Chapter 012

The Lady Tasting Tea ⑤ (Unabara Sorano)

Update Time: 2011-NOV-02 20:47:43

Two weeks later, on a spring day when daytime and nighttime are of equal division, Sorano walks into Tokiwadai Middle School again.

This time, she is not there for an exam, but to meet with her teacher.

She knocks on the office door, and without waiting for a response, she walks in.

As expected, her teacher is sitting at his desk, giving off a casual vibe as usual.

Sorano bows deeply and does not lift her head.

"I'm sorry, Oleg Dmitrievich."

"What's wrong? Oh, by the way, your grades should be out now, right?"

Her teacher seems indifferent, as if he had not bothered to learn about her grades and did not care about her exam results. This makes her a little sad. She had always thought her teacher would have higher expectations of her, but now it seems that is not the case.

"Yes. I'm sorry, it wasn't as good as I had hoped."

"It's okay," after noticing Sorano's disappointment, he pauses and says, "You should know that exam results usually don't mean much. I've had bad exams before, and Julian Schwinger's grades weren't that great when he was in school. And, this exam was quite special and not something everyone can adapt to."

"I'm sorry..."

Although she receives comfort from her teacher, Sorano does not feel any better. She can't say anything except apologize.

"By the way, how did you do on the exam?" Sorano's teacher asks, perhaps feeling that she's been dragging on for too long.

Sorano takes a deep breath to adjust her low mood. She finds that although the difficult-to-explain experience has made her indifferent, since her present consciousness awakening, she has become more susceptible to emotional influences. In other words, she seems to have become more emotional than her past consciousness in memory. Like now, she even needs to adjust her emotions before she can speak.

"I passed, but my score wasn't high. And..."

"Wait, what did you just say? Say it again?"

"Huh?"

Her teacher suddenly raises his voice. Sorano looks up in confusion, and her teacher's eyes widen as if he's heard something incredibly unbelievable.

"Well... I passed, but my score wasn't high..."

"Really?"

"Yes..."

Her teacher's reaction really scares Sorano, and she even answers with a trembling voice.

In front of her, her teacher's gaze is vacant, his mouth opening and closing, but he can't seem to say anything.

Just as she's about to call the school hospital, her teacher finally reacts.

It's a burst of laughter that's almost painful to the ears.

Although her teacher is a burly Russian man with a rather violent temper, he is not the type to neglect his appearance. To be honest, although he tends to argue with people as soon as he opens his mouth, most of the time, he is the type of person who pays great attention to his scholarly image. It can even be said that he resembles a Western intellectual male more when he doesn't speak.

But his current behavior really leaves Sorano at a loss for words. Perhaps it's a habit brought about by her previous self, who often failed, but her first reaction is to recall if she did anything wrong. But it doesn't seem like that's the case.

Sorano stares at him in confusion as he opens the large screen and microphone for the conference call, connecting to the Tokiwadai Middle School teacher platform. She has no idea what he's thinking. Although she understands her teacher's tendency to go off-topic, this time she really can't understand it at all.

"Hey, you guys who are still alive! Get out here!"

Okay, this is just inexplicable, completely inexplicable.

"Oh! Kurkov, you damn bastard! Why the hell are you making noise at a time like this? Huh? Unabara? You're here too?"

The large screen displays several split screens. Upon closer inspection, Sorano recognizes all the people on the screens, who are the teachers who have been tutoring her for the past six months. Except for three who seem to be absent, all of them appear on the large screen.

"I don't have time to waste with you. You guys quickly check her grades and get ready to pay up this month's salary! I'm waiting to clean you guys out!"

Wait, does this mean that her exam results were used as a betting topic by them?

"You mean... could it be..." the middle-aged man who had guided Sorano in quantum electrodynamics quickly looks at the computer next to him on the screen. Soon, his expression becomes completely incredulous, "Unabara, how old are you this year? No... this is obvious... unbelievable... too unbelievable..."

"This can't be true..."

"This is insane, absolutely insane..."

All the teachers who are also checking their own computers have the exact same reaction.

"Wait a minute!" Sorano interrupts them, "Oleg Dmitrievich, please explain what's going on here?"

To her surprise, her teacher awkwardly turns his head away to avoid her gaze.

"Let me explain," the middle-aged man says, "Unabara, do you know what exam you took for this time?"

"Huh? Isn't it the entrance exam for Tokiwadai Middle School?"

Actually, their reactions have already made Sorano realize that there must be something wrong with the exam content, but she still asks politely.

"Damn it!" the middle-aged man actually curses, "The entrance exam for Tokiwadai, you had passed before you even took the exam."

"But I haven't taken any other exams?"

"No, you have. We, the eleven of us, evaluated you based on our communications with you during the preparation for this exam, which was the content of the entrance exam for Tokiwadai. We had reached a complete consensus on this at the time when you had been reviewing for a month."

"Ah!"

Sorano finally understands. No wonder her teacher told her at the beginning not to participate in guiding her. It turns out that the process itself was the entrance exam for Tokiwadai. No wonder she felt that there was something wrong with her preparation method after receiving the test paper. The guidance was not for the exam itself.

This raises a new question.

"So... what did I take the exam for?"

"To be honest, when Kurkov asked us to reserve an assistant seat for you in advance, many of us thought he was just flattering the chairman. But when this guy took out the test bank, none of us thought that anymore. The reason is simple. If the chairman knew that he was using this thing to mess around with his granddaughter, he would probably kick him out of Tokiwadai at the first time. To be honest, none of us thought you could pass, including your teacher himself. Kurkov, this is a test bank you found, you tell her what kind of exam it is."

Sorano's teacher coughs awkwardly, but his expression is filled with a sense of pride.

"This is an exam from the last century. Although there have been many changes in details, the framework has not changed at all. It comes from my homeland, from a true great man, who named it the 'Theoretical Minimum'. In the thirty years when he personally reviewed this exam, only forty-three people passed. Except for those who left physics for various reasons, almost everyone has left their mark in the physics world. I think that's enough to say, right?"

Yes, it's enough. Sorano is completely stunned. She fully understands what her teacher is saying, but she feels like she's dreaming.

Because the great man her teacher mentioned is the great Lev Davidovich Landau. And the content of her exam is none other than the famous "Landau Barrier"!

Sorano is in a daze. She could never have imagined that her teacher would use the Landau Barrier as a test bank, let alone that she would pass the Landau Barrier, which is considered a path to hell by young physicists, without any prior knowledge!

Letting a middle school student attempt the Landau Barrier is already an incredible thing. And the fact that this middle school student has passed the Landau Barrier is really beyond belief.

Even if it is a dream, it's too incredible.

"Hey, don't freeze up!"

"Who let you[1] do this recklessly!"

Sorano shouts at her teacher, which is very rare for her, as she is usually calm and collected.

It's not that she's overly emotional, but anyone who understands the situation would be shocked.

The "Theoretical Minimum" is undoubtedly a highly respected physics exam, but it's also an extremely painful one. The term "barrier" comes from the fact that particles without enough energy cannot pass through it. In fact, even among those who have passed the Landau Barrier, many have had to give up physics because of exhaustion. In history, there have even been cases of people going insane from the stress.

During the past six months of guidance, almost all of Sorano's teachers have repeatedly emphasized that she can give up if she finds the difficulty level too high. Her teacher also told her on the first day that she could change the exam content if she found it too difficult. This is the reason for all of this.

So when the middle-aged teacher who guided Sorano in quantum electrodynamics said, "If the chairman knew that he was using this thing to mess around with his granddaughter, he would probably kick him out of Tokiwadai at the first time," he wasn't exaggerating at all. Letting a middle school student attempt the Landau Barrier could lead to a disaster if things went wrong.

"Well... Unabara has already scolded me half to death... Hey! You guys should say something for me too! This is all your fault!"

Sorano's teacher seems to be lacking in confidence for the first time in his life.

"Ahem!" although everyone looks like they're just here for the show, the middle-aged teacher who guides Sorano in quantum electrodynamics interrupts to stop the teacher and student conflict, "Unabara, although Kurkov is always unreliable, we still have a few people here watching over the situation. If you experience any discomfort during this process, any one of us will intervene to stop it."

"I asked you to say something nice for me, not to badmouth me in front of my student!"

Sorano sighs. She can tell that these people are actually quite happy about her passing the Landau Barrier. Although it was too reckless as a cause, the result was not bad. However...

"May I ask, Oleg Dmitrievich, have you[2] passed the Landau Barrier back then?"

"Well... I did take the exam, but barely... almost passed..."

"Well, I now realize that you are not so stupid after all."

"You brat!"

Sorano's teacher sits back in his chair. Although he was insulted by his own student, he couldn't stop laughing.

[1] Footnote by the author: In fact, in Russian customs, only unfamiliar people are addressed with "вы" (the more formal form of the second-person pronoun "you"). Sorano has always addressed her teacher as "ты" (the less formal form of "you"). But in this sentence, Sorano uses "вы" to express her dissatisfaction with a more formal address.

[2] Footnote by the author: Sorano switches back to the more intimate form "ты".

Endnote by the uploader:

About the phrase "not so stupid" said by Sorano:

This seemingly impolite phrase has a very famous anecdote. The person who was said this was Albert Einstein, twice. One time was when Einstein made a mistake during a speech. Many people in the audience probably noticed it, but because Einstein was so famous, no one dared to point it out. At this point, Lev Landau walked up and said, "What Professor Einstein said was not stupid, however, the last equation he wrote does not derive from what he previously discussed. In fact, it requires further assumptions..." The other time was even more impressive. It was also when Einstein gave a report. After he finished, Landau's old rival and famous physicist, Wolfgang Pauli, stood up and directly said, "You know, what Einstein has just said is not so stupid."

However, one thing to note here is that both of these guys were actually die-hard fans of Einstein, even though they were disciples of Bohr, who was Einstein's lifelong opponent.

Understanding this background will help us understand why Sorano dared to use this phrase to make fun of her teacher, and why her teacher was not upset by this seemingly impolite remark. Sorano seemed to be expressing her dissatisfaction straightforwardly, but at the same time, she was also excessively praising her teacher without any basis.

Some digressions about the Landau Barrier:

There are some digressions here, although the reason why I provide this information to the author is to commemorate Landau.

Only two people in China have ever passed the Landau Barrier. One of them took two years to barely pass, and Landau seemed to be dissatisfied and did not accept him as a disciple. The other was Hao Bailin, who took ten months. However, Mr. Hao did not consider himself a direct disciple of Landau. That was because when Mr. Hao took Landau's Theoretical Minimum exam, Landau did not fully proctor it — due to a car accident in 1962, the last exam was proctored by Abrikosov. It is said that Mr. Hao has always regarded this as a lifelong regret.

Some other digressions:

When it comes to Landau, it is impossible not to mention the Landau school and the issue of scientist groups. Unlike the West, the organization of scientist groups in the former Soviet Union (including present-day Russia) is completely different. The scientist groups in the West are more like salons, where a group of people with no obvious relationship sit together (often in cafes or similar places), debate with each other, and gain inspiration from others. Although there are also mentor-apprentice relationships, apprentices usually do not stay with their mentors for too long. The scientist groups in the former Soviet Union are more like martial arts sects in Chinese martial arts novels, with mentors and apprentices and condisciples closely united, debating and gaining inspiration with other groups. Sometimes, a group of people even stay together for more than ten years. For example, the Landau school is like this.

These two models are often compared and criticized by each other, but in my opinion, this is more of a personality issue rather than an academic issue. For example, some people have criticized that in the scientist groups of the former Soviet Union, students are like slaves to their mentors, and it is difficult for students to develop independently. But in fact, understanding Landau will reveal that this criticism is unreasonable. The mentors of the scientist groups in the former Soviet Union, such as Landau (including Zeldovich and Ginzburg, Ginzburg's example is somewhat special), do not interfere with their students' independent development, and Landau even encourages students to form their own groups. Many of Landau's disciples later formed their own groups, some of which even used "Theoretical Minimum" as a standard for assessment, Just like Landau himself. It is actually the personality of the Russians that makes them more willing to establish or join a closely united group. In fact, after the disintegration of the Soviet Union, the Russian scientific community also tried to learn from the Western organizational model, but after a big circle, they still returned to the old path of Landau. What is even more interesting is that now the West has developed some scientist groups based on schools like the former Soviet Union, and Japan can even be said to have had both situations coexisting.

In fact, this kind of debate has no practical significance and is not a matter of who is better or worse. To be honest.