Humans Shrunk 100 Times

Chapter 51: Surface Area

As Wei Dalei didn't accompany them this time, Chen Mu made more preparations than usual before setting off.

Around 7:30, everyone gradually woke up one after another.

There was no washing up as water was still a precious resource, reserved only for drinking. Therefore, everyone looked quite dirty.

In reality, fetching non-drinking water from outside wasn't too difficult. In April, there was already a significant temperature difference between morning and evening. Dewdrops could often be seen on the wild grass by the roadside, glistening and crystal clear.

Though the quantity wasn't comparable to what one could find in autumn, for the current humans, a single dewdrop could supply water for several people for a day.

However, going to places with thick vegetation was relatively dangerous. Chen Mu had observed that in some areas where the wild grass grew luxuriantly, it would stretch to the height of the road. Collecting dewdrops from there could be considered for the future, but it wasn't the most urgent matter at the moment.

After all, the apocalypse had arrived, and even if you counted it all, it had only been a week. Many things were far more important than cleaning and showering. Priorities needed to be addressed one by one.

...

Du Jiajia had now grown accustomed to her role as a full-time chef. After getting up and tidying up a bit, she began thinking about breakfast. And because Chen Mu and the others were going out again, she had to prepare it in advance.

"Do you want to take some food with you on the way?" Chef Du had fully embraced her role and took responsibility for everyone's meals.

"No need, it won't take too much time this time," Chen Mu replied.

"Don't you want to bring some for the new members? Perhaps they have been hungry for a long time," she suggested.

"When I left, they still had some food left, so they should be fine until now," explained He Ying.

Chen Mu added, "Besides, carrying cooked food might attract flies and other pests, which would only cause more trouble."

"Alright," Du Jiajia nodded, feeling somewhat disappointed.

...

After everyone finished breakfast, it was exactly 8 o'clock.

Chen Mu readied his weapons, led He Ying and Sun Yuan, and set off once again.

Although they had already taken this route several times, every time they couldn't help but feel heavy-hearted, especially this time, knowing about the fierce struggles in the outside human world, a sense of ominous foreboding intensified.

Sometimes, Chen Mu really wanted to hide away and do nothing. Perhaps that way, he could live longer. However, his nature always compelled him to prefer dying quickly with a sword in hand rather than waiting for death to slowly catch up.

...

"Are you saying this thing is really a hand grenade?"

As they walked, He Ying held the two stones that Chen Mu had given her before departure in her hands. Though she found it hard to believe that these seemingly ordinary stones could be explosive hand grenades, she still handled them with great caution.

"Yes, as long as there's no intense impact, they won't cause any trouble."

They had also studied the hand grenades made by Dong Junwei before. The triggering mechanism of these things was still unclear. There were no fuses or similar components. It seemed that they would only explode upon collision.

However, they couldn't determine the exact threshold for a powerful enough collision, as they lacked the necessary equipment and instruments for quantitative analysis. They only had a rough estimation. Fortunately, these grenades were relatively stable, and ordinary shaking or impact wouldn't lead to accidental detonation.

The power of the hand grenades was directly proportional to Dong Junwei's current abilities. The more meticulous effort she put into making them, the longer the time she spent, and the more energized she was, the more powerful they would be.

Tang Jing also considered whether the power of the grenades would weaken after being stored for a long time. However, based on the past few days, there seemed to be no such problem.

This was different from metals.

The metal objects heated by Dong Junwei, although their cooling rate was far slower than normal and it seemed that their specific heat capacity had undergone significant changes, they would eventually cool down.

Tang Jing had conducted experiments on a piece of iron heated to emit blue smoke, and it took a full twenty-four hours for it to completely cool down to room temperature. The cooling process was linear.

Currently, they were unsure if Dong Junwei's enhanced abilities would affect the duration of heat retention. After all, it hadn't been long since the squad leader awakened, and her abilities were still quite limited, making it impossible to conduct more detailed experiments.

Before setting off, Chen Mu brought four hand grenades for himself and gave two to He Ying and one to Sun Yuan.

Furthermore, Sun Yuan was provided with a small, compact shield. Initially, they had intended to get him a spear, but the high schooler seemed to be extremely afraid of combat and would tremble even without an opponent. In the end, they could only give him a thin iron shield for self-defense in critical situations.

Holding the shield in his hand, Sun Yuan felt a sense of novelty throughout the journey, and his words became much fewer.

Only now did He Ying understand the meaning behind Tang Jing's statement yesterday, "No need for close combat." If these grenades possessed the power described by Chen Mu, there would indeed be little need for direct hand-to-hand combat.

Unfortunately, they were all dressed in summer clothes.

Take Chen Mu as an example. His short-sleeved T-shirt had no pockets, and although his shorts had two pockets on the sides, they were small and couldn't carry much.

Chen Mu had considered modifying his clothes to add some pockets, but in reality, it was nearly impossible to achieve. Every time he attempted to use his abilities on fabrics like towels, it failed. It wasn't that his abilities couldn't affect fabrics; it was just that the result was always chaotic, and the amount of mental energy consumed was several times more than with other objects.

In theory, fabric's density is small, so such a situation shouldn't occur, but that was how it was.

He and Tang Jing had discussed this issue before.

In the end, they could only speculate on a rough possibility.

Because unlike dense materials like metal or plastic, fabric was not a unified whole.

Take a piece of cotton fabric, for example; it was composed of countless cotton threads, and each cotton thread was made up of thousands of cotton fibers. So, from an outside perspective, it seemed that Chen Mu was using his ability on a piece of fabric, but in reality, his target was countless individual threads, making the task incredibly challenging.

Here's a more straightforward example to understand this:

Chen Mu could easily manipulate a solid block of copper, but the same mass of copper wires would be exponentially more difficult to handle.

Thus, when considering Chen Mu's abilities, Tang Jing introduced a new critical attribute beyond an object's density: surface area-to-mass ratio.

The surface area-to-mass ratio refers to the total surface area possessed by a unit mass of an object.

Another more intuitive and easy-to-understand definition is the ratio of an object's surface area to its volume.

Clearly, a spherical object possesses the smallest surface area-to-mass ratio, and roughly speaking, the more irregular an object's shape is, the larger its surface area-to-mass ratio is likely to be.

But the best way to increase the surface area-to-mass ratio is by cutting the object into smaller pieces.

For example, for the same mass of iron, a single iron sphere and a pile of iron powder would have the same volume in theory, but their surface area-to-mass ratios would be vastly different.

And that's precisely the case with fabric.

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