Zhao Bing keenly felt that this was his chance to obtain nitric acid. He thought of the knowledge he had learned in his previous life. The initial acquisition of nitric acid was discovered by Arab alchemist Abu Musa Jabir Ibn Hayan in the eighth century AD when distilling a mixture of alum and saltpeter. Then until the thirteenth century, it was prepared by heating saltpeter and clay.

This shows that the preparation method of nitric acid has long been realized in this era, and the raw materials they used are not difficult to obtain today. However, Zhao Bing could only smile bitterly. This is not his profession, and he can only know a general idea. Everything needs to be tested through experiments. At that time, he had decided to go to the Northern Expedition and had no time to preside over the research of this work, so he could only hand it over to local experts such as the Academy of Sciences.

Before leaving, Zhao Bing informed them in detail about his ideas, general methods of manufacturing and matters that should be paid attention to, and then they operated and experimented in detail. Unexpectedly, they had really made it work and made equipment that could be produced in small batches, prepared production processes, and could be put into production. This made Zhao Bing extremely happy, because with nitric acid, he could create thunder and mercury.

After Radius Mercury was invented in modern times, it has a high sensitivity to flames, needle stabs and impacts. In the dry state, even extremely light friction and impact will cause explosions, which is the first substance to be used as a detonator. With it, Zhao Bing can improve the current weapons and make it possible to create more advanced rear-loading guns.

In the concept of the world, there is a gun first and then a bullet. In fact, the improvement of the gun is subject to the improvement of ammunition. The invention of mercury has revolutionized the bullets, making the breech loading a reality. The emergence of breech guns has changed the form of war, making the gun fire faster, the rate of breech fire is reduced, and the ammunition is easier to carry and preserve.

The breech gun will also change the current combat form. Now the Song army adopts linear queue tactics to increase and maintain firepower density through alternate shooting. The loading speed of the breech gun is better than that of the flintlock gun, so that fewer soldiers can reach the same firepower density. Simply put, in the past, if a soldier had to maintain a combat surface of thirty steps in the past, each could now maintain a front line of fifty steps or even a hundred steps.

This calculation will greatly improve the combat effectiveness of the troops. In the past, a combat mission that an army needed to complete might be achieved by a division, so that there would be no need to maintain a huge number of troops. Of course, the use of new weapons will greatly increase the consumption of ammunition, increase the cost of war, and become more dependent on logistics.

However, Zhao Bing also knew that it would not be achieved overnight if this goal was achieved. With nitric acid, it was just the beginning, and it was only a small step to try to produce thunder mercury. Because its properties are not stable, it is extremely sensitive to vibration, impact and friction when drying, and is easily detonated by Mars and flames. To put it into use, it is necessary to passivate the thunder mercury. Without any reference data, a lot of manpower and material resources are needed to be invested to perform experiments and choose the best solution.

The breech gun is now just a "concept". Although Zhao Bing has several design plans for firearms in his mind, it is not easy to build them. We must comprehensively consider the current processing level and ability, whether the technical standards of raw materials meet the current production capacity, etc. Therefore, it is very difficult to invent it at the moment, and it involves many disciplines and industries.

Of course, every investment of "new invention" is also an improvement in the industrial level of the Song Dynasty and a qualitative leap in the development of science and technology. This makes Zhao Bing often secretly complacent. After hundreds of years, this period of history will leave a strong mark in the history of world science and technology development. The Chinese nation has truly created many world firsts, and all this cannot avoid himself, the initiator.

What makes Zhao Bing regret is that almost every invention now is for military purposes, used for killing, in order to compete for living space and resources. But he feels that it is precisely because life and death have also stimulated people's creativity and developed powerful weapons, but it has also promoted the development of productivity and social progress in disguise.

The Academy of Sciences soon gave him another surprise. These people were young scholars who had good academic skills. Although they failed the scientific examination, it did not mean that they were not good at brains, but that they were too good at it. In other words, they were somewhat biased, or they had different ideas from the world and had a strong desire for knowledge.

Because these fallen scholars had a certain cultural foundation, they studied with Zhao Bing for a period of time and reached the level of modern junior high school graduates. However, his teacher was not very competent, but he just taught some basic knowledge. Most of the time was for them to study by themselves and discuss and make progress together. The only major project they participated in was the "biogas" project in Lin'an City.

In this practical activity, from the initial conception, laboratory verification, and subsequent local trials and process debugging, they were all completed under the guidance of Zhao Bing. After being rolled out on a large scale, they participated in the whole process, from the selection of biogas tanks, the layout of pipelines, the design of street lamps and the preparation of production processes, all of which were independently completed. While these scholars were trained, they also inspired their enthusiasm for unknown exploration and were committed to scientific research.

This time, the scholars of the Academy of Sciences presented Zhao Bing with a "steam engine", inspired by a small experiment in natural sciences when he was in elementary school - a steam sprayed from a water bottle to drive a paper windmill. At the beginning, he just wanted the students to feel the energy conversion intuitively, so that they could understand that what could be used as the driving force was not only from the wind and water in nature, but also from the energy conversion to obtain new power.

When Zhao Bing saw the "steam engine" present in front of him, he immediately turned from surprise to shock. The guy in front of him, who was the size of a water tank and sprayed with white steam was like a earth heating stove that was once very popular in the 1980s. If you look closely, it would be better than that thing! So his first feeling was to run quickly. The "steam engine" had only one hole for water and air discharge, and the furnace body was connected by riveting, and without a pressure reducing valve, it was not as safe as a pressure cooker.

But Zhao Bing still wanted to run away because he couldn't make up his mind to attack these young people of high nature, but he was also nervous and tried his best to keep a smile and listen to them explaining the principles and techniques of manufacturing. During this process, the students stuffed a few more pieces of wood into the furnace and used airbags to blast the fire. His heart was lifted up now. If this sounded, the power was no less than that of a shell, and all the people in front of him had to go to heaven.

At this time, Zhao Bing would rather face the enemy's troops than face this "steam engine" with no idea of ​​good temper. As the firepower increased, the steam ejected from the nozzle became thicker and thicker. Two students connected an iron pipe to the nozzle. His heart thumped again, and the front was scary enough. Isn't this really a life-threatening person!

‘Puchi, puchi…’ Hearing a few jets, Zhao Bing’s eyes moved away from the ‘steam engine’. It turned out that there was a Qiankun behind. A student turned the next flywheel and found that there was a connecting rod mechanism behind. Under the action of inertia, the connecting rod rotated with the flywheel, and the steam also sprayed out. He finally understood that these people really made a single piston cylinder, which drove the connecting rod through the reciprocating movement of the piston, causing the flywheel to rotate.

"Okay, reward!" Zhao Bing shouted, asking the students to quickly remove the fire and cool down. Because he understood that once the piston is stuck or the connecting rod stalls and stops moving, the steam cannot leak out. Either the furnace body explodes or the cylinder explodes. He is not safe, so it is important to end the observation quickly.

While speaking, under the guidance of Zhao Bing, everyone first put out the fire with all their might, and then quickly took off the connecting pipe to let the remaining steam leak out. He breathed a sigh of relief. But no matter what, this thing has already taken the prototype of a steam engine, and at least it can be used as a power generator to drive the connecting rod. To be honest, this broken thing has created history and is likely to become the source of power for the first industrial revolution in the world.

Although Zhao Bing was a little scared, he was very pleased that everyone was willing to use their brains to independently complete the design of the furnace body and cylinder, and created a model that was considered a steam engine. Since he said he wanted to reward, Zhao Bing would certainly not go back on his word and rewarded the "steam engine" research team for 2,000 jin to encourage him. After hearing this, everyone thanked him in unison, and their faces were full of joy. This was not only because they received the reward, but more importantly because they received the emperor's recognition.

Now Zhao Bing is like a "god" in the eyes of the subjects of the Song Dynasty, especially the young scholars. He can be called a series of titles such as "family". He has received recognition and praise from the family. Now that their creation has been recognized and praised, he is of course very happy, but he doesn't know what it would be if they knew that they had done a major event that changed the course of history and would receive a reward of only 2,000 guan.

After everyone calmed down, Zhao Bing began to give a live explanation, pointing out the shortcomings in the design of the apprentices, especially the "stupid and bold" behavior of creating real objects for experiments without considering and taking any safety measures, pointing out the dangers. At the same time, they warned them not to make such stupid mistakes again and put personal safety first at all times.
Chapter completed!