From Apple To Spring Wenzhong Zhang
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Winter is tough, but Spring is coming 1. Spring is like a perhaps Hand in a window, carefully to and fro moving New and Old things 2. Spring is a season full of hopes. I was fascinated by the anecdote of Newton’s apple as a young countryside boy in a Spring when I first heard it from one of my primary school teachers. Why should the apple always descend perpendicularly to the ground? Curious about the cause of the way the apple falling led Newton to the great discovering of gravity. I was equally impressed by his famous sayings: “I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.” and “If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants “. Hence, it was not a surprise that physics is the subject of my choice for undergraduate study. I wrote my first article about the mechanism of superconductivity during undergraduate study using some basic laws of quantum mechanics just learned and some relations based on experimental findings. I was encouraged by several of my university teachers. I believe that it is the orderly coupling movement of free electrons and holes near the Fermi level which causes the superconductivity. The superconductivity can only happen when the energy gap between the free electrons and the holes is low enough thus reaches a critical value to enable the orderly coupling. The quanta of energy from the surroundings (mainly phonons) should be just low enough hence not to break the orderly coupling. The article is in Chinese, I had tried to submit to several journals and it was rejected by all. I realized that It is impossible to challenge an established theory as famous as BCS theory or simply propose an alternative one. I grew up in a countryside, countryside was generally much poorer than city in China, famously known as price scissors. It was tough for a family in countryside to support a university student living in city. I tried to earn money to support myself while studying and decided finding a job immediately after graduation. I was recommended by my teachers to Beijing to do research on nuclear energy technologies. Since then I have stayed in the nuclear sector up to now, although I moved from Beijing to the UK—Isaac Newton’s Country. About three years ago, I was in a hope to develop a better understanding of material fatigue through analysing a simple oscillator (a spring) model. A bit of progress had been made. While I contemplated the behaviour of a spring, I suddenly realized that there might be blind spots inside the foundation theories of modern physics. I devoted most of my weekends and holidays in pursue this in a hope to advance the foundation theories of physics and realize my past dream as a young boy. Last year I wrote my first article about the Planck constant 3 and second article about the Hubble constant 4,5, both articles stemmed out from analysing the behaviour of the oscillating of springs.
I tried to submit to a dozen of journals, and my articles were rejected again and again. I tried to ask advises from several professors in physics, they all gave me relatively positive feedback and one of them even replied that the articles may produce profound influences on the development of foundation theories of physics. I posted my articles in Research Gate and got lots of readers and a lot of kind encouragements. Please find two of my articles by clicking the following links: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/330638885 https://www.researchgate.net/publication/327321921 However, the research is not aligned well with my company’s commercial interest of technology and engineering, although it may eventually benefit the advancement of new technology and engineering. I contacted with Manchester University, I am grateful that Manchester University offered me a visiting staff position without pay to enable me to use the library and information resources. Despite the different hardships I have been through, while the season of Spring is coming, I am in a hope that the value of my works may be recognized by someone special there, and I may get funding support to devote more in the research. There are so many exciting things ahead. I believe that the Spring of science is coming, which has already manifested from the discovering of the amazing links between the oscillating springs and our mysterious universe. There is a window which is open for vast opportunities of new research directions and frontiers in physics and science, maybe for technology and engineering as well.
All the best wishes,
Wenzhong Zhang
References 1. https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/steve_southerland_644197 2. https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/spring-perhaps-hand 3. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/330638885 4. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/328049503 5. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/327321921
