Text ✎Liangshu Editor✎Liangshu is not cool - the seismometer has been removed from the textbook - because there is a large part of the country at the junction of the Eurasian continental plate and the African plate, our country has also become one of the earthquake-prone countrie

text ✎ Liangshu

editor ✎ Liangshu is not cool

- seismometer was removed from the textbook -

Because there is a large part of the country at the junction of the Eurasian continental plate and the African plate, has led to our country becoming As one of the countries prone to earthquakes, we have often suffered from earthquakes in history.

Like the Tangshan earthquake , the Wenchuan earthquake, etc., they are all painful and indelible disasters for us. Before this, there were actually many instruments for detecting earthquakes in our country.

But in today's highly technologically advanced society, when one can know all the news about another place with a phone call or a WeChat, the earthquake monitoring instrument does not seem to be so important.

However, there is one earthquake monitoring instrument that has always been remembered in the minds of countless people, and that is the Zhang Heng seismograph.

In the history textbooks 17 years ago, there was such a record of the seismometer, and two pictures were attached as supporting evidence.

But when I looked at the textbook again today, I found that the seismograph no longer exists in today's history textbooks. Even today's children have no idea about this prop.

The seismometer was removed from the textbook

If we are talking about earthquake monitoring, then one person who has to be mentioned is Zhang Heng, one of the Five Sages of Nanyang.

He is a famous inventor and astronomer in ancient China. But these are just names. What really makes people admire him is one of his inventions, which is the wind and seismograph .

This is the world's earliest earthquake monitoring instrument. According to Later Han Dynasty records, this instrument is divided into eight directions according to southeast, northwest and northwest. There are eight dragons with beads in each of the eight directions. Under the dragon, there are eight A toad with its mouth wide open.

When an earthquake occurs somewhere, the beads from the dragon's mouth will fall out and then fall into the toad's mouth. Then you only need to move in this direction to see the location of the earthquake.

When people learn about this historical content, they are actually more moved by a special feeling. After all, this is the world's first earthquake monitoring instrument. Thousands of years earlier than European countries. There's really no way we can't be proud.

However, before 2017, this content had always been included in junior high school history textbooks. After the textbook was revised in 2017, it was discovered that the seismometer had completely disappeared from the textbook and became a history textbook.

Many current students who entered junior high school after 2017 don’t even know who Zhang Heng is? What is a seismometer?

This also makes us sigh, why is the seismometer removed from the textbook, and what is the secret behind it?

The questionable seismograph

In fact, the seismograph has been questioned since its discovery. Most scholars expressed their unwillingness to believe that ancient technology can realize the seismograph.

They even think that this seismometer is just a cover and cannot be real at all. Even hanging a piece of meat from the beam is more powerful than this seismometer.

In fact, the seismograph has been questioned by most people a long time ago.

In Austria there is a scholar named Lei Libo. When he learned that the Chinese have always believed in such a thing as a seismometer, he scoffed directly.

He believes that the Chinese people's worship of Zhang Heng is fundamentally unscientific and irrational. With the technology at the time, it was simply impossible to achieve technology like the seismograph.

After the seismograph was removed from textbooks, more people began to speak out about the seismograph, as countless Chinese academicians said.

This kind of seismometer is actually less sensitive than residents' physical senses. If this kind of seismometer is really used for earthquake monitoring. I'm afraid the earthquake has reached your home and you don't know it yet.

Popular science writer Fang Zhouzi also wrote about the seismograph being removed from the textbook. He said that the seismograph made by Zhang Heng thousands of years ago may be just like the current model, a pure decoration with no effect at all.

himself found it hard to believe that the technology at that time could produce such an earthquake monitoring machine.

or even Chinese Academy of Sciences Fu Chengyi, an academician of who specializes in seismometers, even said bluntly: A seismograph like , even if it hangs a piece of meat from the beam, is countless times more powerful than this seismograph model.

Of course, not all people deny this seismograph, and some scientists express their affirmation of this seismometer.

includes Chen Tianjia, a teacher at the School of Humanities, Chinese Academy of Sciences. But so far, no one has been able to provide proof to prove his statement.

The main reason for this is that Zhang Heng was a person who lived thousands of years ago. Firstly, no physical object of the seismograph he made has been handed down, and secondly, there are no clear drawings for research.

All the drawings and actual objects of the seismometer had completely disappeared without a trace by the time of and in the Western Jin Dynasty.

People’s knowledge of seismographs is all studied from the history recorded in history books. : First, there are no drawings, and second, there is no actual object. Who can know whether this seismograph exists?

Seeing this, some friends will definitely question it. No, in the history books I studied before, there is clearly a seismograph, and there are also photos of the actual thing. How is it possible that there is no physical object and no drawing record?

In fact, the seismograph we saw is not a real seismograph, but a reproduction based on historical records by Mr. Wang Zhenduo of the Chinese History Museum.

Copying seismographs is the beginning of all disputes

After Mr. Wang Zhenduo saw "Book of the Later Han·Zhang Heng Biography" , he began to make seismographs based on the records of seismographs in the book.

However, the records of the seismometer only have records of the appearance, and there is no record of the internal structure at all.

At that time, Mr. Wang Zhenduo believed that the inside of the seismometer was probably based on the principle of an upright lever. Later, he learned about the British Milne's principle of a pendant pendulum by consulting books.

Based on the two theories, he has a basic graphic theory for the production of seismographs.

However, because there is still a lack of theoretical foundation for the upright lever principle, the final production has not been carried out.

Until 1951, Mr. Wang Zhenduo referred to the inferences about the upright lever principle by two Japanese people, Hara Tsunrei and Imamura Akihiro. Only then was a 1:10 scale wooden seismograph produced.

Since then, the wooden seismometer has been placed in the Chinese History Museum for everyone to visit.

After the seismograph was reproduced, it attracted the attention of the whole of China. At that time, People's Pictorial directly painted Mr. Wang Zhenduo's model.

Later, there was also a seismometer model painting made by Mr. Wang Zhenduo on China's special stamps .

Not only that, in order to promote Chinese culture and show China's strength, we also promote this model as a carrier of Chinese and foreign cultural exchanges .

has even been displayed as a national gift at the United Nations World Intellectual Property Organization headquarters. It is enough to see how much international significance the emergence of this seismometer had at that time.

But again, because of the huge impact of this seismograph, this seismometer has also become questioned by people.

even finally removed Mr. Wang Zhenduo’s seismometer from the textbook. The reason needs to be explained from the principle of upright lever.

The defects of upright lever principle make the seismometer useless

After Mr. Wang Zhenduo’s seismometer was copied, the layout organization of the history textbook decided to add Mr. Wang Zhenduo’s seismometer to the textbook.

Everything was very good at the beginning, even Mr. Wang Zhenduo was very happy. But gradually, the seismograph continued to make mistakes, making the incident more serious.

In fact, Mr. Wang Zhenduo’s seismometer was built on a theoretical basis and did not undergo formal experiments. Even after construction, Mr. Wang Zhenduo did not test it.

This also leads to the fact that the seismograph actually has many shortcomings, and these shortcomings make this seismograph have many flaws. The biggest thing about is that it has no ability to monitor earthquakes.

Through the introduction just now, we already know that the principle of the seismograph is the upright lever principle. The upright lever principle actually relies on the unstable balance of the object.

However, the upright lever principle is very insensitive to the unstable balance of the object. If a large object tips next to it, the upright lever may tip over unstablely.

So when an earthquake occurs, there is no problem if it is nearby. Even a house may fall down, let alone a dragon ball?

But if this is the case, it loses its meaning. The seismograph must be able to detect it from a long distance, even several provinces and regions away from the local area.

But if the distance is so far, the fluctuations of the earthquake are actually very small. Even if the seismograph actually spits out the dragon ball, it is not clear whether the dragon ball fell because of the earthquake or because of other factors. The impact causes the Dragon Ball to drop. So in the end we can only keep this question.

Of course, another very important problem is that this dragon ball is difficult to fall off. Once during a visit to Japan, the staff conducted earthquake simulations.

But the dragon ball at that time had no reaction at all, and there was no reaction of falling down. In the end, the staff knocked it with a wooden stick and finally made the dragon ball fall down.

This is mainly caused by a structural problem of the seismometer. As seismology experts said, even hanging a piece of meat from the rafters is better than this seismograph.

After all, hanging pieces of meat from the beams is also a natural earthquake detection structure.

New seismometer appeared, old seismometer removed from textbook

At that time, because Mr. Wang Zhenduo’s seismograph had such a serious error, countless people, both at home and abroad, expressed distrust of China’s seismograph.

even believes that Zhang Heng is a fictional character and does not exist in history. But when Feng Rui appeared, this statement took a turn for the better.

In fact, earthquakes are divided into transverse waves and longitudinal waves. The ones that can be interfered with are generally the longitudinal waves of earthquakes. This kind of wave is like an object falling suddenly, so when an object falls, the same longitudinal wave will appear.

However, transverse waves can rarely be directly simulated by objects on the ground. So if we are monitoring shear waves, there is still some hope.

So Feng Rui conducted further research based on Mr. Wang Zhenduo’s seismograph.

He re-fixed the toads scattered around and fixed them on the bottle body.

Then, after repeated tests using Longxi waves to confirm that Longzhu would not be interfered by other longitudinal waves, the seismograph was re-released.

This time the seismometer really has the function of monitoring earthquakes. Because of his success, Feng Rui knew that the seismometer made by Mr. Wang Zhenduo actually had a huge mistake.

In order not to affect the knowledge acceptance of the next generation, he decided to remove the seismograph from the teaching materials. So Feng Rui began to dissuade the editors of the textbook, asking them to delete the seismometer from it so that students could learn correct knowledge. This is what textbooks should do.

With Feng Rui’s perseverance, the editors of the textbook also conducted research on the seismograph. Indeed, as Feng Rui said, the seismograph has huge flaws.

If we want to educate with all our heart, we still need to let the children receive the correct education. That’s why they removed Mr. Wang Zhenduo’s seismometer from the new textbook in 2017.

Science has no end, and the restoration of objects is not perfect.

In fact, things like this are not rare in our history. Because time is too long, many things cannot be restored. It can only be simulated and built based on the shell of the object in the record.

But after all, we were not the people at that time, and we didn’t know how to make it, so the things we made were flawed.

Not only this seismometer, but also the Sinan imitated by Mr. Wang Zhenduo before.

Mr. Wang Zhenduo also made a Sinan based on historical data, but this Sinan is the same as the seismograph, although it was made according to what the book said. But what the ancients left behind was only an appearance, and the internal structure was not understood at all.

So Mr. Wang Zhenduo restored Sinan according to the data recorded in the book.

But after all, the thing restored in this way was not made by me, and it still has big flaws. In the end, this Simon also became a Simon that cannot be pointed to.

So when faced with this problem, the professor of at Shanghai Jiao Tong University also said the same thing. I think this Sinan should also be removed from the textbooks. Such mistakes cannot be used to confuse the eyes of the new generation of Chinese people.

But in fact, the scientific restoration was not made by me after all. Although the seismograph made by Feng Rui today is closer to the historical records than Mr. Wang Zhenduo’s seismograph.

But there is still a possibility that a closer replica has not yet appeared. Perhaps in the near future, we will also see the emergence of a replica that is closer to Zhang Heng’s seismograph. One day, we may even be able to completely replicate the seismograph. .

Conclusion

There may be no limit to the reproduction of history, but it is necessary to be true to history. The seismograph may have lost its role now and has been replaced by the Internet.

But the research on it is not to allow us to monitor earthquakes, but to allow us to restore history and let the world know that In ancient China, there was such a great inventor who invented the early world Thousand-year seismometer.

We also hope that one day in the future, we can really find the actual seismograph, or its design drawing, and then study the real seismograph. Then the lost piece of history will be fully displayed.

——End——