What? You Went Straight for Feynman?

With that "no," Jiang Yizhou stood frozen in place, his face turning incredibly ugly.

The more flamboyant he had been just now, the more awkward he felt now.

The students in the classroom looked at him with teasing eyes. Some boys who normally couldn't stand his mannerisms even failed to hold back, letting out pig-like snorts of laughter.

Jiang Yizhou only felt his face burning, but his mental fortitude was fairly good.

He quickly forced out a relieved smile, as though the mistake just now had merely been a slip of the tongue.

"Ah, looks like I oversimplified it."

As he spoke, he pretentiously picked up the test paper again, his brows tightly furrowed as if he were conducting a second analysis.

But in reality, he was panicking like crazy.

To give himself a way out, Jiang Yizhou's mind raced, and he finally squeezed out an explanation he thought was quite reasonable.

"Teacher, I think this question may be ambiguous."

Jiang Yizhou pointed at the question.

"Since the chain ultimately all falls onto the ground, the pressure it exerts on the ground must eventually equal its weight."

"So the intermediate process is simply a process of increasing from zero to mg, so..."

"What I said earlier, F = xgλ, or that it directly equals mg, is valid under certain specific conditions."

Hearing this, Li Dong, seated in the back row, couldn't help shaking his head.

To him, Jiang Yizhou's way of thinking was practically that of an amoeba.

He had completely ignored the fundamental fact that it was in motion.

The chain was falling. The instant each small segment of iron links touched the ground, its speed dropped to zero, and the drastic change in momentum generated an enormous impact force.

Ignoring that impact force and talking about the static gravitational force was practically an insult to Newton's Second Law.

Jiang Yang's expression on the podium wasn't very pleasant either.

As a physics teacher, he could tolerate students being unable to solve difficult problems, but he absolutely could not tolerate this sort of forced explanation just to save face.

Physics was a rigorous discipline. Yes meant yes, and no meant no.

"Jiang Yizhou."

"There is no 'I think' in physics, and the Momentum Theorem will not change because of your 'specific conditions.'"

His words left Jiang Yizhou unable to sit or stand, wishing he could find a crack in the ground and crawl into it.

"Ring, ring, ring."

The life-saving bell finally rang.

On the podium, Jiang Yang no longer paid any attention to that prideful student.

He directly announced the end of class.

Only then did Jiang Yizhou collapse into his chair as though he had been granted a pardon.

Jiang Yang didn't bother with him anymore. Holding his water cup, he headed toward the classroom door, but just as he reached it, he suddenly stopped.

He suddenly remembered that he still had the task of making up the numbers to complete.

Although he didn't know what Old Yang was thinking, he was counting on Li Dong to fill one of the spots for the physics competition.

With that thought, he turned around and headed toward the back row of the classroom.

As he passed the second row, he could still hear Jiang Yizhou explaining himself to the students around him.

"There's definitely something wrong with this question. The conditions must not have been fully given, which is why I misunderstood it. If all the conditions had been provided, I definitely could've solved it..."

Jiang Yang merely sighed inwardly, shook his head, and said nothing.

At the back of the classroom, by the window.

Li Dong had his head lowered, holding his phone with a focused expression.

Jiang Yang walked all the way to his desk without Li Dong noticing.

Seeing this, Jiang Yang found it somewhat amusing.

He really was still a student of No. 7 High School. He said he wanted to participate in the physics competition, but wasn't he actually hiding in the back and reading novels?

But Jiang Yang couldn't be bothered to care. As long as Li Dong was willing to sign up, that was enough.

As for reading novels during class? Let him read.

Jiang Yang even wanted to tease the kid a little.

He bent down, leaned close to Li Dong's ear, and lowered his voice.

"Li Dong, what novel are you reading that has you so absorbed? 'Thirty years east of the river, thirty years west of the river'?"

Li Dong jumped at the sudden voice.

He jerked his head up and looked at Jiang Yang in alarm.

"J-Jiang... Teacher Jiang?!"

Jiang Yang smiled at him and casually glanced at the phone screen.

Then, the smile on his face froze.

On the screen was a somewhat familiar illustration—it explained Feynman diagrams and path integrals.

A line of words was prominently displayed in the title bar:

The Feynman Lectures on Physics

Jiang Yang: "???"

He blinked hard, wondering whether he had become farsighted.

Were novel titles these hardcore these days?

Which platinum-ranked author had started a new book?

But that wasn't right!

The formatting didn't look like a novel, and neither did all those technical terms...

This was the genuine original edition of The Feynman Lectures on Physics!

Jiang Yang was completely dumbfounded.

An ordinary high school senior hadn't even mastered the four branches of classical mechanics, and he dared to tackle Feynman?

Was he showing off, or was he really reading it?

Li Dong also came to his senses and hurriedly put away his phone, an awkward smile appearing on his face.

"Well... Teacher Jiang, I... I was just taking a look."

Looking at his evasive manner, Jiang Yang found it even more absurd.

Just taking a look?

At Feynman?

He shook his head, deciding this might be some new way kids these days showed off, and temporarily put the matter out of his mind.

"Alright, stop hiding it."

Jiang Yang waved his hand.

"I came to ask you..."

Halfway through, his gaze was suddenly drawn to the physics test paper Li Dong had exposed while trying to hide his phone.

The paper happened to be open to the page with the "chain problem."

That itself was nothing unusual. After all, they had just been discussing this paper in class.

But what Jiang Yang found unbelievable was...

The answer in the response area for that question.

F_total = G + F_impact = (λx)g + 2λgx = 3λgx

Three times!

That was the correct answer!

Jiang Yang didn't even bother speaking. He directly reached out and picked up the test paper.

[Let the infinitesimal element be dm...]

Every step of the derivation was perfectly correct, using calculus and the Momentum Theorem!

He even saw a small note Li Dong had written at the side in the end.

[If energy loss is considered, this process is a perfectly inelastic collision, and the mechanical energy of the system is not conserved.]

Beautiful!

Jiang Yang looked at the paper in his hand, then at the bewildered Li Dong.

This solution method had taught even him quite a bit. It was far simpler and clearer than the answers he had found online.

He had always thought Li Dong was merely an ordinary student who was slightly better at physics, perhaps capable of scoring eighty or ninety points at most, and that was only on tests written by the school itself.

At Gaokao difficulty, eighty would have been his absolute limit.

But now, it seemed he might have misjudged him!

Being able to solve this problem using such a method meant Li Dong's understanding of physical mechanisms had already far exceeded the scope of high school physics.

Seeing Teacher Jiang holding his test paper in a daze without speaking for so long, Li Dong began to feel uneasy.

"Teacher Jiang? Is there a problem?"

Only then did Jiang Yang come back to his senses.

"Th-this... you solved this?"

Li Dong naturally knew what he was surprised about.

Although it was a little showy, he really had solved it himself.

So he scratched his head and said with a sincere expression.

"Yes, Teacher Jiang."

"I happened to be interested in calculus before. When I looked at this problem just now, I felt that using conservation of energy wouldn't work, so I tried solving it with the Momentum Theorem. I didn't expect it to work out."

"If it were a different type of problem, or something more difficult, I probably couldn't do it."

Li Dong felt he was being very modest.

After all, he had only just begun The Feynman Lectures on Physics, and there were still huge pits like Quantum Mechanics ahead. If he encountered problems like those, he genuinely wouldn't be able to handle them.

But to Jiang Yang's ears, those words sounded completely different.

Self-taught calculus?

It just happened to work out?

He couldn't solve a different type of problem?

Who was he trying to fool?

Being able to skillfully use the Micro-element Method to solve a variable-mass problem meant his fundamentals were terrifyingly solid!

This kid had hidden himself far too well!

At that moment, a curse popped into Jiang Yang's mind.

To hell with making up the numbers!

"Y-you wait here for me!"

Jiang Yang tossed out those words, turned, and ran out of the classroom.

Li Dong watched Jiang Yang's disappearing back in complete confusion.