Stories of famous people who went from failure to success

The reason why a great man is great is that when he and others are in adversity, others lose confidence, but he is determined to achieve his goals. The following are the stories of famous people who went from failure to success. Come and have a look with me.

Celebrity stories from failure to success (1)

Our great mathematician Zu Chongzhi was not only proficient in astronomy and calendar, but also made great contributions to mathematics, especially his outstanding research on "pi". The achievements are even better than those of previous generations.

Everyone knows that pi is the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter: 3.14159. In ancient times, people knew that the value of a barrel was 3 mm. The craftsmen who made wooden barrels and basins all knew that the diameter of a barrel was 3 mm, that is, the circumference of a barrel is three times the diameter.

Of course, modern computers have been used to calculate pi to more than two thousand digits after the decimal point. But there were no computers at that time, so all calculations were done by hand. Before Zu Chongzhi, Liu Xin, a mathematician in the late Western Han Dynasty, calculated pi to be 3.1547. Zhang Heng, a scientist in the Eastern Han Dynasty, calculated that pi is approximately 3.1622. It was not until the end of the Three Kingdoms that the mathematician Liu Hui created a "circle cutting technique" to calculate pi, and the study of pi made significant progress.

What is "circle cutting"? "Circle" means "dividing", which is to subdivide a circle into many equal parts. Draw a polygon with all vertices on the circumference of the circle and all sides with equal lengths. Find the side lengths of the polygon, and then calculate the pi? The more sides the polygon has, the closer the circumference is to the circumference of the circle, and the more accurate the calculated pi is.

One morning, Zu Chongzhi was studying at home. He was reading the "Nine Chapters of Arithmetic" annotated by Liu Hui. When he saw the "circle sect" section, he thought: Count the sides of the regular polygon. Counting 96 is not too much. The circumference of a polygon is still far from the circumference of a circle. Why not count more? The more side lengths of a regular polygon, the closer the perimeter of a polygon is to the circumference of a circle? Then Wouldn't the calculated weekly rate be more accurate? After thinking about it, he looked up and saw his son playing outside, so he called out: "Xun'er, go to the back mountain and chop two bamboos." ?

Zu Chongzhi’s son was called Zu Xun. He was very smart. Under the influence of Zu Chongzhi, he also liked mathematics. Later he became a mathematician and proposed the famous "Zu Xun's theorem". Hearing his father calling him, he hurriedly ran in and asked, "Dad, what's the matter with calling your son?"

Zu Chongzhi said, "Go to the back mountain and chop a moso bamboo." ?

Xun'er asked: "Are we planning again?"

Zu Chongzhi replied: "Yes, you can chop it down and bring it to me." ?

In Zu Chongzhi’s time, there were no Arabic numerals such as 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, etc. All calculations relied on small sticks. In that era, these small sticks were called calculation chips.

In order to obtain as accurate data as possible, Zu Chongzhi used the "circle cutting technique" to increase the number of sides of the regular polygon inscribed in the circle to 24,576. Now, the circle is cut, but the calculation process is really painful. Zu Chongzhi placed his calculations everywhere: if they couldn't fit on the table, they placed them on the floor. If they couldn't fit on the floor of the study, they placed them on the floor of the main room.

Zu Chongzhi calculated from morning to night, playing with the calculation chips and placing them all over the floor. When his wife called for dinner, she had no idea where to start, so she had to throw him two steamed buns. Xuner stood on tiptoe and handed him the calculation chips back and forth until it was time to light the lamp. Zu Chongzhi just stood up, but his waist could no longer straighten. It took two full days of calculation to reach 192 polygons. I was already so tired that my back ached.

Zu Chongzhi thumped his waist and said: "Xun'er, that's it for today. Don't move the calculations here. Get up early tomorrow and do the calculations again." ?

Zu Chongzhi got up at dawn on the third day without waking his wife and Geng'er. After holding the candle, it was already broad daylight a few hours later, and Zu Chongzhi was still squatting on the ground and just burying his head. Playing with the calculations, he didn't pay attention to a person who suddenly walked in from outside the door. The man didn't pay attention to the calculations on the ground. He walked straight to Zu Chongzhi, patted Zu Chongzhi on the shoulder happily and said: "Brother Wenyuan, let me tell you something." Before he finished speaking, he heard Nazu Chongzhi shout: "You, you". The man was startled, and the man said: "Brother Wenyuan, you are like this"

Zu Chongzhi stood up, shook his head and sighed, "Look at the ground, all the hard work of the past two days has been in vain." ? Only those who came here saw the calculations all over the ground. When he came in, he didn't pay attention and kicked the prepared plan into a mess. The man kept saying: Sorry, sorry. ?Left in a hurry.

Zu Chongzhi was really upset at this moment.

Zu Chongzhi had no choice but to wake up Xuner and start all over again. Zu Chongzhi said: "Xun'er, after this calculation, you should write down the results of each time, and we will start over from the beginning." Count from the dodecagon. ?

In this way, Zu Chongzhi squatted on the ground and made plans, day after day. Some of the newly made arithmetic chips were not polished smoothly. If you were not careful, the hair picks on the arithmetic chips would prick your fingers, causing excruciating pain. At the end of the day, Zu Chongzhi's ten fingers were already stained with blood.

On the seventh day, the circumference of the 24576 regular polygon inscribed in the circle was calculated to be six feet, two feet, eight inches, and 31,832. At this time, Zu Chongzhi was so tired that he could not even walk straight up.

After resting for a day, I continued to count. Starting from the circumscribed regular hexagon, I counted one day to the circumscribed regular hexagon of 24576. It took another nine days.

If you don’t have perseverance, you will never succeed.

Zu Chongzhi’s calculation of the pi value accurate to seven digits after the decimal point was a great achievement at the time. In Europe, it was not until 1573 that a German named Hetuo The mathematician who calculated the value of ? expressed it as a fraction 355/113, a thousand years later than Zu Chongzhi!

Celebrity stories from failure to success (2)

In Before the advent of electric lights, the most commonly used lighting tools were kerosene lamps or gas lamps. This kind of lamp burns kerosene or gas, so it produces strong black smoke and a pungent odor. It is also very inconvenient to add fuel and clean the lampshade frequently. What's more serious is that this kind of lamp can easily cause fire and cause catastrophe. Over the years, many scientists have tried their best to invent an electric light that is both safe and convenient.

At the beginning of the 19th century, a British chemist used 2,000 batteries and two carbon rods to make the world's first arc lamp. But this kind of light is too strong and can only be installed on streets or squares, and cannot be used by ordinary families. Countless scientists have racked their brains to create a cheap, high-quality, durable household electric light.

The day has finally arrived. On October 21, 1879, an American inventor finally ignited the world's first practical electric lamp through long and repeated experiments. Since then, the name of this inventor, like the electric light he invented, has entered thousands of households. He was Edison, who was praised by later generations as the "King of Inventions".

On February 11, 1847, Edison was born in Milan, Ohio, USA. He only studied in school for three months in his life, but he was studious and diligent in thinking. He invented more than 1,000 achievements such as electric lights, phonographs, and movie cameras, and made significant contributions to mankind.

When Edison was 12 years old, he was obsessed with scientific experiments. After his tireless self-study and experiments, when he was 16 years old, he invented an automatic telegraph that sent a signal every hour. Later, automatic ticket counting machines, the first practical typewriter, double and quadruple telegraph machines, automatic telephones and phonographs were invented one after another. With these inventions, Edison was not satisfied. In September 1878, Edison decided to launch an attack on the fortress of electric lighting. He read a lot of books about electric lighting and was determined to make electric lights that were cheap, durable, safe and convenient.

He started experimenting with incandescent lamps. A small piece of heat-resistant material is placed in a glass bubble. When the current burns it to a white-hot level, it emits light due to heat. He first thought of charcoal, so he put a small piece of charcoal wire into a glass bubble, but it broke immediately as soon as he was powered on.

?What is the reason for this? Edison picked up the carbon filament that was broken into two sections and looked at the glass bubble. After a long time, he suddenly remembered,?Oh, maybe it’s because there is air in it. Air The oxygen in the carbon fiber helped the carbon filament burn, causing it to break immediately! So he used his own handmade air extractor to remove as much air as possible from the glass bubble. As soon as the power was turned on, it did not turn off immediately. But after 8 minutes, the light still went out.

But no matter what, Edison finally discovered that the incandescent lamp is very important in the vacuum state. The key is the carbon filament. This is the crux of the problem.

So what kind of heat-resistant material should be chosen?

Edison thought about it and decided that platinum has the highest melting point and strong heat resistance! So Edison and his The assistants tried several times with platinum, but this kind of platinum with a higher melting point, although it extended the lighting time of the lamp a lot, it still had to automatically turn off and then light up from time to time, which was still not ideal.

Edison was not discouraged and continued his experimental work. He successively tried various rare metals such as barium, titanium, and indium, but the results were not very satisfactory.

After a while, Edison made a summary of the previous experimental work and wrote down all the various heat-resistant materials he could think of. There were as many as 1,600 types in total.

Next, he and his assistants classified the 1,600 heat-resistant materials and began testing them. They tried many times, but platinum was still the most suitable. Thanks to improved extraction methods that create a higher degree of vacuum inside the glass bulb, the lamp life has been extended to 2 hours.

But this kind of lamp made of platinum is too expensive. Who is willing to spend so much money to buy an electric lamp that can only be used for 2 hours?

The experimental work fell into a trough, and Edison was very Troubled, one cold winter, Edison sat by the fire, looking at the blazing charcoal fire, and couldn't help but mutter to himself: charcoal

The charcoal bars that can be made from charcoal have been tried. What should he do? Edison felt hot all over, and he pulled off the scarf around his neck. Seeing the scarf made of cotton yarn, Edison suddenly had an idea in his mind:

Yes! The fiber of cotton yarn is thicker than that of wood. Good, can I use this kind of material?

He hurriedly pulled off a piece of cotton yarn from the scarf and baked it on the fire for a long time. The cotton yarn turned into charred charcoal. He carefully put the carbon filament into the glass bubble and tested it. The effect was indeed very good.

Edison was very happy, and then he made a lot of carbon filaments made of cotton yarn and conducted many experiments in succession. The life of the light bulb was suddenly extended by 13 hours, and later reached 45 hours.

As soon as the news spread, it shocked the whole world. The price of gas stocks in London, England plummeted, and the gas industry was also in chaos. People had a premonition that lighting gas lamps would soon become a thing of the past, and the future would be the age of electric light.

Everyone congratulated Edison, but the lovely Edison didn’t look happy at all. He shook his head and said: No, we have to find other materials!

Why, it stayed on for 45 hours Not yet? The assistant asked in surprise. ?No! I hope it can light up for 1,000 hours, preferably 16,000 hours!? Edison replied.

As we all know, it is good to have more than 1,000 hours of light, but what kind of suitable materials should we find?

Edison already had an idea at this time. Based on the properties of cotton yarn, he decided to look for new materials from plant fibers.

So, the marathon experiment began again. Edison experimented with all plant materials he could find. He even used horse mane, human hair and beards as filament experiments. Finally, Edison chose bamboo. Before the experiment, he took out a piece of bamboo, looked at it through a microscope, and jumped with joy. So, he put the carbonized bamboo filaments into the glass bulb, and when the electricity was turned on, the bamboo filament light bulb lit up continuously for 1,200 hours!

At this time, Edison finally breathed a sigh of relief, and his assistant Everyone congratulated him, but he said seriously: There are many bamboos around the world, and their structures are different. We should choose carefully!

The assistant was deeply moved by Edison’s scientific attitude of striving for excellence. , one after another volunteered to inspect various places. After comparison, a kind of bamboo produced in Japan was the most suitable, so a large amount of this bamboo was imported from Japan. At the same time, Edison opened a power plant and set up wires. Soon after, the American people began to use this cheap, high-quality, durable bamboo filament light bulb.

Bamboo filament lamps have been used for many years. It was not until 1906 that Edison switched to using tungsten filament, which improved the quality of light bulbs and continues to be used today.

When people light up the electric lamp, they always think of this great inventor, who brought endless light to the darkness. In 1979, the United States spent millions of dollars on a year-long commemorative event to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Edison's invention of the electric light.