If you can't be Marie Curie, be yourself

Text/Ying Zhang

In the dark, dilapidated shack, a tiny glass container flashed a faint blue fluorescence, a ray emitted by a decigram of pure radium. A woman gazed eagerly at the little blue in the darkness, as if it were the most beautiful sight in the world.

I think that was perhaps the most romantic scene in Marie Curie's life as a scientist. It was also this scene that made me see the beauty of science.

More than 10 years ago, when I first opened the biography of Marie Curie, I did not expect that this woman, who had a huge time and space distance from me, would almost change the trajectory of my life.

The story of Marie Curie in the book begins with her childhood. At that time, her name was Still Mania, and she carried a long Polish surname, with a broad forehead and soft blond hair. By the time she was 4 years old, she was able to read the words in books more fluently than her sister, who was a few years older than her. From elementary school to middle school, she has always maintained the first place in every subject.

What appealed to me most was that "physics," an abstract and difficult term for most people, was a magical world of fun for her. When she was studying in Paris, she easily understood the boring physical terms and principles and applied them freely.

Not only that, she is not a pedantic who plunges into physics and chemistry and is not familiar with the world, she has a wide range of hobbies. She loves literature and writing, and is extremely gifted in language, in the words of her teacher: her Russian pronunciation makes it seem that she was born in St. Petersburg.

She is truly a legend that makes me worship.

That year, I was just in my second year of junior high school, and when many of my classmates were sighing and nervous about starting to learn the two new disciplines of physics and chemistry, I was full of ambition and even couldn't wait. Because, I am about to enter the world of Marie Curie.

Perhaps because of this positive mindset, I learned physics and chemistry with ease. The former, in particular, for me, did not have the legendary "threshold", and I made great strides into the world of physics.

Marie Curie once regarded those delicate physical instruments as the most interesting "toys" in the world, and in her eyes, it was a discipline that could study the theorems that "govern the universe". And for me as a beginner, those rudimentary physical instruments and phenomena were enough to make me addicted.

Those complex circuit diagrams seem to be hidden mysteries of the map, I can smoothly connect the ammeter, voltmeter, resistance, light bulb according to them; the movement, fixed pulley and lever are like the magical tools of Doraemon, which can save so much force; and the standard atmospheric pressure on the ground, which can only raise the mercury column to 76 cm, not a little more, how precise and wonderful...

For a while, I even felt like I could be another Marie Curie. Of course, when you read this article I wrote, you already know that my dream has not come true.

This mentality continued into high school. When I entered high school, learning physics suddenly became difficult for me, and every physics class, the teacher talked about it on the top, and I sat down to listen to it with relish, but I always couldn't get started when I took out the exercise book.

This sense of loss made me suddenly fall from the cloud of the "Become Marie Curie" dream to the ground of reality at a gravitational acceleration of 9.8m/s2.

Ultimately, the harsh reality forced me to reposition myself. In the final college entrance examination volunteer, I filled in a major that I have always been good at but ignored by myself.

My alma mater was a liberal arts college, and when I first entered, I thought I would be lost, and I would deeply remember in my heart the dream that could not be realized in this life. But in fact, I spent 4 years of college happily and calmly for the simple reason that I no longer had to work hard to please physics.

I finally believed Han Yu's saying that "there is a specialty in art", and I was glad that I did not die with physics with paranoia.

Still, I want to thank Marie Curie, who, while not succeeding in introducing me into the world of scientists, did teach me a lot.

For example, how to look at glory and rewards, how to face setbacks and tribulations. In her most glorious years, she gave her daughter the Nobel Medal as a toy; in her most painful time, her husband Pierre After Curie's death in a car accident, she still went to school on time to teach students and performed her duties as a teacher.

When I'm complacent about what I've achieved, or I'm frustrated by setbacks, I unconsciously think of her and the tenacity she feels in the face of life.

After graduating from university, I went to Hong Kong to continue my studies. In the second semester, there was a course called "Radio Program Production", because the teacher was the front desk director of Radio Television Hong Kong, so it attracted many students, and the number of people who chose the course was explosive. When the teacher showed the syllabus and homework plan of this semester through the projector, the strict requirements and heavy homework made many people back off. In the second class, I became one of the few people still sitting in the classroom.

I know that my voice conditions are not good enough, but even if I can't be an anchor, it is good to have an anchor addiction, not to mention, I am a person who has not known the height of the sky and the thickness of the physical death. After a semester of hard work, each of us successfully completed two 30-minute on-air (live broadcast) and a personally independently produced 20-minute radio program that we could not have imagined before.

To this day, I've done a completely different job than I originally envisioned. The frustration of not being Marie Curie taught me that some landscapes, even if you can't be in them, are a pleasure to enjoy from a distance.

The world is so beautiful, I can't be Marie Curie, at least I can be myself.