is needed, such as performing a sector integral with a small angle along the stretching direction. Today, Shen Qi set the angle to 10 degrees.

Working from morning till night, Shen Qi finished his day's work with an A4 sheet of paper printed with a one-dimensional scattering curve of the sample.

This A4 sheet of paper embodies the researchers' patience, meticulousness, sense of responsibility, and ambition to seek breakthroughs.

At the end of the 19th century, a British physicist named Rayleigh discovered something incredible while studying nitrogen: nitrogen obtained from the air was always slightly heavier than nitrogen obtained from nitrogen-containing compounds such as ammonia—by 0.0064 grams.

Rayleigh spent two whole years repeatedly conducting the same experiment, persevering and observing and verifying it over and over again, and finally arrived at a startling conclusion: there exists a "lazy" gas in the air - argon. Argon means lazy in Greek.

Times are changing, and experimental equipment is being upgraded, but the tradition of experimental physicists continues: to conduct experiments, to keep conducting experiments, until the end of time, until retirement.

"Spending time in the lab is fun, but I can't spend all my time there." Shen Qi gets one A4 sheet of paper a day, and he estimates he needs to collect at least 100 sheets to build a theoretical system.

This is just one area of Amorphous Alloy; there are also complex oxides, superconductors, various nanomaterials, and polymers and biopolymers.

The Nobel Prize in Physics is not easy to obtain, and Shen Qi knew that theories without experimental data were unlikely to be accepted by most physicists.

Graduate and doctoral students must spend time in the lab; without it, they won't succeed.

As a high-ranking leader, Shen Qi couldn't possibly be doing experiments and calculating simulation data every day. His responsibility was to grasp the strategic direction and propose innovative ideas. Most of the specific and tedious experimental work should be delegated to his subordinates, and Shen Qi could just supervise occasionally.

This brings us back to the topic of talent. Shen Qi summoned Cui Xiaoyi into his Director's Office and asked, "Why hasn't the physics PhD arrived yet? What difficulties have you encountered?"