Chapter 265: Breaking News!
Translator: Henyee Translations Editor: Henyee Translations
The chemistry course might not be the best, but it was not that different from biology and materials science. There were still a lot of students enrolled in chemistry.
One of the reasons was the element of danger, especially in organic chemistry, which frequently dealt with reagents. Even if one followed the safety manual, there was no guarantee that nothing would happen. When an accident happened, one might not even realize it.
The other one was the salary. Even though the rankings for the salary of fresh graduate often put applied chemistry near the top, the actual situation was different.
However, Lu Zhou knew that Han Mengqi did not have to worry about the salary.
Even if she did not cut it in chemistry, she could always rely on her rich mother…
Chen Yushan was sitting in the pa.s.senger seat while she directed Lu Zhou. The four spent the whole day hanging out in Philadelphia.
Maybe because of the joyful atmosphere in Philadelphia, Han Mengqi started to feel a lot better.
Still, the happiest was Xiao Tong. She had infinite energy, and she never stopped talking.
Due to Xiao Tong’s extroverted personality, she made friends with Chen Yushan and Meng Qi easily. They exchanged Wechat and QQ details in the fast food restaurant.
After Xiao Tong heard that Meng Qi also played Honor of Kings, she stopped eating her hamburger and opened the game on her phone.
Han Mengqi looked at Xiao Tong’s phone and said, “You also play Honor of Kings?”
Xiao Tong said proudly, “I do, I do. I’m great.”
Interested, Han Mengqi asked, “What rank are you?”
“Diamond!” said Xiao Tong. She added confidently, “But right now I’m still at the bronze rank, but I know that I deserve to be at the diamond. It’s only a matter of time.”
Han Mengqi: “…”
Chen Yushan bit her straw and smiled at the two’s conversation, whereas Lu Zhou rolled his eyes.
Lu Zhou thought, “Without doubt, Xiao Tong is definitely diamond in “stubbornness”.
As for other areas, she’s a bit behind…
…
After Xiao Tong came, Lu Zhou’s life did not undergo drastic changes. The only difference was that he had one more person to take care of, and he started to sleep on the sofa instead of the bed.
His original plan after returning to Princeton was to move out of his student apartment, but he still had not found a new place yet.
He had two choices. One was the teachers’ apartment of the Princeton Inst.i.tute for Advanced Study. The other was a two-story mansion with a front yard and garage located between Princeton Inst.i.tute for Advanced Study and the main campus.
Although it said it was a mansion, it was only to sound more elegant. This kind of small cottage was very common in America. Lu Zhou had even seen them in American TV shows before. The average price was between $200,000 and $300,000 USD, and the rest was not expensive.
Lu Zhou wanted to choose the latter because of the convenient parking spot, but the owner was a stubborn New Yorker who only wanted to sell and not rent. Lu Zhou only had $500,000 USD right now, and even though he had the money, he did not want to buy a house just for a few years.
After all, after a few years, he would return to China.
Although Lu Zhou wanted to consider other houses, they were either a bad fit or rented out already, so he put the situation of him moving on hold.
Fortunately, Xiao Tong was not picky about where she lived. She would ask Lu Zhou to drive her to Philadelphia and she would hang out with Chen Yushan. Other than that, she did not bother Lu Zhou much.
Lu Zhou’s relaxed lifestyle would continue until the end of August when the new issue of Nature Chemistry would be released.
…
At the end of August, the Rio Olympics had just ended. The Olympics was still in the news when a piece of technology-related news quietly went on the newspapers.
The reason for this was because it was a thesis published in Nature.
The t.i.tle was simple, but it grabbed the attention of the entire world.
It was not because of Lu Zhou.
Most people would not bat an eye if someone claimed to have come up with a new PDMS material that could solve the lithium dendrites problem.
The reason was that this was a Nature thesis!
The quiet and calm materials science field was suddenly attacked by a storm.
Although this was not the first time the materials science community was shocked by a lithium battery “breakthrough”, this time was different. The reason was that the reviewer was Professor Bawendi, and according to Bawendi, he had repeated the experiment and received amazing results.
This was obviously breaking news.
Within a few days of the thesis publication, the thesis went into Science highlights.
The highlights were similar to re-tweeting.
For example, when a person published a thesis in journal A and made a major breakthrough, journal B would then find an expert in the field of the thesis to summarize the thesis and then post it in their journal.
This type of occurrence was common in the fields of biology and chemistry. It was nothing rare. However, a Nature thesis highlighted by Science was quite rare.
The academic community was almost fanatic.
If this thesis was real, then most of them would not suffer loses. Rather, they would receive gains.
The reason was simple. The battery industry was mainly focused on the problem of lithium dendrites. If the problem of lithium dendrites was solved, then there would be a large amount of research and development funds flooding into this field.
Even though some laboratories and experiments researching negative electrode materials would die off, more funds and grants would come in.
Therefore, within a week, almost 80% of lithium battery laboratories had ran repeated experiments on this thesis.
This grand occasion caught the attention of the press.
A reporter from the Columbia Radio and Television Science Technology section gave an interview to Professor Kerr from Cornell University.
Coincidentally, when the Colombian reporter arrived, Professor Kerr’s laboratory was doing the final stages of the experiment.
Professor Kerr answered the questions seriously.
“… Our research team is repeating the experiment. If this isn’t an accident, then this technology will undoubtedly change the face of the entire industry… ”
“… Because neither the lithium-sulfur battery nor the lithium-air battery can solve the problem of dendrites. If the problem of lithium dendrite can be solved on the negative electrode material, we don’t even have to make drastic changes to the battery design. We just have to change the negative electrode material.”
The reporter’s eyes sparkled with excitement when he heard Professor Kerr’s answer.
There was no doubt that he was interviewing a piece of breaking news.
“But Professor Kerr, the feedback we received from the IBM lithium battery project group was pessimistic about this technology. What do you think about this?”
Professor Kerr thought and said, “This situation is normal. Every once in a while, a laboratory would claim to have solved the problem of lithium dendrites. It is necessary to be cautious. Honestly speaking, I’m still suspicious, because the ideas and solutions presented by the author aren’t new.”
The reporter immediately asked, “Why do you say this?”
Professor Kerr, “Because our current practice is to increase the viscosity of the electrolyte, or even use solid materials. To make a carbon material structure on the lithium negative electrode, the lithium metal has to be limited in shape after discharge. Therefore, when charging it, it can ensure that the negative electrode structure does not collapse after all the lithium enters the positive electrode. The design of the coating film used by Professor Lu on the negative electrode material has actually been tried many times in many laboratories 20 years ago. And…”
Reporter, “And?”
Professor Kerr shrugged and said, “And he’s a mathematics professor. I don’t know about this new computational materials field, but I also know that building models often isn’t enough.”
Suddenly, a cheering sound came from the laboratory.
Professor Kerr and the reporter were stunned.
Reporter, “What happened?”
Professor Kerr looked at his a.s.sistant before he turned to look at the reporter with a strange look.
“I don’t know… I think the experiment is successful?”