The Goblin's Bottle

Author: Xia Jia

Although Mr. James C. Maxwell is a rigorous physicist, when faced with the supernatural But he was also quite able to keep his composure even when he was talking, perhaps thanks to his wife Mary's long-standing interest in all things folklore.

The uninvited guest is sitting next to the fireplace, looking somewhat shabby. After repeated requests from his master, he reluctantly took off the thick and wrinkled dark green pointed hat on his head and kneaded it on his knees, revealing his sweaty forehead and his iconic furry ears.

"Sorry, excuse me." Mr. Maxwell said, got up and left the living room. At this time Mary was standing at the end of the corridor holding coffee.

"Is that the legendary fairy?" she asked curiously.

"At least that's what he said himself."

"It's quite big." Mary commented, "It just doesn't look very useful."

Indeed, the... (what should I call it? thing?) sitting by the fireplace has no appearance that can be called majestic, magical or terrifying. It is wearing a shabby coat. Like a farm worker who just emerged from the cornfield, although he did appear out of thin air in Mr. Maxwell's laboratory with a "bang" and a puff of smoke as the legend says.

"I think it's a joke." Mr. Maxwell shrugged, "I don't know why though."

"But you'd better be careful, the goblin's power may not be what it looks like. It looks like that." Mary said, but there was no hint of worry in her tone. They returned to the living room together.

After drinking a cup of hot black coffee, the goblin seemed to relax a little, so Mr. Maxwell picked up the topic again: "Dragon... I'm sorry, sir, what you said at the beginning What’s your full name?”

“Corunerias Gustav Rompersdilchin,” the elf replied, with an almost embarrassed expression, “This is what happened later. Someone gave me a very old German surname."

"Yes, yes, sir. But let's continue. I remember we just talked about Archimedes... ..."

"Yes, he was my first master. To be honest, he was an out-and-out old madman," the goblin said with a straight face, "I was manipulated by him a few times. In ten years, I made countless messy things. The night before the Romans entered the ancient city of Syracuse, they sealed me in a stone slab for more than a hundred years." At this point, the goblin's eyes turned a little bit. Once it was wet, he quickly wiped it twice with the back of his hairy hand.

Mr. Maxwell cleared his throat: "I understand, but you haven't said what bet you made at that time?"

"A bet? Oh, yes. It's been too long. , I, I can’t remember clearly.” The goblin stammered, continuing to rub his hat, “Actually, I was destined to suffer from that incident from the beginning. You also know what a difficult old man he is. "

"Okay, then how did you emerge from Mr. Faraday's experimental notes? "

"This is a long story. There are a lot of things going on. If you knew the names of my owners, you would be able to guess what the situation is like. I won’t talk nonsense to you here.” The goblin raised his head and looked at the other party with an almost sad look in his eyes. , "In short, there are not many normal people among you who are engaged in physics. Take Mr. Faraday as an example. I was helping him wind the coils that day, and he suddenly said to me: 'It is enough for you to follow me. Has it been a long time? I don’t have anything else to do for you. He just sealed me up with a book without even saying goodbye, and then I came to your place in a daze, with nothing but the coil. Coil, he didn't even think of asking me for a copper plate."

Mr. Maxwell was about to comment on this matter, because it was well known that Mr. Faraday was his teacher, but Mary appeared in a dignified manner. At the door.

"Zhan, do you want to keep this gentleman for dinner?"

The goblin suddenly became restless. "No, don't bother, sir, madam. I think we should get it done as soon as possible." He said from Fumbling in his pocket, he pulled out a roll of greasy parchment, mutilated with age.

Mr. Maxwell unfolded and looked at it carefully, and the Goblin continued beside him: "In summary, this is what happened. Let's make a bet. If I lose, I will be at your disposal; if you lose, If you do, your soul and all your property will be mine, and I will be free from now on.”

“Is this necessary?” Mary leaned over and asked.

"It's an old rule, ma'am. This is how everyone has done it for thousands of years. You've probably heard of it."

"Betting with goblins may not be a profitable thing. Something worthwhile." Mr. Maxwell raised his head, "What can you bring me?"

"A lot..." The goblin stretched out his furry paws, and the shiny gold coins fell from his palms. Coming out, he deliberately let them clink to the ground, "Wealth, power, status, as long as it is what you ask for."

Mr. Maxwell looked at his palms curiously. "Anyway, this seems like an opportunity..." He murmured to himself, "Okay, Mary, we'll have dinner later, so get a pen now."

The rules of the bet are as follows. Mr. Maxwell poses a difficult problem. If the goblin cannot solve it within twenty-four hours, the victory goes to Mr. Maxwell, otherwise the goblin wins everything. Of course, the prerequisite is that this difficult problem must have a certain answer.

“Don’t embarrass me with unclear questions, sir. You can ask me to run around the American continent, but don’t ask me if I can come up with a difficult problem that I can’t answer. ." Mr. Maxwell accepted.

"I'm afraid it won't be that easy, dear." Mrs. Maxwell felt a little uneasy, "How can you be sure of defeating the goblin?"

"Listen to me. , Mary." Mr. Maxwell lowered his voice carefully, "I read the contract carefully. Guess what I found is the most interesting thing? That long list of signatures, Aristotle, Galileo, Newton, and Coper. Ni... Almost all the great physicists I know are on it, and it's so comprehensive that it can be compiled into an encyclopedia. This is not surprising, but if you think about it, for thousands of years, I have never heard of any of them. I don’t think I’m the first person to lose his life because of some kind of contract he made with a goblin.”

Mary blinked quickly. "Poor goblin." She sighed, "How are you going to embarrass him?"

"Just wait and see, actually I don't have much confidence."

Just When the goblin rubbed his pointed hat a hundred and eight times, Mrs. Maxwell invited him into her husband's laboratory with a kind smile, and by the way carefully rescued the ravaged hat from his hands and hung it on her clothes. On the hat rack.

At this time, Mr. Maxwell was further debugging the glass instrument that was taking shape.

"I think this will do." Mr. Maxwell took the end with the rubber stopper out of the sink and said, "Come on, this is the entrance."

The goblin looked at this pile of sparkling glassware with almost desperate eyes. Its main body was a large glass bottle with rubber stoppers at both ends. The middle of the bottle was divided into two halves by a vertical glass partition. One side contained Some liquid ether.

"You want to lock me in?" the goblin asked weakly.

"Yes, let's see if you can find a way out." Mr. Maxwell replied, "This will be a very meaningful experiment."

Fairy Station He hesitated for a while on the other side of the empty bottle, then shrunk his body and got into the bottle with a resigned expression. The mouth of the bottle was blocked with a sound. He was floating in the air and looking around. The glass bottle unfolded in a smooth arc, enlarging the scenery outside many times. Mr. and Mrs. Maxwell were looking inside curiously.

It is impossible to go out directly. As we all know, in any fairy tale, no matter how powerful a fairy is, once it is locked in a glass bottle, it will never get out. This strange fact may indicate that the goblin's transformation ability is limited, otherwise he can shrink to the atomic level, and then get out of the huge and neat grid of silicon dioxide leisurely, although it is difficult to say that he will It will not be affected by electrostatic force and be firmly adsorbed on a certain valence bond. Obviously, Mr. Maxwell took this into account in this interesting experiment--oh, no, almost forgot that this was a life-or-death gamble.

Then, there is only one way to get out, the only way decided in advance by the experimenter.

We should say that the elf Corunerias Gustav Rompersdilchin has a pretty good scientific mind, or at least has been with physics for thousands of years. I have learned some scientific ways of thinking while getting along with each other.

When Mr. and Mrs. Maxwell had a cup of coffee and entered the laboratory to observe the progress, the goblin transformed himself to a scale visible to the naked eye, and his body was covered with wet ether vapor.

"I found two small holes in the diaphragm," he announced. "They seemed a little narrower to me, but I went to the other side and looked, except for the There is nothing but the dizzy gas."⑤

"Those holes were not made for you," Mr. Maxwell said apologetically, "I tried to make them as small as possible. It's for experimental purposes."

"I think I will understand what you mean soon." After that, it became invisible again.

When they walked out of the laboratory, Mr. and Mrs. Maxwell winked mischievously like a girl and said:

"I'm beginning to think you've won, dear, let's just say It's a woman's intuition. Can you reveal some military secrets to me?"

"In fact, I want to see if it is possible for him to separate hot and cold gases, in other words, quickly and quickly. "Slow down, here

it involves the issue of entropy reduction," Mr. Maxwell replied, but he was obviously a little absent-minded. He put his arm around his wife's shoulders and kissed his forehead lightly, "You go to bed first." Honey, I want to continue observing for a little while."

When he went to look again an hour later, he found that the goblin had grasped the trick.

"I have shrunk to the limit that I can reach. At this scale, air molecules are flying around like crazy little marbles." The goblin panted, "As long as I can control these two A small hole, allowing only the fastest to enter the other side, will

raise the temperature there, causing the liquid to turn into gas and push the plug, and may even cause an explosion. ”⑥

"It seems that you really know a lot of things." Mr. Maxwell praised, "Come on, and if possible, help record the speed of the small molecules flying towards you. Maybe I can take this opportunity to verify my rate distribution theory."⑦

After that, he left.

After breakfast the next day, Mr. and Mrs. Maxwell listened to an improvised piano piece by Schubert, and then walked briskly towards the laboratory. The cool morning wind was blowing from the rose garden outside the window. Come in.

"How is it?" He leaned down and took a closer look. The ether level did not drop significantly. "It seems that your efficiency is not very high."

The goblin didn't even show up, he just shouted at the top of his lungs:

"You'll know if you try it yourself, sir, there are so many bullets, oh! Yes, I mean, it's good to be able to stand firm." La,

Ouch! Hey, I heard that this is what cowboys do in the West, okay, I won’t tell you!”

Mr. Maxwell shook his head. , then Mary leaned up from behind and said softly:

"You look disappointed, Jen?"

"Maybe a little.

"He turned around and kissed his wife's fragrant curly hair, "Although our fairy is not delicate and dexterous, she is still very hardworking. "

"Ours? "Mary winked at him mischievously. When her husband left the laboratory and went to the study, she carefully closed the curtains to block out the bright and warm sunshine in the morning, so as not to affect the accuracy of the experiment.

When they returned from their evening walk, they finally saw some results - the temperature on the bottle side did increase, but it was not enough.

They sat calmly and waited for the huge clock to strike. At nine o'clock, with a bang, the goblin angrily pressed his flat nose against the inner wall of the glass bottle.

"I give up!" "He said hoarsely, "Let me out quickly. "

Mary very considerately brought bread rolls and hot coffee. The goblin devoured them and finally regained his energy.

"I have never done such a tiring job. Son, I really want you to find a chance to try it yourself. "

Mr. Maxwell was smiling and holding a cigar in his mouth, with a curious expression on his face.

"I think that must be interesting. "As he spoke, he took out the long contract written on parchment, and the demon signed his clumsy handwriting dejectedly to indicate that the new master-servant relationship came into effect.

"I will listen to you from now on. He put one hand to his mouth and began to bite his nails in turn, "But can you explain to me what just happened?" There's always some science to it, right? Tell me about it.

Mr. Maxwell scratched his head, stood up and said:

"Okay, come with me to the study. There are a few books I wrote myself. You can add them first." Something basic..."

He put his arm around the goblin's broad shoulders and walked out. Mary sighed and meekly gathered the cups and plates on the table into a pile. She had already thought about these things and could ask the goblin to do so. Anyway, the future life looks quite worth looking forward to.

This is how Mr. Maxwell easily subdued the goblin, or to put it another way, this man met Archimedes. The story of how the fairy Corunerias Gustav Rompersdilchin, who determined a series of tragic encounters in the following thousands of years, suffered another unfortunate failure, but this story has not ended yet. Completely over.

When Mr. Maxwell and his wife passed away, they planted a small patch of roses in the corner of heaven. For a while, no physical research disturbed their leisurely and peaceful life. The kind goblin occasionally comes to see them.

"What did you bring?" "Mr. Maxwell asked, sitting in the chair, while his wife stood aside with a gentle manner. The posture and position were the same as what they were used to in life.

"A picture, sir, madam. "The goblin took out the thin, smooth piece of paper from behind his back and said with a slightly twitchy expression, "I took the photo. "

Mr. Maxwell raised the photo to his eyes and looked at it carefully. There were some people he didn't know on it.

"Let me guess...who is your current owner? In other words, who read my manuscript? ”

“Front row, the one in the middle, sir, no, further to the left, do you believe it? He was only sixteen years old at that time, and I kind of watched him grow up. "The goblin sighed and said, "Don't look at him now, looking so slovenly and with hair that looks like lightning has struck him, but he was a handsome young man back then. "

"What did he ask you to do? "Mr. Maxwell asked curiously.

"He said to me: 'No, you run after this beam of light as fast as you can, and don't forget it when you catch up with it. Tell me what you saw. ’ Tell me, is this something humans do? "

"Of course, of course..." Mr. Maxwell mused, "I think this idea is great. As we all know, the speed of light is constant, and I have already proved it. ”⑧

“I don’t quite understand. Mrs. Maxwell said softly, "That sounds very difficult."

”

“There is something even more outrageous, madam. "The goblin blinked his eyes, with sparkling tears swirling inside them. "Look at this gentleman again. He did something behind my back, and then he took out a mysterious box. The ground let me get into it. I can learn from you. I solemnly suggested that he let a cat in and try. The two of us made a bet on what would happen. As a result, we still don’t know whether the poor little guy is dead or not. live. ”⑨

“I didn’t understand. "Mr. Maxwell said.

"You will understand in the future that this is different from what you have studied before. " Yao Jing replied with some pride, "The most important thing is this old guy, yes, I just want to talk about him. He told me about the structure of matter all morning, and he patted my shoulder with a smile and praised me for learning. It went very quickly. In the end, I took a red pen and circled two small balls on the messy picture on the blackboard, and then said: 'Okay, if you can make them turn in the same direction, I will obey you. '" ⑩

Mr. Maxwell shook his head in confusion. Obviously, this was not something within his field of research, but it undoubtedly rekindled his interest in physics.

" I will raise these questions at the tea party this afternoon. Would you like to attend? Perhaps you would like to meet your former masters, now that you know more than we do. "

"Will they all come? "The goblin asked timidly.

"Most of them will come. If Mr. Archimedes has not forgotten the time and Mr. Newton has not been unwell, we will be together every afternoon. Drinking tea has been a tradition for thousands of years. ”

“Mr. Archimedes? You mean Mr. Archimedes? "The goblin grabbed the pointed hat he never left and jumped out of the chair, looking around nervously, "Oh, no, thank you for your kindness, but I think I'd better go. "

"What a pity. Do you really don't want to see him that much? Mr. Maxwell stood up and led the goblin to the door. "Then can you tell me what question he asked you?" I guessed it for a long time but didn't figure it out. ”

The goblin turned around, and the peaceful afternoon sunshine of heaven shone on his furry ears and sad yellow eyes. It was so warm and peaceful, but he still shrank his neck awkwardly, as if he still couldn’t help but feel sad. The easily excited old man seemed to shudder under the intimidation of his passionate momentum.

“Actually, he is a good old man, and sometimes I really miss him. He replied, "But he shouldn't have shouted at me: 'Give me a fulcrum!'" ’ This is something that even God cannot do. ”⑿

Note:

① This is indeed a very old German surname pieced together by the author himself. Among them, the surname Rompersdilchen comes from "Grimm's Fairy Tales?" "Dwarf", the dwarf in the story asked the queen to guess his last name, and if she couldn't guess, she would take her child away.

② Everyone knows that Archimedes died in the war. When the Roman army captured the ancient city of Syracuse and rushed into his room, he was doing math problems and said calmly: "Let me finish this problem. "At this time, an angry Roman soldier killed him.

③ This is a simple method to test the air tightness of the container. Heat the container with your palm to see if any bubbles leak out.

④ The crystal structure of silicon dioxide is three-dimensional honeycomb-shaped, and the valence bond between every two silicon atoms is connected to an oxygen atom

, but strictly speaking, Glass is not composed of pure silica.

⑤ Ether vapor can be used as an anesthetic gas in medicine, but its low boiling point is mainly used here. >⑥ The principle of "Maxwell's Demon" is not used for further explanation.

⑦ This is the focus of our thermal textbooks - the abnormal "Maxwell distribution law", which is about the probability of molecules with different speeds. As for the distribution equation, I still don’t understand how it was derived.

⑧ Einstein first proposed the theory of relativity when he was sixteen years old. He wrote in a paper: "If you can travel at the speed of light, you can see that there are stationary objects around you, and at the same time It is an oscillating electromagnetic wave, which is really a wonderful contradiction." This idea is based on Maxwell's theory of the constant speed of light.

⑨ Schr?dinger’s cat... Everyone on earth seems to know this, so I won’t explain it. I’ll hold a minute’s silence for that cat...

⑩ Pauli Exclusion Principle, that For fermions, two electrons existing at the same energy level must have opposite spin directions. This seems to be in high school chemistry textbooks.

⑾ Newton's health deteriorated in his later years, and he suffered from severe symptoms such as anorexia and insomnia, as well as intermittent paranoia of persecution. He died of illness in 1727.

⑿ Archimedes’ famous saying: “Give me a fulcrum and I can move the earth!”