For nearly a month, Chen Muwu's daily activity was to repeat the process of "purifying liquid, loading into containers, observing the spectrum, recording data, and taking photos".

Occasionally, when it rains on a cloudy day and the experiment is put on hold, he has to seize this time to write the experimental paper, and he has to work hard all day long, and he has no leisure for a moment.

This busy state now reminds Chen Muwu of the time when he was a graduate student and worked in the laboratory, but this time, his boss was himself.

Ye Gongchao occasionally came to Cavendish Laboratory to find him a few times, either to read a few lines of his newly made English poems, or to tell Chen Muwu about what has happened at home and abroad recently.

In the early morning of May 6, the northbound express train running on the Jinpu Railway, that is, the blue steel sheet that Chen Muwu had ridden when he went to Shaoda to give lectures, derailed near Lincheng in Xiandong Province, and the reason for the derailment was because the robbers deliberately sabotaged and hijacked all the men, women, young and old on the train, including many foreigners, the most famous should be Powell, the editor-in-chief of the "Miller's Review" in the sea, and the sister-in-law of John Rockefeller Jr., the only son of American oil tycoon John Rockefeller, Lucy Aldrich.

Hearing this news, Chen Muwu was faintly afraid, because under the full efforts of the Sulian government, the Trans-Siberian Railway has been fully connected, and if he chose to come to Europe by train, then it is very likely that he may also appear on the train of this Jinpu line.

……

Tuesday, May 22.

Chancellor of the Exchequer Stanley Baldwin, also an alumnus of Trinity College, Cambridge, has become Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.

On the same day, the Deutsche Mark continued to depreciate rapidly, and within a day, the exchange rate between the US dollar and the Mark fell from 1 to 50,000 to 1:57,000.

Also on the same day, an excited Capitsa took the equally excited Blackett to the laboratory to find Chen Muwu and tell the latter that they had taken the first clear picture of the trajectory of the recoil electrons scattered by gamma rays.

"What a beautiful picture!"

Chen Muwu couldn't help but praise that he was finally relieved.

Chen Muwu finally no longer has to repeat the experiment over and over again in this dark room, about the scattering of visible light, he has already done the experiment of six kinds of liquids under three different frequencies of light, and he even did the comparison experiment of two substances in the three-phase state of solid, liquid and gas, and took many spectral photos, which is enough for him to write a thesis.

In fact, Chen Muwu could have written a paper for publication after observing the scattering spectra in pure water and pure ethanol, but he was afraid that his experiment would go too smoothly and might arouse the suspicion of others, so he had to delay it for so long.

Chen asked Kapitsa and Blackett to take a few more clear photos of recoil neutrons for later use in writing their papers.

And he himself spent two more days, taking the paper on visible light scattering, to the office on the second floor of the Cavendish laboratory to find his immediate boss, Rutherford.

Chen Muwu's third paper, although called a thesis, is actually more like a record of experimental results.

It completely records the wavelength change phenomenon produced by light after being scattered by different liquids: in the scattered light, there are spectral lines with frequency ν₀±Δν symmetrically on both sides of each original incident spectral line (frequency ν₀), and the frequency difference Δν is independent of the incident light frequency ν₀, which is determined by the nature of the scattered substance, and each scattered substance has its own specific frequency difference, some of which are consistent with the infrared absorption frequency of the medium.

He also pointed out that this frequency change is very subtle, about one thousandth of the Rayleigh scattering.

Moreover, the scattered light is polarized, and current theories cannot explain where this polarized light comes from.

Rutherford was very happy after reading Chen Muwu's paper, and he said loudly with a smile on his face: "Good, good! Young man, you have only been in the lab for less than a month, and you have brought us another big surprise! ”

Chen Muwu, who was standing beside Rutherford, only felt deafening.

Rutherford was so loud that the researchers had to hang a "Please Whisper" sign on the ceiling of the lab to remind their immediate boss that he was constantly disturbing others in the lab to conduct experiments.

But as it stands, this reminder card is useless and useless.

"Just a little bit of work, Director." Chen Muwu said modestly.

"Let's go," Rutherford stood up and patted Chen Muwu on the back, "Take me to see your experimental phenomenon." ”

With that, the two walked out of Rutherford's office and into the dark room where the experimental equipment was placed.

When Rutherford saw two sharp bright lines in the eyepiece of the spectrometer, he couldn't help but be amazed: "Beautiful spectral lines!" I'll just say, in our lab, I'd like to see something new besides radioactivity! ”【1】

……

"Listen, the old crocodile is praising that Chinese genius again."

In the open laboratory on the side, Capitsa, who heard Rutherford's loud voice, had a look of envy on his face, and complained to Blackett, who was in the same group as him.

Blackett still had a paralyzed face, but his tone was agitated: "But, Sir is right, Chan is indeed a genius. Without him, how could I have published my first paper in the journal of the Royal Society right now? ”

Blackett was so grateful to Mr. Chen that he occasionally wondered if he would invite him to his home in London next month, during King George V's birthday holiday.

Kapitsa ignited his fighting spirit: "It seems that Chen's third paper is about to be published, and we must also work harder to not be left too far behind by him." ”

"Hmm." Blackett nodded.

……

Chen Muwu later told Rutherford in the laboratory that he wanted Rutherford to be the corresponding author of his paper, so that it would be easier to get the manuscript from the editorial office of the Bulletin of the Natural Science Society of the Royal Society.

But Rutherford told Chen that his worries were unwarranted, because the editors would know that the name of the place was a guarantee of the quality of the paper if they saw the letter from the Cavendish lab.

Putting the paper in an envelope and putting it in the mailbox, Chen Muwu walked along the Kang River back to Mrs. Brown's room where he was renting.

The weather was already very warm at the end of May, and the rowers in Cambridge's unique light blue tracksuits were training hard and preparing for the competition.

At the end of June and the beginning of July, after the Spring Festival semester is over, they will go to the Thames River in London to have a reputational battle with the Oxford University rowing team.

*****

[1] Author's note: Rutherford did say this in history, but not because Raman scattering (because Raman did not experiment in the Cavendish laboratory), but because Edward Appleton and his student Miles Barnett discovered the ionosphere in the atmosphere by radio signals in 1924, for which the former was awarded the 1948 Nobel Prize in Physics.