Chapter 5: Chapter 5: The Trait Called “Workaholic
Editor: Henyee Translations
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After being excited for a few minutes, the sa question popped into his head.
“7812378 * 7812378 = …”
???
??
Still couldn’t do it within a second, what was going on?
...
As… ahem, a genius, he shouldn’t be stumped by such a problem!
Zhang Yuan frowned, a vertical multiplication problem appeared in his mind. He stumbled through it for half a minute before finally coming up with the result.
“61033250014884.”
Not bad, still got it.
Thinking it over carefully, a look of realization appeared on his face.
“So that’s it… the old would have solved such problems directly on a computer, which caused my calculation skills to degrade significantly. If you don’t use your brain, even geniuses can’t instantly pop out answers…”
“Calculating slowly now is just because of a lack of proficiency and not mastering the relevant techniques. If I use ntal arithtic long-term, I can definitely improve.”
The next day…
Zhang Yuan woke up bleary-eyed and rubbed his groggy head.
Maybe it was because he was too excited last night, constantly testing his IQ, that he just couldn’t fall asleep. By the ti he finally managed to doze off, it was nearly dawn.
He looked, and it was already 10 o’clock.
“Darn!”
Zhang Yuan rolled off the bed, quickly washed up, then hurriedly rushed out the door.
“I hope I’m not late, otherwise Auntie will nag for ages…”
The 30-day vacation was tight, with every day planned out clearly, and he had already scheduled to have lunch at his aunt’s today.
July in Donghua City was like a furnace, with heat waves rolling over, and the roadside plants were caught in the inferno.
Zhang Yuan hurried to the subway station, where there was always a comfortable air conditioner.
This era did not lack energy, and the power generation of each large fusion nuclear power plant was comparable to the Three Gorges Hydroelectric Power Station of the past, with dostic electricity priced as low as 3 cents per degree.
Thanks to this, apart from plastics and other traditional petroleum-derived products that remained expensive, high-energy-consuming industrial products like steel and cent had beco unusually cheap.
In particular, the vigorous developnt of nanotechnology had resulted in generation after generation of upgraded building materials. For example, adding 6% nano-silicon dioxide to cent could double its compressive strength and improve the overall working properties of concrete.
The widespread availability of cheap, new materials had led to increasingly taller surface buildings in the city, with kiloter-high skyscrapers being commonplace.
Two hundred years ago, the 828-ter-tall Burj Khalifa was the tallest building in the world, but now, it was rely the tallest building in a village.
Moreover… the sa construction cost could now build at least five!
So transportation tracks were even placed thousands of ters high, with skyscrapers as the rail pillars.
These beca very popular in almost all large cities, making aerial rails the face of big cities.
“So many people.”
Donghua City was one of the five first-tier cities in Xia Country. Even though he had missed the morning rush hour, the subway station was still crowded.
“Passengers, please give way to the elderly and children.”
“Please refrain from smoking or begging inside the carriages.”
Completely solving traffic problems was impossible.
Critics always found the most comfortable angles to attack the governnt, if the transit was too crowded, the governnt would definitely catch flak. But if there were too many subway trains, with lots of empty seats, it would be considered a “waste of taxpayers’ money.” No matter what, they would get criticized, so they just made do.
Zhang Yuan stood at the back of the line, hearing soone constantly complain about “not adding more trains” and so forth. He chuckled to himself, not thinking much of it, and instead picked up his phone to start doing exercises.
This was a very popular app called “Super Brain” that could test a person’s mory, arithtic skills, and reasoning ability. Since he was bored anyway, doing a few problems wasn’t a bad idea, and he could also test his IQ.
IQ was currently the most important issue to him.
Every ti he found his IQ to be high in a test, the satisfaction was indescribable.
The subway station was noisy, making it hard to concentrate, but sohow, doing exercises always produced a peculiar sense of accomplishnt, giving him a sensation like eating chocolate candies.
Maybe it was because after using that elixir, he acquired a trait called “workaholic”?
“I finally understand why soone would want to work all day long, turns out it’s so darn enjoyable. Using my brain has beco an unexpectedly fun thing!”
Ding-dong…
The subway arrived, and the crowd surged in, clearing the earlier waiting area.
Zhang Yuan entered the subway, found a random place to stand, and continued doing another problem.
With increasing proficiency, he reduced the ti for seven-digit basic arithtic from half a minute per problem to 10 seconds per problem, and his calculation speed kept improving.
That feeling of the answer almost jumping out was finally slowly erging.
The more he used his brain, the sharper it beca, and this result pleased him greatly.
Soon, he was no longer satisfied with ordinary basic arithtic and moved on to square root calculations.
“Let’s start with sothing simple, √7812 (keep four significant figures).”
Zhang Yuan gave himself a difficulty boost.
There are many different thods to manually find the square root of an integer. The most conventional one is called trial and division, a bit like division, and if your ntal arithtic is good enough, you can indeed calculate it directly.
So algorithms are a bit more troubleso, like continued fraction expansion, bisection, Newton’s iteration, etc.
Fifteen seconds later, he got the specific conclusion.
“√7812 = 88.38…”
Correct answer!
“√444”
“21.07”
Correct answer!
Ha ha!
Is this… what it feels like to be a genius?
Gosh… it feels aweso!
The carriage was very quiet, except for the subway’s electronic prompts, everyone else was busy imrsing themselves in their own little world.
Occasionally, a few people, whether they were reading a novel or watching a video at a peak mont, would burst into laughter like fools…
“Subway ti should be used for self-improvent, not entertainnt!”
A “well-inford” guy who had returned from studying abroad frowned, lanting this poor social trend.
The phenonon of “phone addicts” was often criticized by major dia outlets, but criticizing it didn’t do much good; people still played on their phones and kept their heads down. You can’t expect the governnt to legislate, banning playing phones in public, can you?
This man’s na was Ye Fan, and in his perception, foreign subways had everyone reading newspapers instead of playing on phones, and the social climate was a hundred tis better than in Xia Country (though it was just that there was no internet).
Anyway, no matter what, in his opinion, young people abroad lived much healthier lives than young people in Xia Country!
“No wonder these folks can’t get into space, it’s because they’re putting learning ti into entertainnt… No wonder they aren’t making it to space!” Ye Fan thought secretly.
“There’s a saying, what’s it again? I just used the ti others spent drinking coffee on work…”
Especially the young guy next to him in a short sleeve shirt, who had a mysterious grin on his face.
Tsk tsk, must be dating a 2D girl, huh?
Hopeless!
(By the way, let explain the book’s title. Originally, I wanted to call it “Deep Space Era,” but it was too serious, and the click rate would be low.)
(It’s sci-fi, you know how it is, even though “Wandering Earth” was a hit, that doesn’t an other sci-fi can hit too. Most people would see “Deep Space Era” as a title and probably wouldn’t even want to read it, not even want to click it.)
(After thinking it over, I decided to change it to this, “Deep Space Captain,” even though it sounds kind of corny, the click rate should be a bit higher…)
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