For Zhu Mingzhong, he naturally didn't know that thousands of miles away, a guy who claimed to be the first traitor in Chinese history gritted his teeth and couldn't wait to eat his bones, in fact, there was more than one person who couldn't wait to eat his bones, and he didn't have a lot of debts, not to mention, in his heart, this was not a debt at all, and it was naturally impossible to take it to heart.

At this time, for Zhu Mingzhong in the laboratory room, he is carrying out the laboratory with great interest, in fact, as a strategic envoy, because he does not need to directly participate in civil administration, so he will always have some time for the laboratory, such as the cultivation of Dutch potatoes, the cultivation of Chaotian peppers, and even the breeding of cotton, the seeds of the first two are crossed with him, and the latter is a completely unexpected harvest - on Thomas's ship, there are two bales of cotton, these two bales of seemingly inconspicuous lint, It is not the short-staple Asian cotton commonly planted in China, but the upland cotton native to Mexico, in history, this higher yield, better quality upland cotton replaced the poor quality and low yield of African cotton and Asian cotton is at least two and a half centuries later, and now, in the face of these two bags of seed cotton from the Americas, Zhu Mingzhong naturally did not let go of the cotton seeds in the cotton bale, and immediately ordered people to try planting in the training ground outside the city, after all, in his planning, the textile industry will be the driving force behind the development of China's industry. And cotton is the raw material guarantee that set off this industrial revolution.

Of course, the indigenous domestication of upland cotton will take several years or even more than a decade, and now is not just the beginning of a long process. Naturally, he would not devote all his energy to the long process of cultivating improved seeds, after all, in the current situation of sparse population and sufficient land, improved seeds are not urgently needed.

Compared with agriculture, how to improve military equipment to meet military needs may be more urgent, and it is precisely for this reason that in the past few months, Zhu Mingzhong has been conducting some chemical laboratories in a targeted manner, and the purpose of the laboratories is precisely to meet the needs of improving military equipment.

"Potassium chlorate ......"

When taking out the brine from the wooden barrel, Zhu Mingzhong muttered to himself, how many times has this been the laboratory?

Now he has lost count of how many labs have been conducted to make potassium chlorate.

Is it the 100th time, or the 200th time? Or more? But every time the finished product in the laboratory is somewhat unsatisfactory.

But what is certain is that in the 17th century, in order to complete these laboratories, he had to complete too much preparation. In the preparation of raw materials, he needs to store the brine for several months to crystallize the magnesium sulfate in the brine into magnesium sulfate heptahydrate, and then heat the brine to 114 degrees to evaporate, cool to about 25 degrees, so that the salt and magnesium sulfate crystallize and precipitate. Then heat the solution again at 122-126 degrees to evaporate, cool and crystallize to remove the salt.

And in order to complete this laboratory, of course, you also need an object - a thermometer, although there is a mercury thermostat in the medicine box, but when making the thermometer, it is still almost completely from scratch, in this winter, just like the original Celseus, Zhu Mingzhong inserted the mercury thermometer into the melting snow, set it as the freezing point, as a standard temperature point; Then the thermometer is inserted into the boiling water and set as the boiling point, which is another standard temperature point. The first mercury thermometer was made by dividing the freezing point and the boiling point by 100 degrees, and it was used in the laboratory.

Even many of the utensils in this laboratory were designed by him himself, and in this era of change from knowledge to experience to science, Zhu Mingzhong is like a pioneer, methodically engaged in his laboratory.

"The concentrated solution forms potassium chloride hexahydrate magnesium chloride, that is, carnallite crystallization, and then dissolves and heats carnallite in water at 105 degrees, cools to 25 degrees, and potassium chloride crystallizes and precipitates ......"

Although industrial potassium chloride with a purity of about 80% can be prepared after washing and drying according to the information he has seen, after many laboratories, Zhu Mingzhong found that the effect of potassium chlorate prepared is somewhat unsatisfactory and needs to be further purified.

After all, in the 21st century, in Chinese universities, the education implemented is the so-called "professional education" rather than "generalist education", and under this educational mechanism, Zhu Mingzhong only has a slight dabbling in chemistry.

"I hate less when the book is used!"

After sighing, Zhu Mingzhong racked his brains to recall the materials he had read, and then applied them to the next laboratory.

The reason why he spent a few months studying potassium chlorate is naturally because of the important role of potassium chlorate in military equipment, for example, it is a key raw material for the manufacture of fire pipes, without potassium chlorate, the loyal army can only use the original ignition grenade, if there is potassium chlorate, the loyal army can directly enter the new era of pulling grenades, and from then on, the modern pulling grenades will become a big killer weapon of the loyal and righteous army.

After all, the kind of ignition grenades that were used in the past. There are too many restrictions when it comes to use, especially due to the weather. The reason why it cannot play a decisive role on the battlefield. It's because lighting a fire on the battlefield is not an easy task, after all, not everyone can carry a fire at all times. Especially when using a front-loading flintlock pistol, the velvet carried with them was a potential danger, and soldiers rarely had the opportunity to hold a grenade in one hand and a velvet in the other, and then set the grenade on fire.

Because of this, the grenade has become the key to improving the combat effectiveness of the loyal army, and to a certain extent, it is not inferior to the flintlock pistol.

However, Zhu Mingzhong apparently ignored the backwardness of chemistry in the 17th century, not to mention that he was not a chemistry major himself.

"If it really doesn't work, use thunder mercury, a grenade that hits the needle with a flap!"

Muttering like this, Zhu Mingzhong secretly thought to himself, maybe compared to potassium chlorate, the former is simpler. However, he did not give up his attempt to make potassium chlorate, although he had already made thunder mercury a few months ago, but the way of thunder mercury was always too simple, and even the fire medicine of the flip needle also needed chloriopotassium acid...... Although potassium chlorate can be replaced by reducing the amount of mercury used to a certain extent, it will also reduce the rate of ignition, so potassium chlorate has become a key problem that must be solved in any case.

Of course, potassium chlorate is used not only to make grenades and artillery pipes, but also to make matches and many other industrial products. In addition, it can also be used as a high-energy explosive - potassium chlorate passivated with vegetable oil such as tung oil, the explosive power is not inferior to ammonium nitrate explosives, and its power is far greater than that of ordinary black powder. Although nitroglycerin and diatomaceous earth explosives can achieve the same effect, the former is too dangerous to produce compared to potassium chlorate, while the latter is relatively simple and safer to produce.

However, at this stage, when the demand for explosives is not too urgent, black powder, which is further purified from raw materials and has a more scientific formula, can fully meet the needs of grenades and artillery shells.

Just solve the pull fire pipe!

The combat effectiveness of the troops can be qualitatively enhanced.

And the premise is that the production of potassium chlorate needs to be solved!

Without solving this problem, everything is just empty talk.

The chemistry laboratory has always been boring and boring, when conducting the laboratory, Zhu Mingzhong will occasionally discuss some chemical knowledge with his laboratory assistants, they are students in Qinghe Academy, all the time, he often likes to spread his knowledge of chemistry in this way, in this era when chemistry has not yet been defined as science, these seemingly basic chemical knowledge, it is very likely to change the entire history of chemistry.

Zhu Mingzhong naturally didn't know about all this, but one thing is for sure, sometimes, only one seed needs to be planted, and these seeds will eventually sprout on their own, and eventually under the right conditions, they will grow into a big tree.

After a busy day in the laboratory room, Zhou Boqi, who took the carriage back to the academy, did not return to the dormitory like his classmates, but went to the laboratory room, where he once again studied his reflective camera obscura, since a few months ago, after seeing the "Book of Ink" in the library, he was uncontrollably obsessed with this technology, and he added a biconvex lens and aperture to the camera obscura through several other Western books compiled in the library, so as to greatly improve the image clarity. From this, he designed and built a small, portable, single-lens reflex camera obscura that could be used to aid painting.

However, Zhou Boqi was not very satisfied with all this, in addition to the fact that the painter did not need the assistance of the camera obscura, and more importantly, he needed a special raw material to achieve his goal.

"How can we keep the light?"

Again, looking at the image in the camera obscura, Zhou Boqi muttered to himself, his brows furrowed, and countless thoughts were tumbling there, but there was no formed thought, or rather, it didn't help him much, I helped him save those pictures.

Through reflection and experimentation over the past few months. Zhou Boqi already knows that all natural things in this world can be displayed in this cassette in the form of "light", but the light in the cassette cannot be preserved, and because of this, if you want to save these images, you must save the light, but how to preserve the light?

In the books he had read, there had never been an answer, and no one had even considered it in the past. But this does not prevent Zhou Boqi from thinking about this issue now. Then he went to some laboratories every day that seemed to outsiders to be "whimsical and unrealistic", and he believed that the secret of preserving light must be in those chemical experiments, and through continuous experiments, maybe he could find the answer. And the answer must be in those bottles and cans, and he never doubted it, and even now he has recorded hundreds of chemical experiment reports, and of course, has experienced hundreds of failures.

Unconsciously, after experiencing many failures again, Zhou Boqi had stayed in the laboratory room until late at night, and when he blew out the candle and left the laboratory room and returned to the dormitory, as soon as he entered the door, he heard his roommate who had not yet slept asking.

"Zhengjun, why is it so late today?"

Liu Haitang knew that his friend had always been obsessed with those experiments, and he couldn't extricate himself from the somewhat illusory experiment.

"Hmm,"

Zhou Boqi nodded and took off his clothes, his whole person looked a little tired, after all, he had been busy for a day.

"How's it going, is there any progress today?"

Of course, the answer was no, and even Zhou Boqi didn't answer at all, and at this time, Liu Haitang, who had not yet fallen asleep, asked curiously on the side, although in his opinion that career was a little too illusory, but it was inevitable that he was still a little curious.

"Zhengjun, why are you always obsessed with such a "camera machine", what can keep the light image? It's like a sword can't cut off water, it's not realistic at all......"

Obviously, even close friends can't understand Zhou Boqi's thoughts, and in the face of his friends' doubts, he was silent for a while, and Zhou Boqi, who was lying on the bed, suddenly asked.

"Peng Zhi, do you know what the world was like a hundred years ago?"

Friend's question made Liu Haitang stunned, what was the world like a hundred years ago? This is a question he never considered. What was the world like 100 years ago? I'm afraid this was only known to people a hundred years ago!

"Do you ever know what your great-grandfather looks like?"

"Isn't there a portrait?"

But when he thought of the portrait, he naturally thought of it. The portrait of his grandfather, in his opinion, was simply two people compared to his grandfather. This portrait is also unreliable, and if so, what is?

People today don't know what it was like a hundred years ago. Even future generations don't know what their grandfathers and great-grandfathers were like. Not to mention the others?

The words of his friend made Liu Haitang fall into silence, and he seemed to understand why his friend was addicted to it.

"Is the portrait a real person?"

In the rhetorical question, Zhou Boqi looked at the ceiling above his head and said softly.

"You and I were born in troubled times, and in the past we only knew that the world recorded the troubled times in words, but how could we know what this troubled times were like? And as the saying goes, there are heroes in troubled times, and there are so many heroes in the world today, but a hundred years later, who knows what it will look like if it is a strategy, such as a loyal and righteous soldier, and what it looks like to all the people in the world? ”

Staring at the ceiling, Zhou Boqi muttered.

"If I can leave that light and shadow, a hundred or even hundreds of years later, the people of this world will naturally be able to get a glimpse of today's scene, and I can also see my heroic appearance today, and I will not be biased by the words, Pengzhi, you say, isn't this a good thing?"

When he said this, Zhou Boqi's eyes burst out of the darkness with a look full of yearning and longing......