In the study room of the Ge Mansion, without the emperor in the way, Ge Yong stared at Zhang Shou. The sullen expression on his face just now disappeared without a trace, replaced by a smile. He even touched Zhang Shou's head as if he was teasing his grandson in the past. Seeing that his closed disciple was embarrassed and hurriedly avoided him, he did not take it as an offense.
"You raided the Jiuzhang Hall last night, and the incident offended many people in the Imperial College. But today someone came forward to denounce Zhou Xun, and you did not add insult to injury because of a small grudge. As a result, not only did you clear yourself of any involvement, but you also forced Zhou Xun to remember your favor. Well done, you didn't bring shame to me!"
"And I lied to the emperor out of good intentions, and I also apologized, so I finally made up for it."
Zhang Shou secretly felt lucky. At the Imperial College, he had discovered that the emperor did not seem to have noticed the flaw in his words, but out of caution, he was indeed planning to ask Ge Yong to help him pass on a letter of apology!
He felt that whatever he said at this moment would seem to be showing off, so he could only laugh dryly in response.
Ge Yong obviously had no intention of harping on this matter. After all, it was difficult for him to ask Zhang Shou for help with what the emperor said. But he was very interested in Zhang Shou's method of determining whether the plaque was hollow!
"Since the emperor has asked me to determine whether the Taizu plaque is hollow or has a secret compartment, I must first ask you about the principle of this method. If it is really useful, it is only used to deal with a Taizu plaque, which is making a fuss about nothing. It is most effective to determine whether someone has forged gold and silver ingots when casting. Come, tell me in detail how you came up with this idea?"
Zhang Shou could only laugh dryly. Isn't it said that Archimedes' Principle was derived from the fact that Archimedes was trying to determine whether a crown was pure gold after pondering for a long time
He thought about it and decided to explain it in detail: "Teacher, whether it is dark wood or gold and silver, as long as they are of the same material and weight, their sizes should be the same. But because the shapes of these things are not as regular and neat as the Yangma Biebin mentioned in the Nine Chapters of Arithmetic, the actual size cannot be calculated."
Ge Yong, who claimed to be a master of mathematics, of course understood what Zhang Shou meant. After a little thought, he nodded and said, "That makes sense. Go on."
"Since we can't calculate the size, we can only use other methods to calculate and compare. Therefore, water becomes a very convenient criterion. Because objects of the same size put into water should displace the same amount of water. So by marking the edge of the pool, we can easily compare the actual size of the object..."
As Zhang Shou spoke, he thought that in order to fully explain this principle, mathematics alone was not enough. It was necessary to use simple physics knowledge and even terms such as mass, density, volume, buoyancy, etc. Otherwise, it would undoubtedly be very difficult to explain it to people who were not proficient in mathematics like Ge Yong.
The same goes for the difficult-to-pronounce terms in the Nine Chapters on the Mathematical Art. It would be best if Ge Yong could publish a book to popularize related terms such as tetrahedron, triangular pyramid, rectangle, square, and cube. Otherwise, there would be only yangma and bibin, which would be completely unintuitive.
Just like Luo Siye, Xu Heizi and those doctors from the Imperial College, ordinary people would be completely confused when they saw or heard those two words.