At the age of 17, he owns nine national invention patents, and all his whimsy comes from life.

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A new invention: thermal liquid sensor was tested and verified in Chentian laboratory.

　　During the awarding ceremony of the 2017 Qiu Chengtong Science Prize, I talked with Professor Yao Qizhi, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, an academician of the American Academy of Sciences and a Turing Prize winner.

　　On the eve of the Spring Festival, Li Chentian, a 17-year-old high school student from Zhuhai, went to the United States at the invitation of Tsinghua University to participate in the "Global Innovation Experience Camp" jointly organized by Tsinghua and Washington University. He won the best project award in this innovation challenge by virtue of the "active high-voltage power line deicing monitoring system" invented on the spot. Later, he flew back to Beijing, as a participant in the last ISEF (International Science and Engineering Grand Prix), and introduced his experience to the young people who were participating in the 2018 ISEF project selection and international exchange winter camp.

　　He invented the fluorine-free electronic refrigerator at the age of 9, the solar intelligent outdoor manhole cover management system at the age of 12, and the programmable terminal and operating system at the age of 13. So far, he has nine national invention patents … What kind of "awesome person" is Li Chentian? Why have you achieved so much at such a young age? The all-media reporter of Guangzhou Daily takes you to know the young man who is praised by the outside world as "Edison" in China.

　　At the age of 5, I designed light-controlled lanterns for myself.

　　Last weekend, when the reporter saw Jerry Lee Tianshi, he wore an old school uniform and black-rimmed glasses, which was very low-key; He was a little shy when he didn’t talk, but when he started talking about his invention, Li Chentian hardly stopped for more than two hours, and he spoke as fast as a machine gun. When I met some professional terms, I was a little confused when I watched the reporter. He kept changing his body movements to explain it.

　　Li Chentian’s family said that his whimsy began in childhood. My father said that he showed a strong interest in electricity when he was learning English in the early morning. Every time he was carried out by his mother and saw the neon lights flashing on the street, he would dance. "How can anyone be on the TV?" "How can a toy car automatically turn?" ….. Since I was two years old, I have often asked my parents who are all from liberal arts to be speechless.

　　Because of her strong interest in electronic products, at the age of five, Chen Tian borrowed her cousin’s middle school physics textbook for self-study. On the Spring Festival that year, the family was going back to their hometown. Before leaving, they were worried that the red lanterns hanging on the balcony of Zhuhai’s home were left unattended in the morning. They had been on for more than ten days, which was both a waste of electricity and a fear of causing safety accidents. He sprouted the idea of designing a light-controlled switch. "It will automatically turn off the lights when there is sunshine during the day and turn on the lights at night when there is no sunshine." As a result, he removed a sensitive relay from a radio through two days of fiddling, and really made such a switch through transformation.

　　However, in the eyes of Chen Tian, the first real invention was the "fluorine-free electronic refrigerator" he built when he was 9 years old. Later, he was out of control. At the age of 12, he invented the "solar intelligent outdoor manhole cover management system", and at the age of 13, he developed the "programmable cloud-and-thing terminal and operating system" … At the age of 12, he won the first prize in the Guangdong Youth Science and Technology Innovation Competition for six consecutive years and won the national first prize three times. At the end of last year, Chentian won the Science Award and the Silver Award in Computer Science in the 2017 Qiu Chengtong Middle School Science Award Global Finals with his paper "Universal Power Adaptation Protocol (UPP) and Its Implementation". From provincial and municipal competitions to going abroad to represent China teenagers in ISEF, Li Chentian has won more than 30 scientific and technological innovation competitions, and has successfully applied for 9 national invention patents.

　　All whimsy comes from life.

　　"There is no epiphany in science. I just invested enough time in invention and creation. I just started the accumulation of’ 10,000 hours’ earlier." Li Chentian said modestly that to make inventions, we must first have a strong interest and then invest a lot of time.

　　Chen Tian said that you should be curious when making inventions and pay attention to everything that happens around you. All my whimsy comes from life. The idea of the project "Active High-voltage Power Line Deicing Monitoring System" when I participated in the Innovation Challenge in the United States originated from the ice disaster in 2008. He was deeply impressed by the embarrassing picture of manual mechanical deicing in the power sector on TV, so he always had an idea, "If the frozen wires can be deiced automatically, even the wires in the alpine zone can not be frozen!" Over the past few years, he has done a full technical demonstration for this project, and this global innovation experience camp just gave him such an opportunity. Chen Tian said, "Due to sufficient technology accumulation, the original prototype of this project took only two days, and finally won the highest award’ ‘Best Project Award’ in the participating projects."

　　The topic he is working on, "Variable Temperature and Pressure Pump", was inspired by his parents taking him skiing in Harbin during the winter vacation in 2016. At that time, he saw a small vendor barbecuing with liquefied gas on the street, and the fire went out. As a result, he saw the small vendor cover the gas bottle with a towel, pour some boiling water on the towel, and the fire "sprayed" again. He said that when he saw this phenomenon, he was very excited and thought that this phenomenon might solve the problem of transporting low-viscosity liquids such as refrigerants that he had always wanted to solve. If the pressure in the pump chamber is changed by changing the temperature instead of moving parts such as piston, wouldn’t it be possible to manufacture a pump without moving parts?

　　Parents support the "disruptive" behavior of disassembling and tampering with household appliances from an early age.

　　Chen Tian said, "If I make small achievements, I would like to thank my parents for their tolerance and support." Since childhood, his parents never forced him to attend interest classes, and he was not required to be a schoolmaster. He said that he has never attended any cram school since he went to school. During the holiday, he either stayed at home to make inventions or participated in scientific and technological competitions and exchanges in various places.

　　Parents also fully support the "disruptive" behavior of dismantling household appliances that they have shown since childhood. Just in the first grade of primary school, in order to study the temperature control switch, I dismantled a newly bought electric heating plate imported from Germany at home in the morning. At that time, the market price was more than 2,000 yuan. When he was 9 years old, he developed a fluorine-free electronic refrigerator. In order to buy a refrigerator, his parents took him to Beijing to find many shops, and finally spent three days scouring Zhongguancun for the desired products.

　　In order to support his son’s innovation and invention, his father set up a "morning lab" for him at home. In this laboratory, the reporter saw a laser positioning machine, a small supercomputer with 72 cores, a multifunctional calibration measuring instrument with data stability of 2ppm, a multifunctional vector network analyzer and a very advanced mixed-signal oscilloscope.

　　"Over the years, the equipment in this laboratory alone has invested more than one million yuan, not including thousands of old electronic products that he invents and buys every time and dismantles." Chen Tian’s father smiled and said, "If we only talk about the electronic laboratory, my laboratory may be the best in Zhuhai."

　　However, apart from scientific and technological inventions, Chen Tian has no other hobbies. As long as he doesn’t go out to participate in scientific and technological competitions and exchanges in his spare time, he basically stays in this laboratory.

　　Learning computer programming in the fifth grade of primary school is painful to cry.

　　Li Chentian does not agree with the reputation of the outside world as a "genius boy". His parents have repeatedly stressed that their children have only shown strong interest in electrical appliances and circuits since childhood, and they are ordinary teenagers. "He is only willing to spend time on electronics," my father said seriously. "Since I was a child, I love to disassemble things. Others sell old household appliances at home, and my family often buys them back from outside."

　　Chen Tian added that every design or invention is not always smooth sailing, and there are many failures. There are two or three thousand discarded circuit boards at home. And when learning theoretical knowledge, I once had the idea of giving up. With the deepening of scientific research, he had to learn computer programming for a project in the fifth grade of primary school. Most of the electronic components encountered before are concrete things, while computer assembly language is too abstract. For a child in the fifth grade of elementary school, it is like reading a gobbledygook at first. "If you don’t understand, you can’t learn!" Sometimes I read until late at night, and in the morning I said that I was so miserable that I cried and wanted to give up several times. Finally, with the encouragement of his father, he persisted, and it took him more than a month to write the first program-"digital clock". Looking at the success of the first string of code written by myself, Chentian jumped with excitement. "He was yelling, and then he ran downstairs from upstairs and kept shouting, Dad, I made it up." Dad recalled.

　　Text, map/wide newspaper all-media reporter Chen Zhijia