Bro, Don't Study Anymore - Chapter 14

7/13

After the first round of problems was released, the lab became a hive of activity.

In the past few idle days, some people in the lab even played Plants vs. Zombies, attracting a crowd of “Second World War commanders” to watch.

In the last couple of days, intense discussions about the problems filled the lab, with frequent movement of people.

Little Tang followed Senior Song to the Control and Measurement department to learn about algorithms, carrying a package of newly opened circuit boards.

Last night, they stayed up in the lab fixing circuit modules, with Senior Song working on the algorithms beside him. After only three hours of sleep, they were back at it.

Sitting down and turning on the student power supply, Little Tang glanced at the waveform on the oscilloscope screen. It looked terrible.

Not wanting to see it, he turned off the oscilloscope’s channel display and sighed heavily: “I don’t know if the teacher can sleep, but I definitely can’t.”

The summer training problems were adapted by the teacher from previous electronic design competition questions, with a bit of his own creativity added.

The teacher smiled kindly at the time: “Theoretically, it’s feasible, but we haven’t tested the solution ourselves. It’s okay, everyone do their best. The higher the performance, the better the score.”

“We also encourage everyone to come up with innovative solutions.”

It wasn’t that they wanted them to innovate, they wanted to push them to their limits.

Senior Song turned on his computer and, while waiting, leaned back in his gaming chair, tilting his head to look at Little Tang.

“Tang’er, take another nap. The plan is solid; we’ll work on it slowly.”

Another team member from their lab, Senior Shen, was sitting by the window drawing circuit boards.

Seeing them arrive, she was surprised: “You guys are here so early, can you handle it?”

Little Tang yawned, leaning on the table: “Senior Shen, is the MAX262 fixed?”

Senior Shen opened the drawer in front of her and took out two boards, one black with gold plating and one green with solder mask.

Placing both on the table, Senior Shen said: “The black one is still not fixed. The green one is the real deal.”

Little Tang examined the boards thoroughly and couldn’t find any visible issues with the black one, so he set it aside for now.

Little Tang started unboxing the delivery: “The new boards have arrived. I’ll solder one and see how it goes.”

He turned on the soldering station and added some water to the sponge.

Yawning again, Little Tang forced himself to stay awake: “I’m basically an electrician now. After soldering this, I’ll nap for a bit,” he said to Senior Song.

Senior Song began typing code: “Alright, be careful while soldering.”

When Little Tang placed the surface-mount resistors on the table, he felt something was missing. He realized his tweezers were gone.

He looked around the table, checked the drawers, and found nothing.

“Senior, have you seen my ‘high-precision’ tweezers?”

Senior Shen repeated his search steps and found nothing, shaking her head: “Nope.”

“…Great, my tweezers have been borrowed without asking.”

Senior Zhao, sitting in front of him, had just finished a test and came over to check on their progress.

He chimed in: “Junior, just use your hands for soldering.”

Little Tang: “Are you suggesting I train my ‘iron sand palm’?”

“Iron sand palm is an essential skill for hardware engineers.”

…So, hardware engineers’ lives don’t matter, huh.

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