[Two months before the annual competition begins, a reference topic is released.]
[This reference topic is similar to the official competition questions, but much less difficult, akin to the relationship between a fake and the real deal. If the reference topic's difficulty is 3, the competition question would be around 40.]
[This year's reference topic was announced last night.]
[The topic's gist is as follows: A high-speed warp cargo ship, launched from a spaceport, encounters a virtual planet during its spacetime jump. Given the virtual planet's mass and atmospheric conditions, calculate the cargo ship's orbital deviation after being affected, and determine how to adjust the engines with minimal energy to orbit the virtual planet once, completing the first real-time observation of the virtual planet.]
[The most outrageous part is that the topic states this virtual planet suddenly expanded from a singularity in a void, becoming a complete planet within an hour. It's like popcorn, where a small kernel suddenly explodes.]
[Everyone in our class feels this topic's premise is highly absurd. A planet cannot appear out of thin air in reality. It's likely the question setter is trying to make things difficult for us. Past topics always had real-world applications, but this year's topic is unbelievably fictitious. Or perhaps, something similar has happened somewhere in the universe?]
[As soon as the topic was released, our class started grinding. We worked through the night from 8 PM yesterday, finishing the problem-solving at 9:30 AM today. Then we spent another two hours organizing and double-checking. My brain is buzzing right now, as if someone squeezed it with their hand and extracted all the brain fluid. So, after writing this letter, I'm going to sleep soundly.]
[My approach was deemed the most reliable by the teacher. First, using the cargo ship's initial velocity, the multi-dimensional angle between the cargo ship's orbit and the planet's orbit, combined with the gravitational equation, I constructed a grand equation. After calculating the results, the conclusion was that a probe escaping in the direction of the planet's motion would have the maximum velocity, while one escaping in the opposite direction would have the minimum velocity. Both the exit and entry velocities are distributed on a circle centered at the tip of the planet's velocity vector.]
[Then, using the reference frame transformation method, the virtual planet is fixed at the origin. The probe's velocity A and velocity B have different directions but equal magnitudes, which allows for the construction of a gravity assist. Velocity A is distributed on a circle centered at the tip of velocity A', with the difference between velocity B and velocity A as the radius, to find the deflection angle and the timing of entering the planet's orbit, using hyperbolic equations to calculate four variables.]
[Next comes the detailed calculation. Since it's a warp cargo ship, I used the Yuan Hanlin-Wang Shuang formula in higher dimensions. This formula is actually an upgrade to the Karman-Tsien formula. The Karman-Tsien formula studies two-dimensional, inviscid, steady, subsonic flow. We are currently studying the cargo ship's high-dimensional, inviscid, steady, near-light-speed flow. I'll list the formula here...]
Jiang Ye flipped through, finding five pages of calculation content.
There were even printed diagrams, with strange ellipses and circles, a bunch of straight lines dividing angles, a velocity graph with an eight-digit x-axis and a five-digit y-axis... and three more pages of charts and graphs.
"What is my son doing?" Jiang Ye was utterly confused. "Is he trying to teach this problem to both of us? Doesn't he know his parents are both ignorant in math and physics?"
"This problem is very simple," Cen Yemeng said something surprising.
"Don't joke around, wife. Don't pretend to be knowledgeable to impress me," Jiang Ye said speechlessly.
"I really do understand. This is high school material, and my math and physics scores were decent back then," Cen Yemeng said. "After so many years, I've returned my specific calculation abilities to the teacher, but I can still grasp the general idea."
"I don't believe you," Jiang Ye shook his head.
"Why don't you believe me? For example, this step uses the 'tangent gas approximation' method. On a plane with pressure and the reciprocal of density as coordinates, the isentropic relation curve passing through infinity and one over infinity is replaced by the tangent line at the point of infinity and one over infinity. P and ρ are the pressure and density of the incoming flow at infinity." Cen Yemeng spoke rapidly. "Then, a high-dimensional substitution is made, which is son's formulas 7 and 8." kAnshu伍.ξà
Jiang Ye was completely stunned, his mouth agape in an 'o' shape, staring blankly at his wife.
His worldview was shattered!
How could both his wife and son be so amazing!
Then what was he, as a husband and father, supposed to be?
"This is unbelievable!" Jiang Ye exclaimed. "Aren't you more inclined towards liberal arts? Why do you understand math and physics?"
"It's all minor stuff," Cen Yemeng said proudly. "I almost became a scientist, but then I realized opening a dumpling restaurant was more profitable, so I gave up further studies."
"Are high school students this formidable nowadays?" Jiang Ye held his son's letter, feeling like an illiterate. "When I was in high school, physics problems were about sliders, carts, balls, and coefficients of friction. Now, high school students can calculate spaceships. It's incredible!"
"Let's continue reading the letter," Cen Yemeng suggested.
[All my classmates are very interested in the virtual planet game. Many of them secretly write settings for virtual planets during class, as it's quite interesting and can earn money. It seems like for every 100 likes, you get ten yuan.]
[I also wrote a small setting in my spare time.]
[About twenty thousand years ago, there were some monkeys on the planet. They were thin and small, living on wild fruits and small animals, and feared all fierce beasts. Because of their cat-like physique, they were no match for other carnivores.]
[Once, there was a flood, and all the monkeys stood on a floating log, drifting with the current. After days and nights without anything to eat, all the monkeys were starving. Just then, an island in the water finally appeared ahead.]
[The island was covered with strangely shaped snake trees. The trunks were thick wooden logs, but the branches hung down to the water like green snakes. They even had bark like snake scales, and were bare without leaves, or perhaps those snake scales were shrunken leaves.]
[The monkeys tried to paddle their floating log towards the island. The snake-like branches quickly enveloped them. Suddenly, one monkey screamed; two snake branches bit it and coiled around it tightly. The other monkeys screamed in fear, but the snake branches continued to bite the monkeys, quickly grabbing and coiling half of them to death.]
[The surviving monkeys fled in panic to an open area on the island. Looking back at the monkey-eating snake tree, the tree was covered with hanging monkey corpses. Many snake branches were wriggling like snakes, dismembering the monkey corpses and secreting a green resin to wrap the monkey meat. Within minutes, they had digested the dead monkeys into pus and absorbed them completely.]
[The monkeys, terrified and enraged, picked up stones and threw them at the snake trees. But the snake trees had thick, rough bark and didn't react at all. Some snake branches were still searching in the flood, occasionally scooping up a dead fish and coiling it up to eat, their movements very elegant.]
[Suddenly, a monkey pointed to the top of the tree. Amidst the dense snake branches, a red fruit, the size of an egg, rapidly grew.]