Li Yongle, creator of popular science videos: The Internet has magnified popular science and also brought me happiness
2024-08-07
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2024 marks the 30th anniversary of my country's full-function access to the international Internet. In this regard, Beijing News Shell Finance reporter interviewed Li Yongle, a witness to the development of the Internet and a creator of popular science videos. Li Yongle said that the characteristic of the Internet is resource sharing, allowing students to obtain high-quality educational resources at a lower cost. "Any student, no matter where they are, can learn these courses at any time as long as they have a mobile phone."
"On the Internet, knowledge videos also have their own place." He believes that popularizing science is a correct and meaningful thing, and the Internet directly connects him with countless people with a thirst for knowledge, magnifying such a correct and meaningful thing. At the same time, in this process, he learned a lot of knowledge and gained happiness.
The following is the interview transcript:
I used the Internet as a "database" at first, but I didn't expect it to be known by more people.
Beijing News Shell FinanceQ: When was the first time you went online?
Li Yongle: I first went online in 1999. I had nothing to do after the high school entrance exam, so I went to an Internet cafe to learn how to use QQ. When I found out that the people I searched on QQ were all real people, I was very excited. Because before, I usually had to meet in person to make friends. This time, I suddenly found that I could make friends on the Internet, so I was very excited.
Beijing News Shell Finance: In 2017, your video became popular on the Internet for the first time. Can you talk about your feelings at that time?
Li Yongle: It was one morning, and my phone rang before I woke up. A friend told me that I was on the hot search. I didn’t understand what hot search meant at the time. Later, someone told me to download a certain software and find your video on it. After I downloaded it, I found that it was from a tutorial class eight years ago when I was a graduate student. I talked about the leap year. I explained it from the perspective of set theory. I didn’t expect that this short clip would become popular after being posted online. Many people watched it. It was also forwarded by official media accounts such as People’s Daily. I was very excited at the time. At that time, I realized that if the content I made was attractive, it could have a great influence on the Internet.
Beijing News Shell Finance: As a physics teacher, you also upload videos to the Internet yourself. Have you ever thought that the impact of the Internet is so great?
Li Yongle: My initial idea was just to move my teaching content online, because I felt very tired when teaching the senior high school physics competition, and I wondered if there was some way to relieve my stress, so I thought of recording some knowledge points that I didn’t talk about in class into short videos and putting them online for students to watch. I also welcome more students to learn online.
At the beginning of 2018, I officially started to create popular science videos on the Internet. So far, I have uploaded about 400 videos, with more than 20 million fans on the Internet and billions of views. At the beginning, I wanted to use the Internet as a database and a tool, but I didn't expect that more friends would get to know me.
Internet science popularization has enabled me to learn knowledge and gain happiness
Beijing News Shell Finance: Many of your popular science videos later became popular on the Internet. Many people are happy to watch them because they combine many hot topics and explain them in an easy-to-understand way. How did you do this?
Li Yongle：At first, I didn’t think about making popular science videos on the Internet. I just found that combining textbook knowledge with life might have some better results. Later, a classmate told me that I could combine hot information in life. I found that many things in life actually contain scientific principles. I thought that it is actually very interesting to dig out scientific principles, and in the process of digging out scientific principles, I learned a lot of knowledge on the spot. For example, during the epidemic, many people prepared blood oximeters at home. If you want to explain the principle of blood oximeters, you need to involve many aspects of knowledge, including biology, physics, and mathematics. By integrating these knowledge together, you can get a conclusion, how to make a blood oximeter. In this process, I actually learned a lot of knowledge, and thus gained happiness.
The Internet boom is like a box of chocolates. You never know what the next piece will taste like. I still remember the first popular video, "What is Leap Year?", which used the concept of sets in mathematics to explain problems in life, explaining problems that everyone will come into contact with but no one can explain clearly. This is the charm of popular science. I still remember that day a classmate sent me a WeChat message on my mobile phone saying: You are on the hot search, and I suddenly realized: It turns out that on the Internet, not only entertainment content has a market, but knowledge videos also have their own place. After that, I tried to stay close to social hot spots and do popular science that everyone is interested in. If someone wants to buy a house, I will tell everyone the difference between the two repayment methods of equal principal and equal principal and interest in home loans; if someone wants to watch the World Cup, I will tell everyone how to use the laws of mechanics to explain Ronaldo's elevator ball; if someone buys lottery tickets, I will tell everyone that the probability of winning the first prize by buying lottery tickets is 5,000 times lower than that of being admitted to Tsinghua University. I hope that through my efforts, children who are studying on the other side of the Internet and adults who have left school can feel the charm of science. Let them know that the knowledge taught to us by textbooks is not just a stepping stone to university.
Beijing News Shell Finance: As a physics teacher at Beijing Renmin University High School, your video viewers also include many students who are still learning. In fact, Internet education is also gaining attention nowadays. What do you think about this?
Li Yongle: Internet education is a very good thing. We cannot simply and crudely think that as long as we move high-quality courses to poor and underdeveloped areas, the problem will be solved, because every school and every student has their own characteristics. The teaching methods of these strong schools in developed areas may be targeted at students with good academic performance, but they are not suitable for students with weaker foundations. If they are "mechanically applied", it may not work.
How to implement it may still require experimentation. For example, schools are divided into many levels, and students need to make their own choices after listening to the class, and then undergo certain assessments before finally choosing a certain online teacher. This is one way to help. Another way is that we can let teachers in developed areas help teachers in underdeveloped areas and let teachers in underdeveloped areas improve their teaching content. Which method is most suitable is not something that can be thought of in a snap, nor is it simply and crudely said that as long as we record the course and teach it to teachers in underdeveloped areas, students will be able to learn well.
Beijing News Shell Finance: As an Internet "big V", what do you think about the violent atmosphere on the Internet and how should we purify the Internet environment?
Li Yongle：I was attacked by netizens for three or four years. Later, I found that many people wanted to make themselves "popular" and earn traffic by responding. The Internet world has a certain anonymity, so many people may be willing to make some irresponsible remarks. At the same time, because the Internet world has traffic, it is easy to monetize, so everyone likes to rely on traffic, and it is easy to rely on inappropriate remarks to attract attention. When encountering such a situation, I think there are three main points: if the other party is right, we should correct it; if it is not correct, we will ignore it; if it is too much, we can use the method of reporting on the online alarm platform to protect our rights.
This event is funded by the China Internet Development Foundation's China Positive Energy Internet Communication Special Fund.
Beijing News Shell Financial Reporter Luo Yidan Editor Wang Jinyu Proofreading Liu Jun
