13 Raindrop Experiment

"Mom, I have something to tell you," Cheng Nuo said with a smile as he diligently massaged Jiang Lan's shoulders.

"Yes?" Jiang Lan nodded, signaling Cheng Nuo to continue. She was in a good mood.

"Well… could you lend me 200 Yuan?" Cheng Nuo asked, rubbing his hands in anxiety. "I'd like to buy more study materials since the Gaokao is coming."

"Really? Have you not bought enough?" Jiang Lan asked, puzzled.

A sense of guilt suddenly crossed Cheng Nuo's mind.

Although Cheng Nuo's parents were rather strict about how much pocket money they gave him, they were extremely generous when it came to his study needs.

Both of his parents had low education levels. Neither of them had gone to college. Hence, they had high expectations of Cheng Nuo.

They had never hesitated to spend on Cheng Nuo's education.

Can you imagine how Cheng Nuo felt when he saw his bookshelf cluttered with revision materials?

He almost thought that his parents loved his grades more than himself!

"Oh. Our teacher asked us to buy some new books," Cheng Nuo lied. He had trained himself to be calm enough when lying.

He wanted the money, no matter what it would take.

Actually, it was a half-truth. Indeed, he wanted to buy some books, but not for his studies.

Cheng Nuo already had enough revision materials that would last until his children's Gaokaos. He had better things to do than buying even more books.

He had his own plans for the 200 Yuan.

Jiang Lan trusted Cheng Nuo. She fished out 200 Yuan from her wallet and passed it to Cheng Nuo without hesitation.

"Take it. I'll buy more revision practice books for you if you need more."

"Don't worry. It's enough…" Cheng Nuo waved his hand at once. "I don't need any more practice.

"Okay. I won't disturb you guys any further. I need to go and study."

Cheng Nuo ended the conversation immediately and returned to his bedroom.

"Floor: 12th, height: 40.54 m, length: 62.48 m, width: 54.24 m, Area: 3388.92 m cubed, number of households: 36, brightness: 10 sb [1. Surface brightness, a parameter used to describe the brightness of objects, especially galaxies]…"

"Height: 175.87 cm, weight: 85.24 kg, lung capacity: 4002, brightness: 2 sb…"

"Speed: 54 km/h, weight: 3214 kg, Brightness: 15…"

Dressed in a hoodie, Cheng Nuo leaned on the balcony and studied the city under the night sky using his special power.

Even though the sky was pitch black and there were things invisible to his eyes, Cheng Nuo was still able to sense them through their statistical inputs. This made Cheng Nuo feel as if the entire world was under his control.

Cheng Nuo spread his arms to embrace the world.

Suddenly, a gust of cold wind blew into Cheng Nuo's collar.

"Achew! So cold!"

Cheng Nuo closed the balcony at once. He went back to his room, shivering.

"Wind speed: 8.7 m/s, temperature: 8.2 degrees Celsius." Cheng Nuo's eyes provided accurate numbers.

"Is it going to rain?" Cheng Nuo wrapped himself under the blanket and looked up at the moonless sky.

"Humidity: 92.41%."

"It's probably going to rain, then."

As expected, the spring rain fell after half an hour.

"Volume: 0.05 mL, Weight: 0.051 g, Speed: 8.52 m/s…"

"Volume: 0.06 mL, Weight: 0.059 g, Speed: 9.54 m/s…"

"Volume…"

Cheng Nuo lay in his bed and used the raindrops to test how many sets of statistics he was able to collect simultaneously.

And he had an answer: 100 sets.

At least that was what it seemed now.

Once this limit had been exceeded, Cheng Nuo would feel light-headed. Worrying that it might cause unforeseen problems, Cheng Nuo decided not to force his brain to collect more data.

To him, the ability to gather 100 sets of data concurrently was clearly sufficient.

…

The spring rain washed away the dust and dirt from the city streets. The next day, the air was teeming with the sweet smell of the fresh earth.

Cheng Nuo was summoned by Old Man Tang as soon as he reached the classroom.

"Cheng Nuo, Old Man Tang is looking for you again." As usual, it was Qingqing who relayed the message.

When she said that, she shot Cheng Nuo a curious look. She wondered what he had done wrong that made Old Man Tang want to lecture him for two whole classes.

"Cheng Nuo. Come here."

Once Cheng Nuo entered the office, Old Man Tang waved at him with a smile on his face.

Cheng Nuo hesitated.

He wasn't used to Old Man Tang's drastic change in attitude!

"Mr. Tang, are you looking for me?" It was the same old way Cheng Nuo would start a conversation with Old Man Tang.

"Come and take a look at this problem," Old Man Tang said smilingly.

Cheng Nuo was feeling nervous…

"Can you solve this problem?" Old Man Tang asked. At that moment, Cheng Nuo was complaining silently.

"You could have passed me this problem last night! Why do you have to make me come to your office twice?"

Despite the grudge, Cheng Nuo started to read the problem.

"A plane contains n line segments, n≥2. Any segment crosses another one at one point, and no three segments cross at the same point. Geoff chooses an end point on every line segment and places a frog on the point with the frog facing the other end. Then Geoff claps n-1 times. Each time, the frogs jump to the next intersection point on their current segment. The frogs will not change the direction they jump in. Geoff hopes to place the frogs at the right points such that no two frogs will jump to the same intersection point at any point in time.

"(a) Prove that Geoff can always achieve his hope if n is odd.

(b) Prove that Geoff can never achieve his hope if n is even."

Problems that even Old Man Tang considered challenging were meant to torture students.

Cheng Nuo had not had any ideas yet. Hence, he took a chair and started to solve the problem in front of Old Man Tang.

Meanwhile, Old Man Tang was paying close attention to Cheng Nuo's actions.

In fact, it was completely unexpected to him that Cheng Nuo had been able to solve the problem the day before, so he hadn't been focused on Cheng Nuo when he was doing the problem.

Now, however, he wanted to see whether Cheng Nuo had really become the genius that he had imagined.

While Cheng Nuo was scribbling on a piece of paper, Old Man Tang studied every step he wrote down closely to check if it made sense. At that moment, Old Man Tang looked like a student, looking at Cheng Nuo's workings without even blinking.

Meanwhile, other math teachers came to the office too.

When they saw Old Man Tang staring at a student as the latter was solving problems, they couldn't help but laugh. "Tang, what did this student do wrong again?"

They thought that the student had made a silly mistake in his work and Old Man Tang was teaching him how to solve the problem properly.

…