Meng Qian Bi Tan is a comprehensive scientific and technological masterpiece with notes, with 30 volumes, 609 articles and hundreds of words. The contents of the book are very rich, involving politics, economy, culture, military affairs, science and technology and so on. Among them, science and technology content accounts for one-third of the book, including mathematics, astronomical calendar, meteorology, geology, geography, physics, chemistry, biology, agriculture, water conservancy, architecture, medicine, pharmacology and so on. It brings together all kinds of scientific and technological achievements in ancient China, mainly in the Northern Song Dynasty.
Meng Xi Bitan has incisive exposition on many scientific and technological achievements of China. For example, the discussion of the "twelve-year calendar" is based on the solar terms of beginning of spring, Jing Ke, Qingming and Changxia 12. There are 365 days in a year, 365,438+0 days in the big moon and 30 days in the small moon, alternating with each other, which is not only in line with the reality of celestial body operation, but also conducive to the arrangement of agricultural activities.
Meng Xi Bitan first put forward the problem of geomagnetic declination in China and the world, in which he stated that the compass "can guide, but it is often slightly to the east, but not completely to the south". Meng Qian Bitan first recorded the properties and uses of oil in China and the world, and used the name "oil" for the first time. It is also pointed out that oil resources are abundant and "born in infinity", and it is predicted that "this thing will be popular in the world".
In geology, Meng Xi Bitan put forward the viewpoint of running water erosion to explain landforms, which was 700 years earlier than that in Europe.