Awakening Elementary School System in University
Chapter 40 - 37: A New Problem

Chapter 40: Chapter 37: A New Problem

Chen Lin spoke with President Peng for another five minutes before ending the voice call.

He leaned back in his chair and let out a long sigh, feeling utterly content.

’My luck really is something else,’ he thought.

A man like Peng Yifeng was clearly a seasoned veteran who had knocked around in the real world for years.

His calm and sophisticated demeanor, coupled with his flawless, considerate way of speaking, made Chen Lin—a young man who prided himself on his worldliness—keenly aware of what it felt like to be completely outclassed.

Take transferring majors, for example.

The thought had crossed Chen Lin’s mind in the first two days after he received the "Little Mathematician" title.

But he had given up on the idea immediately after excitedly looking up the administrative regulations for transferring majors on the university’s official website.

Yannan University’s rules were written in black and white: in principle, students admitted as liberal arts majors were not permitted to transfer to science or engineering programs.

That rule alone basically blocked off his path.

Not to mention another strict requirement: students applying to transfer must have a GPA from all previous semesters that ranked in the top 15% of their original major.

Chen Lin recalled his abysmal transcripts from his freshman year and the first semester of his sophomore year. They were littered with scores just barely above passing. Forget the top 15%—he’d have to thank his lucky stars to even make it into the top 51%.

So, at the time, he had abandoned the idea without a second thought.

But now, after hearing what President Peng had said, Chen Lin suddenly realized that his previous way of thinking had been far too naive.

’Rules are rigid, but people are flexible.’

’So-called regulations have always been for constraining ordinary people. And with the "Little Mathematician" title, I’m clearly no longer in the ordinary category when it comes to mathematics.’

Just as President Peng had said, as long as he could find a suitable opportunity to fully showcase his mathematical talent, it would be impossible for him not to be allowed to transfer—unless the university leadership and the deans and professors at the School of Mathematical Sciences were complete idiots.

At that point, forget the restriction on crossing from liberal arts to sciences—even the GPA requirement would become a mere formality that could be broken.

What did the university want? Results. Honor. A big name that would make a splash in the academic world!

The more value he demonstrated, the bigger the exception the university would be willing to make for him.

Once he understood this, Chen Lin felt as if a great weight had been lifted, and everything became clear.

’First, I’ll do my best on the finals this semester. At the very least, I can’t let my grades in my current major look too bad. After the exams are over, I’ll find a chance to get in touch with the leadership of the School of Mathematical Sciences.’

’Didn’t Shen Yan say she’d caught the attention of a math professor who was letting her start on graduate-level research early?’

’I wonder if I’ll get a chance to meet them at the academic exchange in mid-July.’

Chen Lin was confident that the more expert someone was, the better they would understand the true significance of his mathematical talent.

With a clear plan in mind, Chen Lin felt a great sense of relief.

He came back to his senses and looked across at Sun Yu, who had been staring at him with wide, expectant eyes, not even daring to take a sip of his lemonade.

"Did President Peng send you the new design proposal?"

"Ah! Yes, yes!" Sun Yu snapped out of his daze and quickly woke up his work laptop to log in to his company email.

Sure enough, an email marked "Important" was sitting silently at the top of his inbox.

"Master, the email just arrived."

Chen Lin glanced at the time in the bottom-right corner of the screen. It wasn’t even twelve-thirty.

"Alright, I happen to be free this afternoon," he said, standing up. "Let’s go. We should hurry and try to get this done and sent to President Peng by the end of the day."

He led Sun Yu to the third floor of the library, navigating the route with ease.

There weren’t many people studying at this time, so Chen Lin easily found an empty single-person study room.

After the two of them went inside, Chen Lin closed the door, shutting out all external noise.

He pointed at the table and said to Sun Yu, "Same as last time, I don’t really understand your engineering design proposals. First, summarize the issues in the proposal into mathematical problems that need to be solved, and then explain them to me."

"Okay, okay, no problem!" Sun Yu wasn’t surprised at all; he was familiar with the procedure.

He immediately opened his laptop, put on his headphones, and began to study the design proposal with intense focus.

Seeing Sun Yu get into work mode, Chen Lin didn’t stay idle either. He took his own laptop and the class notes he had just taken that morning out of his backpack, pulled up Professor Wang’s lecture PPT on his phone, and began reviewing the key points for the final exam in "Appreciation of Chinese and Western Literary Trends."

For a while, the only sounds in the small study room were the faint hum of the two laptop fans and the occasional soft clicks of Sun Yu’s keyboard and mouse.

A little over an hour later, Sun Yu took off his headphones, let out a long breath, and turned to look at Chen Lin.

"Master, I’m done studying it. I can explain it to you now."

Chen Lin pressed Ctrl+S to save the review notes he had just compiled, closed his laptop, and pulled his chair closer.

"Go ahead. What’s the problem this time?"

"This time, it’s about a large-scale scenic pedestrian bridge over a river," Sun Yu began his explanation, pointing to an extremely complex bridge design on his screen, full of smooth, flowing curves. "Our design institute is responsible for the pre-stressed concrete main girders."

"To ensure the bridge’s safety and durability, we have to accurately calculate the theoretical elongation of the pre-stressed steel tendons inside the main girders during the tensioning process."

Sun Yu switched between several documents and pulled up a cross-sectional diagram of a steel tendon.

"Simply put, the core problem is calculating how much a continuously curved steel tendon—which can be treated as a space curve in mathematics—will stretch in total after being subjected to a massive tensile force, P. That is, the total elastic elongation, ΔL."

Chen Lin nodded, gesturing for him to continue.

"The most common method in engineering is called the ’Piecewise Linear Superposition Method,’" Sun Yu explained. "It involves manually dividing this complex, curved steel tendon into several segments based on its path—some are straight lines, some are circular arcs."

"For the straight segments, it’s simple. You just apply Hooke’s Law."

"The tricky part is the curved segments. Because the steel tendon runs through a duct, it creates friction with the duct wall when stretched. This means the tensile force decays after passing through a curve. We typically use an exponential friction model to calculate the attenuated force and then use an approximate formula to figure out the elongation of that curved segment."

Sun Yu’s expression grew troubled. "Our design institute has always used this conventional, simplified method. But, as you’ve seen from the design of this scenic bridge, for aesthetic reasons, it includes several circular arc segments with very large radii of curvature, giving it a unique shape."

"The theoretical elongation calculated with the old method has a systemic deviation of about 2% from the data measured during on-site construction monitoring. While that might not sound like much, it’s already more than half the permissible error range set by national standards. The project will never pass inspection like this."

"Later, we tried a more refined method, which involved breaking down the curved segments into more, even smaller straight segments for a cumulative calculation. The results improved, but the deviation was still around 1.5%, and the computational load exploded, severely slowing down the project’s progress."

Sun Yu looked at Chen Lin and finally got to the core of the problem.

"Master, the bottleneck we’re facing now is that both the conventional simplified method and the more refined segmentation method are fundamentally based on approximating a curve with a series of straight lines. This introduces an inherent error. When the curvature of the steel tendon is greater and the effect of friction is more significant, this error is magnified to an unacceptable level."

He took a deep breath, looked at Chen Lin with eyes full of hope, and said, enunciating each word, "So, we need a new mathematical model—one that can perform a true integration along the curved path, making it more accurate while also being computationally efficient."