Chapter 3: Chapter 3 Electricity Generation
"Si Qin, you stay at the door!" Li Shiming said to Si Qin, who was looking on curiously.
These parts could be explained away as his hobby, but if he actually assembled them into a generator, it would become inexplicable.
Therefore, even though Si Qin was curious, he could not possibly allow her to watch.
Si Qin, though curious, still followed his command and left the study.
Li Shiming started assembling the generator according to his own design.
After two hours had passed, the strange box on the desk looked like nothing more than a box with a crank, with three copper wires leading out from one side, showing nothing else special about it.
The body of the generator was encased in a wooden box, so even if outsiders saw it, it would not attract too much attention.
Li Shiming tried turning the crank and found that he had overestimated the strength of his body.
To achieve a higher voltage, the generator's rotor needed to spin faster. His design used large gears to drive smaller gears, but while this increased the rotation of the rotor, it also required more strength to turn the crank.
He even thought about asking Mo Yan to help him turn it, but then decided against it.
He forcefully turned the crank. Although his strength was insufficient to increase the speed, the sight of sparks at the copper wires confirmed his success.
Having successfully built a simple generator, he knew he wouldn't fail once he had the right parts.
The device wasn't complicated; once he understood the principle behind it, it was easy to replicate, and he was almost a professional.
However, Li Shiming's biggest problem right now was how to maintain a constant rotation of the rotor and how to feed the electricity generated into the uninterruptible power supply in the server room.
He looked at the rudimentary generator, contemplating incorporating it into the server room.
The desk cleared; the generator disappeared from sight and reappeared inside the server room.
He tried to spin the rotor of the generator with his mind, an inspiration from earlier when he learned he could manipulate items in the server room at will.
He had a feeling that he had an extraordinary level of control over the server room.
This did not conform to science, but neither did traveling through time with a server room, which was already inexplicable by scientific means.
Under his mental control, the rotor began to spin, picking up speed.
Due to technological limitations, the bearing part of the generator's rotor employed two softened leather pieces clamped around it with grease added between them for lubrication.
This technique would generate heat when the rotation speed was too high.
He had never considered the possibility of too-high speeds during the design process, because achieving such speeds was impossible in this era.
Yet, placing the generator in the server room and using his mind to rotate the rotor quickly brought it to its design limit.
Fortunately, since the generator was in the server room, his perception was always on it, allowing him to monitor any changes in the generator.
Li Shiming controlled the speed, maintaining it within the design limits.
Using tools, he measured the power output. Because he was using his mind to turn the generator's rotor, the output reached 230 volts.
This amount of power was inadequate for a large server, which vastly exceeded this supply.
However, with the conditions at hand, his goal wasn't to directly power the large server with the generator but to feed electricity into the uninterruptible power supply.
He connected the three copper wires to the input of the uninterruptible power supply. He maintained control over the generator with his mind, continuously feeding current into the power supply.
When he saw the indicator light on the uninterruptible power supply turn green, he knew he had succeeded in the first step.
The uninterruptible power supply began to function. Even though the input current was small, as long as it was within the power supply's limit, any amount of current would be converted by the current converter unit and stored into the uninterruptible power supply's batteries at the standard rate.
As the uninterruptible power supply started to work, he discovered he could completely control it with his mind, even without opening its display panel.
Li Shiming used his mind to keep the generator's rotor spinning for half an hour until he felt his brain beginning to ache.
He quickly stopped controlling the generator. It seemed that controlling the generator's spinning with his mind was not without its costs.
The operations he had performed earlier in the server room were brief and did not make him realize that they consumed something of himself.
He couldn't pinpoint what was being consumed, but it was likely something like his Spirit.
"I can't generate power during the day anymore!" he thought, enduring the throbbing pain in his brain.
"Young Master, what's wrong with you?" As Li Shiming opened the door to the study, Si Qin saw his staggering figure and pale face and cried out in an alarmed tone.
"Si Qin, don't alarm the others, help me rest for a bit!" Li Shiming instructed, forcing a reassuring smile.
"Young Master, let's get a doctor to look at you, your health is important!" Si Qin came forward to support him and advised as they headed towards the bedroom.
"It's nothing serious, just a little drained!" Li Shiming said, knowing his own condition.
Though his Spirit was significantly depleted, the fact that the uninterruptible power supply had stored some power left him feeling excited again.
Lying in bed, his mind entered the server room, but he was far from calm.
He did not know if the large IBM z15 server could be started up, whether he could access the vast amounts of data stored within it; everything was unknown.
This IBM z15 large server had been a gift to the university from several well-known alumni in his previous life, valued at over 100 million.
The large server was not only used by the library but also utilized for calculation in research projects through application submissions, despite being housed in the library's server room.
The IBM z15 was top-of-the-line, equipped with 190 CPUs and a massive 40 TB of memory, integrating 12.2 billion transistors—a culmination of the technology from his former life.
Just the variety of books and research materials stored on this server included over ten million electronic books, covering areas like philosophy, economics, law, education, literature, history, science, engineering, agriculture, medicine, management, art, and military studies—13 disciplines, 92 college majors, and 506 specializations.
In addition, there were published research results from both domestic and international sources, as well as data from university projects in progress.
With such a server at hand, he could bring the world he was currently in up to the level of his previous life.
Whether or not the large server could be started would determine two vastly different ways of surviving in this world. If he could not start the large server, then there would be only one path available to him.
That would be to follow the official career path laid out by his father, Li WenYuan, advancing through the civil examinations to become an officer just like Li WenYuan.
With the ability to store items in the server room space and inspect them at any moment, the path of taking the civil examinations would be extremely easy for Li Shiming.