The story of a famous mathematician, 600 words.
Shen Kuo's achievements in physics research are also extremely rich and precious. The opinions and achievements recorded in Meng Qian's Bi Tan involve mechanics, optics, magnetism, acoustics and other fields. In particular, he has made outstanding achievements in magnetic research. Shen Kuo explicitly talked about the deflection angle of the magnetic needle for the first time in Meng Qian Bi Tan. In terms of optics, Shen Kuo made a popular and vivid exposition on pinhole imaging, concave mirror imaging, and the zoom-in and zoom-out functions of concave-convex mirror through personal observation experiments. He also made some scientific explanations for the light transmission reason of the so-called "transparent mirror" (a bronze mirror that can see the front pattern on the back) handed down from ancient China, which promoted the later research on "transparent mirror". In addition, Shen Kuo also did experiments on the piano to study the phenomenon of acoustic vibration. In chemistry, Shen Kuo has also made some achievements. When I was in Yanzhou, I studied Lu Yan's oil reserves and uses. Taking advantage of the fact that oil is not easy to burn completely to produce carbon black, he pioneered the process of making cigarette ink with petroleum carbon black instead of pine carbon black. He has noticed that oil resources are abundant and "born in infinity", and predicted that "this thing will never be used in the world", which has been verified today. In addition, the name "petroleum" was first used in "Shenkuo", which is much more appropriate than the previous names such as stone paint, stone grease water, fierce fire oil, kerosene, naphtha and stone candle. In Meng Qian Bitan's "Taiyin Xuan Jing" (gypsum crystal), Shen Kuo distinguished several kinds of crystals from morphology, deliquescence, cleavage and heating dehydration, and pointed out that although they have the same name, they are not the same thing. He also talked about examples of metal transformation, such as the physical phenomenon of changing iron into copper with copper sulfate solution. These means of identifying substances described by him show that people's research on substances at that time has broken through the observation of simple surface phenomena and began to explore the internal structure of substances. Shen Kuo also has excellent research in mathematics. Starting from the actual calculation needs, he founded "gap product technology" and "convergence technology". Shen Kuo put forward a correct method to find the total stack number of jars and chess pieces by studying the volumes of jars and chess pieces with gaps, that is, the "gap product method", that is, the second-order arithmetic progression summation method. Shen Kuo's research has developed the arithmetic progression problem since Nine Chapters of Arithmetic, and opened up the research direction of higher-order arithmetic progression in the history of ancient mathematics in China. In addition, Shen Kuo also studied the relationship among arc, chord and vector in a circular bow from the calculation of field, and put forward the first simple and practical approximate formula for calculating arc length from the length of chord and vector in the history of mathematics in China, which is called "the skill of meeting circles". The establishment of this method not only promotes the development of plane geometry, but also plays an important role in astronomical calculation and makes an important contribution to the development of ball science in China.