Chapter 455:
The silence that followed wasn’t just quiet — it was unnatural.
Rylie didn’t look at anyone. Instead, her focus dropped to the physics exam on the desk in front of her. Her fingertip tapped the last question — the hardest one.
When she spoke again, her tone was steady. “Dr. Carter, did it ever cross your mind to check if this problem actually had a solution?”
Letty’s stomach twisted. That couldn’t be right. She’d gone over that problem multiple times. Every equation, every step. It was airtight. Rylie had to be bluffing.
Letty raised her chin, trying to maintain her composure. “Oh?” Now her voice carried amusement. “So we’re doubting the question itself?”
She tilted her head as she continued, “This exam was made for the Advanced Honors Class. It’s been reviewed. It’s solid. Are you really saying it’s broken just because your student failed to figure it out?”
Letty twisted Rylie’s challenge into something petty, painting her as someone too proud to lose.
Rylie gave no response to Letty’s mockery. She slid her finger across a particular sentence in the problem.
“This part says we need to find the radius and the period of an electron’s circular path. The kinetic energy is set at 10 MeV. The particle gets fired straight into a magnetic field measuring 0.1 tesla.”
She raised her head. Her eyes locked onto Letty with the same cold focus as a surgeon’s scalpel.
“The equations they expect us to use are R = (mv) / (qB), and T = …” She paused. “But there’s a problem.”
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Her voice picked up speed, slicing through the air. “Have you worked out how fast an electron actually moves when it carries ten MeV of kinetic energy?” She didn’t wait for a reply. Her hand shot out. She grabbed a marker and turned, heading straight for the large whiteboard beside the stage. A live feed projected her every move onto the screen overhead.
The sound of the marker against the board broke the silence with a high, scraping squeal.
She reached the end of her calculation and punctuated it with a hard dot that echoed through the quiet.
Then she turned. Her stare found Letty, whose confident look had already begun to crack. Rylie’s voice came out sharp, steady, and impossible to ignore. “The speed of light is three…”
times ten to the eighth meters per second. “Now tell me this — if the electron in your question reaches one point eight seven five times ten to the ninth, how many times faster is that?”
Nobody touched a calculator. The answer was clear. Students who understood physics sucked in their breath. A few blurted it out. “That’s over six times the speed of light!”
“That can’t be!” One of the top students jumped out of his chair. His voice shook. “That’s wrong! That’s completely wrong!”
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