I saw that it was written on the paper: Jinzhou sulfur 14 taels, wohuang 7 taels, flame nitrate 2 and a half catties, Ma Ru 1 tael, dry paint 1 tael, arsenic 1 tael, fixed powder 1 tael, bamboo ru 1 tael, Huang Dan 1 tael, yellow wax half a tael, pure oil 1 point, tung oil half a tael, pine resin 14 taels, concentrated oil 1 point. There are nearly 20 kinds of ingredient names in this, among which Zhou Nanjue can understand and can be used to prepare gunpowder: Jinzhou sulfur (Zhou Nan can't understand why Jinzhou, don't want money?) ), nest sulfur, flame nitrate, arsenic, coarse charcoal powder, the rest is difficult for Zhou Nan to understand, or simply don't know what it is, like what hemp, dry lacquer, fixed powder, bamboo ru, yellow dan, yellow wax, clear oil, tung oil, pine resin, thick oil, etc., the amount of medicine is not large, it is estimated that they are all things that support combustion. These raw materials, if they are available from crude medicine stores in other states and counties, most of them, Zhou Nan has never even heard of them.

Zhou Nan is very strange, when he was in elementary school, even the math teacher talked about fractions, and he could say the gunpowder ratio formula of "one nitrate, two yellow and three charcoal", and the exact ratio should be that the mass ratio of the three raw materials of nitrate, sulfur and charcoal is 15:2:3, which is converted into a percentage of 7.5:1:1.5.

It seems that the level of gunpowder in this era can only reach the level of arson and burning, and the most fundamental reason for the joke that the thunder and thunder turned into a goblin out of the mountain that day is in this formula.

To find out the difference between the gunpowder formulas of this period and the gunpowder formulas of later generations, we can only ask what these ingredients are used for. This talent is compared with his own gunpowder formula.

Zhou Nan took this recipe list and asked Guo Xingzu one by one. The first is Jinzhou sulfur, asked Guo Xingzu what Jinzhou sulfur is, Guo Xingzu stood beside Zhou Nan with his hands down, and replied: "Dazhai master, this Jinzhou sulfur is the sulfur from Jinzhou on Hexi Road, and the special Jinzhou sulfur is a sulfur mine in Jinzhou, which is slightly inferior to Kunlun Huang from Funan, Linyi and other countries, but the price is cheap, and it is produced by the government itself, so the gunpowder is all made of Jinzhou sulfur." ”

Zhou Nan nodded, in the era before he crossed, the most in Shanxi was iron ore and coal mines, and there was probably pyrite in Jinzhou, Shanxi, so it was convenient to extract sulfur.

"What's that flame nitre?" Zhou Nan pointed to the second name on the paper, he knew that the flame nitrate, since there was a "flame" in front, it must be different from pure nitrate, right? Guo Xingzu still replied respectfully: "Flame nitrate is saltpeter. Guo Xingzu looked at Zhou Nan and knew that he was going to ask about the things listed on the paper one by one, so he pointed to the words on the paper and explained to Zhou Nan one by one: "Wohuang is the yellow stone from Zhushan County, Fangzhou, Jingnan Road, and it is smashed for grinding. This arsenic is realgar, also known as cockscomb; Maru means that after the outer layer of the sesame stalk is scraped off, the inner layer is peeled off and dried, and cut into pieces; Bamboo ru is the layer that peels off after the outer layer of bamboo is scraped off; Dry lacquer and croton are both crude drugs; Clear oil is sesame oil; Yellow wax is peak wax; Pine resin is the oil collected by the genus Pinus sinensis; Concentrated oil is the underground black oil from Shaanzhou; The asphalt came from the land of Shu. ”

Next, Guo Xingzu didn't say more, probably because he felt that things like small oil, fixed powder, tung oil, etc. were common things on weekdays, and there was no need to explain them to Zhou Nan.

Zhou Nan listened to it so much that he didn't want to listen to it anymore, and he didn't have to listen to Guo Xingzu's explanation anymore.

Zhou Nan looked at this formula list carefully, and roughly calculated, if these things are classified and merged according to saltpeter, sulfur, and carbon-containing substances, the saltpeter weighs 40 taels, sulfur and sulfur weigh 21 taels, and the rest is combustion, carbon-containing materials weigh about 18 taels, and the three weigh about 79 taels. Their composition ratio (i.e., saltpeter, sulfur, and carbon-containing substances, which are the raw materials used to make up gunpowder, accounts for about 51:26:23) in gunpowder. In this way, in Guo Xingzu's list, the proportion of saltpeter is not low, but too low, and the proportion of sulfur is too high. The most important thing in black powder is nitrate, the content of nitrate in this list is low, and the purity of nitrate is probably not too high, which is a problem to be solved.

People of this period did not really understand black powder. Black powder has always been black powder, but the people of the Song Dynasty, who lacked in-depth exploration, did not have a good grasp of the essence of black powder and embarked on the road of gunpowder that went against the grain. Because they didn't understand the explosion principle of gunpowder, the people of the Song Dynasty added too many things to it, so that this gunpowder could only do some arson and poisoning obscenely. This made the man-made black powder of the Song Dynasty not explode in a confined space, but only deflagration, and some could only be used as arson. Since it can only be set on fire, in order to improve the killing effect of this new weapon, the people of the Song Dynasty naturally added poisons such as croton, grass black, wolf poison, and broken intestine grass to it.

The people of the Song Dynasty who crossed the river by feeling the stones, I don't know how many times they went through in the middle, before they created the black powder that could explode in the Southern Song Dynasty, and only then did they have the real sense of the thunder with an iron shell, and the big killer that could blow up the city wall, and the black powder got rid of the title of "arsonist" at this time. And in the middle of the Yuan Dynasty, a fire gun was created - guaranteed to kill people, and if you can't kill it, you will get a full refund. At this time, the nitrate content in gunpowder only reached 60%.

Zhou Nan held the "prescription" in his left hand, pointed at it with his right hand and said, "You only use sulfur, flame nitrate, and coarse charcoal powder to mix it first." None of the rest. It is mixed with 1 point of sulfur, 8 points of flame nitrate, and 1 point of charcoal powder. ”

The reason why Zhou Nan did not use the standard formula of 7.5:1:1.5 for the percentage of nitrate, sulfur and charcoal was because Zhou Nan thought that during this period, it was difficult to achieve high purity in the purification of raw materials, so he could only appropriately increase the ratio of nitrate to make up for the fact that the purity was not enough.

Guo Xingzu looked at Zhou Nan in surprise and said, "Only use these three things?!" ”

Zhou Nan nodded, and said solemnly to Guo Xingzu: "You only prepare according to what I just said, don't mix grit with it when you prepare, you match it first." Don't try it out by yourself after it's ready, be sure to tell me, remember! ”

Seeing Zhou Nan so solemn, Guo Xingzu bowed to Zhou Nan and said, "Obey the orders of the master of Dazhai." The small ones will do it. With that, he turned around and left.

Zhou Nan stopped Guo Xingzu and asked, "Don't forget, the ingredients must be searched from the cottage, and they must not be bought in the state and county." ”

Guo Xingzu replied respectfully: "The things ordered by the lord of the big village, the small sentences are all in my heart. The owner of the village can rest assured that the formula taken by the small suitable person is only because the arsenic, dry paint, yellow dan, yellow wax, thick oil and other things do not come out of the cottage, so it is difficult. Sulfur is a commonly used thing, and the amount is very small, that saltpeter is also commonly used in crude medicine shops, and the villagers in the cottage will boil nitrate and sell it for money, and they are not worried. Coarse charcoal dust is even more common. Please rest assured that the gunpowder can be prepared within two days. ”