Longitude Quotes

We've searched our database for all the quotes and captions related to Longitude. Here they are! All 100 of them:

Nothing makes the earth seem so spacious as to have friends at a distance; they make the latitudes and longitudes.
Henry David Thoreau
Percy says be talked to a Nereid in Charleston Harbor!” “Good for him!” Leo yelled back. “The Nereid said we should seek help from Chiron’s brothers.” “What does that mean? The Party Ponies?” Leo had never met Chiron’s crazy centaur relatives, but he’d heard rumors of Nerf sword-fights, root beer-chugging contests, and Super Soakers filled with pressurized whipped cream. “Not sure,” Annabeth said. “But I’ve got coordinates. Can you input latitude and longitude in this thing?” “I can input star charts and order you a smoothie, if you want. Of course I can do latitude and longitude!
Rick Riordan (The Mark of Athena (The Heroes of Olympus, #3))
Three or four times only in my youth did I glimpse the Joyous Isles, before they were lost to fogs, depressions, cold fronts, ill winds, and contrary tides... I mistook them for adulthood. Assuming they were a fixed feature in my life's voyage, I neglected to record their latitude, their longitude, their approach. Young ruddy fool. What wouldn't I give now for a never-changing map of the ever-constant ineffable? To possess, as it were, an atlas of clouds.
David Mitchell (Cloud Atlas)
When you stay too long in a place, you forget just how big an expanse the world is. You get no sense of the length of those longitudes and latitudes. Just as, she supposed, it is hard to have a sense of the vastness inside any one person. But once you sense that vastness, once something reveals it, hope emerges, whether you want it to or not, and it clings to you as stubbornly as lichen clings to rock.
Matt Haig (The Midnight Library)
Scramblers deactivated, then? Well here's some good news. You feel no pain. You will go straight to a hospital. Remember nothing of this place. And every time you hear the words "parsley", "intractable" or "longitude", you will vomit uncontrollably for forty-eight hours.
Joss Whedon (Astonishing X-Men, Vol. 1: Gifted)
He wrested the world's whereabouts from the stars, and locked the secret in a pocket watch.
Dava Sobel (Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time)
The lines of his face were the longitude and latitude of his life.
Louise Penny (A Great Reckoning (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, #12))
When you stay too long in one place, you forget just how big an expanse the world is. You get no sense of the length of those longitudes and latitudes. Just as, she supposed, it is hard to have a sense of the vastness inside any one person.
Matt Haig (The Midnight Library)
One degree of longitude equals four minutes of time the world over, but in terms of distance, one degree shrinks from sixty-eight miles at the Equator to virtually nothing at the poles.
Dava Sobel (Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time)
i've memorized it. topography on the map of you, a world i'm still charting. i know it. i added it to the key. here: inches to miles. i can multiply it out, read your latitude and longitude. recite your coordinates like la rosaria.
Casey McQuiston (Red, White & Royal Blue)
Djuna concerned only with the longitude, and latitude and altitude of human beings in relation to each other.
Anaïs Nin (Seduction of the Minotaur)
Scientists say every action initiates an equal and opposite reaction. I say that's just the start. I say every action initiates a most unequal and upredictable chain reaction, that every filament of living becomes part of a larger weave, while remaining identifiable. That every line of latitude requires several stripes of longitude to obtain meaning. That every universe is part of a bigger heaven, a heaven of rhythm and geometry, where a heartbeat is the apex of a triangle.
Ellen Hopkins (Triangles)
[John] Harrison [could not] express himself clearly in writing.... No matter how brilliantly ideas formed in his mind, or crystallized in his clockworks, his verbal descriptions failed to shine with the same light.... The first sentence [of his last published work] runs on, virtually unpunctuated, for twenty-five pages." Dava Sobel, Longitude, p66
Dava Sobel
And if you decide to kill somebody, make it anybody and not somebody: some men are made of more special, precious parts: do not kill if you will a president or a King or a man behind a desk - these have heavenly longitudes enlightened attitudes. If you decide, take us who stand and smoke and glower; we are rusty with sadness and feverish with climbing broken ladders
Charles Bukowski
All over India, all over the world, as the sun or the shadow of darkness moves from east to west, the call to prayer moves with it, and people kneel down in a wave to pray to God. Five waves each day - one for each namaaz - ripple across the globe from longitude to longitude. The component elements change direction, like iron filings near a magnet - towards the house of God in Mecca.
Vikram Seth (A Suitable Boy (A Bridge of Leaves, #1))
The zero-degree parallel of latitude is fixed by the laws of nature, while the zero-degree meridian of longitude shifts like the sands of time.
Dava Sobel (Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time)
In the wake of the Longitude Act, the concept of “discovering the longitude” became a synonym for attempting the impossible.
Dava Sobel (Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time)
To be part of nature was to be part of the will to live. When you stay too long in a place, you forget just how big an expanse the world is. You get no sense of the length of those longitudes and latitudes. Just as, she supposed, it is hard to have a sense of the vastness inside any one person. But once you sense that vastness, once something reveals it, hope emerges, whether you want it to or not, and it clings to you as stubbornly as lichen clings to rock.
Matt Haig (The Midnight Library)
—but then I wonder what Latitude or Longitude I’ve got to?
Lewis Carroll (Alice's Adventures in Wonderland / Through the Looking Glass)
Canada is actually a major country, with an area of more than 169 billion hectometers in longitude,
Dave Barry (Dave Barry's Only Travel Guide You'll Ever Need)
Love knows no latitude, Love knows no longitude. Love only knows to be, Annihilated in servitude.
Abhijit Naskar (Find A Cause Outside Yourself: Sermon of Sustainability)
What does that mean? The Party Ponies?” Leo had never met Chiron’s crazy centaur relatives, but he’d heard rumors of Nerf sword-fights, root beer–chugging contests, and Super Soakers filled with pressurized whipped cream. “Not sure,” Annabeth said. “But I’ve got coordinates. Can you input latitude and longitude in this thing?” “I can input star charts and order you a smoothie, if you want. Of course I can do latitude and longitude!
Rick Riordan (The Mark of Athena (The Heroes of Olympus, #3))
…I must say that "Right" has no meaning to me whatsoever! Truth has meaning - as a direction. But one of the peculiar imbecilities of our time is the grid of morality we have placed on human behavior: so that every act of man must be measured against an arbitrary latitude of right and longitude of wrong - in exact minutes, seconds, and degrees!... -Henry Drummond, a character in Inherit The Wind
Jerome Lawrence
What poor, mean trash this whole business of human virtue is! A mere matter, for the most part, of latitude and longitude, and geographical position, acting with natural temperament. The greater part is nothing but an accident.
Harriet Beecher Stowe (Uncle Tom’s Cabin)
With his marine clocks, John Harrison tested the waters of space-time. He succeeded, against all odds, in using the fourth—temporal—dimension to link points on the three-dimensional globe. He wrested the world’s whereabouts from the stars, and locked the secret in a pocket watch.
Dava Sobel (Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time)
The first woman known to have worked as a computer in England was Mary Edwards, who calculated astronomical positions for the Board of Longitude in the 1770s.
Sydney Padua (The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage)
about the right distance--but then I wonder what Latitude or Longitude I've got to?' (Alice had no idea what Latitude was, or Longitude either,
Lewis Carroll (Alice's Adventures in Wonderland)
S. Latitude 34° 21′, W. Longitude 152° 17′
H.P. Lovecraft (Tales)
National boundaries are as invisible as meridians of longitude, or the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn. The boundaries are arbitrary. The planet is real.
Carl Sagan (Contact)
there's a corner of your mouth, and a place that it goes. pinched and worried like you're afraid you're forgetting something. i used to hate it. used to think it was your little tic of disapproval. but i've kissed your mouth, that corner, that place it goes, so many times now. i've memorized it. topography on the map of you, a world i'm still charting. i know it. i added it to the key. here: inches to miles. i can multiply it out, read your latitude and longitude. recite your coordinates like la rosaria. this thing, your mouth, its place. it's what you do when you're trying not to give yourself away. not in the way that you do all the time, those empty, greedy grabs for you. i mean the truth of you. the weird, perfect shape of your heart. the one on the outside of your chest.
Casey McQuiston (Red, White & Royal Blue)
Time is to clock as mind is to brain. The clock or watch somehow contains the time. And yet time refuses to be bottled up like a genie stuffed in a lamp. Whether it flows as sand or turns on wheels within wheels, time escapes irretrievably, while we watch. Even when the bulbs of the hourglass shatter, when darkness withholds the shadow from the sundial, when the mainspring winds down so far that the clock hands hold still as death, time itself keeps on. The most we can hope a watch to do is mark that progress. And since time sets its own tempo, like a heartbeat or an ebb tide, timepieces don't really keep time. They just keep up with it, if they're able.
Dava Sobel (Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time)
This is it, the geographical limit of how far I'll go for Ossie. We are learning longitude and latitude in school, and it makes my face burn that I can graph the coordinates of my own love and courage with such damning precision.
Karen Russell (St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves)
To be a part of nature was to be part of the will to live. When you stay too long in a place, you forget just how big an expanse the world is. You get no sense of the length of those longitudes and latitudes. Just as, she supposed, it is hard to have a sense of the vastness inside any one person. But once you sense that vastness, once something reveals it, hope emerges, whether you want it to or not, and it clings to you as stubbornly as lichen clings to rock.
Matt Haig (The Midnight Library)
Todos nosotros somos seres imperfectos que vivimos en un mundo imperfecto. Y no debemos vivir de una manera tan rígida, midiendo la longitud con una regla y los ángulos con un transportador como si la vida fuera un depósito bancario.
Haruki Murakami (Norwegian Wood)
The British Parliament, in its famed Longitude Act of 1714, set the highest bounty of all, naming a prize equal to a king’s ransom (several million dollars in today’s currency) for a “Practicable and Useful” means of determining longitude.
Dava Sobel (Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time)
Any clock that can track this sideral schedule proves itself as perfect as God's magnificent clockwork. Dava Sobel
Dava Sobel (Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time)
Todos nosotros somos seres imperfectos que vivimos en un mundo imperfecto. Y no debemos vivir de una manera tan rígida, midiendo la longitud con una regla y los ángulos con un transportador como si la vida fuera un depósito bancario. -Reiko
Haruki Murakami (Norwegian Wood)
The zero-degree parallel of latitude is fixed by the laws of nature, while the zero-degree meridian of longitude shifts like the sands of time. This difference makes finding latitude child’s play, and turns the determination of longitude, especially at sea, into an adult dilemma—one that stumped the wisest minds of the world for the better part of human history.
Dava Sobel (Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of his Time)
It was a careworn face. But most of the lines, if followed back like a trail, would lead to happiness. To the faces a face made when laughing or smiling, or sitting quietly enjoying the day. Though some of those lines led elsewhere. Into a wilderness, into the wild. Where terrible things had happened. Some of the lines of his face led to events inhuman and abominable. To horrific sights. To unspeakable acts. Some of them his. The lines of his face were the longitude and latitude of his life.
Louise Penny (A Great Reckoning (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, #12))
Sensation establishes what is actually given, thinking enables us to recognize its meaning, feeling tells us its value, and finally intuition points to the possibilities of the whence and whither that lie within the immediate facts. In this way, we can orientate ourselves with respect to the immediate world as completely as when we locate a place geographically by latitude and longitude.
C.G. Jung (Modern Man in Search of a Soul)
During Ferdinand Magellan’s expedition—the first to circumnavigate the globe, in 1522—a scribe onboard wrote that the pilots “will not speak of the longitude.” Longitudinal lines, which run perpendicular to the parallels of latitude, have no fixed reference point, like the equator. And so navigators must establish their own demarcation—their home port or some other arbitrary line—from which to gauge how far east or west they are. (Today, Greenwich, England, is designated the prime meridian, marking zero degrees longitude.)
David Grann (The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder)
You get to thinking of the Earth as an organism, a living thing. You get to worry about it, care for it, wish it well. National boundaries are as invisible as meridians of longitude, or the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn. The boundaries are arbitrary. The planet is real. Spaceflight, therefore, is subversive. If they are fortunate enough to find themselves in Earth orbit, most people, after a little meditation, have similar thoughts. The nations that had instituted spaceflight had done so largely for nationalistic reasons; it was a small irony that almost everyone who entered space received a startling glimpse of a transnational perspective, of the Earth as one
Carl Sagan (Contact)
Earlier maps had underestimated the distances to other continents and exaggerated the outlines of individual nations. Now global dimensions could be set, with authority, by the celestial spheres. Indeed, King Louis XIV of France, confronted with a revised map of his domain based on accurate longitude measurements, reportedly complained that he was losing more territory to his astronomers than to his enemies.
Dava Sobel (Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time)
Today, the latitude and longitude lines govern with more authority than I could have imagined forty-odd years ago, for they stay fixed as the world changes its configuration underneath them—with continents adrift across a widening sea, and national boundaries repeatedly redrawn by war or peace.
Dava Sobel (Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of his Time)
To learn one’s longitude at sea, one needs to know what time it is aboard ship and also the time at the home port or another place of known longitude—at that very same moment. The two clock times enable the navigator to convert the hour difference into a geographical separation. Since the Earth takes twenty-four hours to complete one full revolution of three hundred sixty degrees, one hour marks one twenty-fourth of a spin, or fifteen degrees.
Dava Sobel (Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of his Time)
As far as one journeys, as much as a man sees, from the turrets of the Taj Mahal to the Siberian wilds, he may eventually come to an unfortunate conclusion —usually while he's lying in bed, staring at the thatched ceiling of some substandard accommodation in Indochina," writes Swithin in his last book, the posthumously published Whereabouts, 1917 (1918). "It is impossible to rid himself of the relentless, cloying fever commonly known as Home. After seventy-three years of anguish I have found a cure, however. You must go home again, grit your teeth and however arduous the exercise, determine, without embellishment, your exact coordinates at Home, your longitudes and latitudes. Only then, will you stop looking back and see the spectacular view in front of you.
Marisha Pessl (Special Topics in Calamity Physics)
What we seek in travel is neither discovery nor trade but rather a gentle deterritorialization: we want to be taken over by the journey - in other words, by absence. As our metal vectors transcend meridians, oceans and poles, absence takes on a fleshy quality. The clandestineness of the depths of private life gives way to annihilation by longitude and latitude. But in the end the body tires of not knowing where it is, even if the mind finds this absence exalting, as if it were a quality proper to itself. Perhaps, after all, what we seek in others is the same gentle deterritorialization that we seek in travel. Instead of one's own desire, instead of discovery, we are tempted by exile in the desire of the other, or by the desire of the other as an ocean to cross. The looks and gestures of lovers already have the distance of exile about them; the language of lovers is an expatriation in words that are afraid to signify; and the bodies of lovers are a tender hologram to eye and hand, offering no resistance and hence susceptible of being crisscrossed, like airspace, by desire. We move around with circumspection on a mental planet of circumvolutions, and from our excesses and passions we bring back the same transparent memories as we do from our travels.
Jean Baudrillard
Blue Planet Phenomenon. she’s from the pink planet called Constellation he’s from the dark planet beyond under a constant monitor no love a interplanetary phenomenon he’s an interstellar she’s studying astronomy what they have seen sets in motion their biology they will meet on the blue planet they should know better it’s death if they get together interplanetary love is forbidden their passion keep it hidden they should know better but they must be together to the blue planet love velocity interstellar crossing Earth’s longitudes hiding their love in the new years eve multitudes they should know better their love still not allowed under another planets blanketing cloud Planet Earth in unified love new years eve blue planet phenomenon she will fall pregnant their baby conceived at a time of human unity their unborn baby and united humanity become one in harmony interstellar before they’re discovered too late their love uncovered they should know better it’s death for forbidden love together trial on dark planet they will all die today “kill them now” judgment say they plea for their unborn baby’s mercy a reprieve child leniency only for their baby clemency “bring on the birth” authorities say a unpredicted baby delivery conceived in a time of human unity a love descendant of humanity interstellar love racing interplanetary embracing human love emanating from their newborn baby blanketing pink planet with love blanketing dark planet with love two planets authority depleting two planets a love meeting now love not forbidden love never to be hidden interstellar love plea she and he with their baby to go free By R.M.Romarney.
R.M. Romarney
He wrested the world’s whereabouts from the stars, and locked the secret in a pocket watch.
Dava Sobel (Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of his Time)
It was like the latitude and longitude of your birthplace can ultimately determine your life’s borders.
Jennifer De Leon (Don't Ask Me Where I'm From (A LatinX Coming-of-Age))
Because longitude represents a distance in the direction of the earth’s daily rotation,
David Grann (The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder)
Each hour of the day corresponds to fifteen degrees of longitude.
David Grann (The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder)
Estoy sorprendido, inspector... Su capacidad deductiva sólo se ve superada por su apostura y por la extraordinaria longitud de su miembro.
Stephen King (The Stand)
Tan sólo tres o cuatro veces en mis años mozos divisé fugazmente las islas de la Dicha antes de que se esfumaran en la niebla, en las borrascas, entre frentes fríos, vendavales y mareas en contra... Las tomé equivocadamente por la condición adulta. Di por hecho que serían una presencia constante en mi trayecto vital y no me preocupé de anotar la latitud, la longitud, la ruta de recalada. Maldito jovenzuelo idiota. Lo que daría ahora por tener un mapa inmutable de lo veleidoso e inefable... Por tener, por así decirlo, un atlas de las nubes.
David Mitchell (Cloud Atlas)
Of students’ papers: ‘I am generally very benevolent [said Shade]. But there are certain trifles I do not forgive.’ Kinbote: ‘For instance?’ ‘Not having read the required book. Having read it like an idiot. Looking in it for symbols; example: “The author uses the striking image green leaves because green is the symbol of happiness and frustration.” I am also in the habit of lowering a student’s mark catastrophically if he uses “simple” and “sincere” in a commendatory sense; examples: “Shelley’s style is always very simple and good”; or “Yeats is always sincere.” This is widespread, and when I hear a critic speaking of an author’s sincerity I know that either the critic or the author is a fool.’ Kinbote: ‘But I am told this manner of thinking is taught in high school?’ ‘That’s where the broom should begin to sweep. A child should have thirty specialists to teach him thirty subjects, and not one harassed schoolmarm to show him a picture of a rice field and tell him this is China because she knows nothing about China, or anything else, and cannot tell the difference between longitude and latitude.’ Kinbote: ‘Yes. I agree.
Vladimir Nabokov (Pale Fire (Penguin Modern Classics))
The Frankfurt, however, did not give her latitude or longitude, and after waiting 20 minutes asked the operator of the Titanic, “What is the matter?” To this the Titanic replied that he was a fool (pp.
U.S. Senate (The "Titanic" Reports: The Official Conclusions of the 1912 Inquiries by the US Senate and the British Wreck Commissioner)
I found that this was a desert region so obscure that the designers of atlases typically stitch page bindings directly over that very latitude and longitude, obliterating the map’s topography as surely as any sandstorm.
Adrienne Mayor (The First Fossil Hunters: Dinosaurs, Mammoths, and Myth in Greek and Roman Times)
You get to thinking of the Earth as an organism, a living thing. You get to worry about it, care for it, wish it well. National boundaries are as invisible as meridians of longitude, or the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn. The boundaries are arbitrary. The planet is real. Spaceflight, therefore, is subversive. If they are fortunate enough to find themselves in Earth orbit, most people, after a little meditation, have similar thoughts. The nations that had instituted spaceflight had done so largely for nationalistic reasons; it was a small irony that almost everyone who entered space received a startling glimpse of a transnational perspective, of the Earth as one world. It
Carl Sagan (Contact)
Three or four times only in my youth did I glimpse the Joyous Isles, before they were lost to fogs, depressions, cold fronts, ill winds, and contrary tides … I mistook them for adulthood. Assuming they were a fixed feature in my life’s voyage, I neglected to record their latitude, their longitude, their approach. Young ruddy fool. What wouldn’t I give now for a never-changing map of the ever-constant ineffable? To possess, as it were, an atlas of clouds. I
David Mitchell (Cloud Atlas)
Among the many spots used by philosophers and astronomers over the centuries to mark the meridian for zero degrees longitude were Ferro, in the Canary Islands; Ujjain, in the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh; the “agonic line” (a line along which true north and magnetic north coincide, but not forever) that passed through the Azores; the Paris Observatory; the Royal Observatory at Greenwich; the White House; and the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem.
Neil deGrasse Tyson (Accessory to War: The Unspoken Alliance Between Astrophysics and the Military (Astrophysics for People in a Hurry Series))
Down, down, down. Would the fall never come to an end? “I wonder how many miles I’ve fallen by this time?” she said aloud. “I must be getting somewhere near the centre of the earth. Let me see: that would be four thousand miles down, I think—” (for, you see, Alice had learnt several things of this sort in her lessons in the school-room, and though this was not a very good opportunity for showing off her knowledge, as there was no one to listen to her, still it was good practice to say it over) “—yes, that’s about the right distance—but then I wonder what Latitude or Longitude I’ve got to?” (Alice had no idea what Latitude was, or Longitude either, but thought they were nice grand words to say.)
Lewis Carroll (Alice's Adventures in Wonderland / Through the Looking Glass)
What will prove to be the metaphorical gridwork of latitudes and longitudes, the dependable charts for human navigation that will let us heal the rift between knowing something and feeling something, a chasm the Enlightenment created for us when it privileged the ability to know over the ability to feel? What will be the grid of metaphorical rhumb lines and meridians in a new portolano, one that will not permit the integrity and profundity of the local to slip away in order to serve a vision of the grand?
Barry Lopez (Horizon)
She and Harriet Warner were worlds apart not only in looks, but also their place on earth–a monarch butterfly and a luna moth. Each had been dropped into lives that were polar opposites, traveling along different longitudes lines destined never to intersect.
Karen White
But pass through Copula Hall and she or he might leave Beszel, and at the end of the hall come back to exactly (corporeally) where they had just been, but in another country, a tourist, a marvelling visitor, to a street that shared the latitude-longitude of their own address, a street they had never visited before, whose architecture they had always unseen, to the Ul Qoman house sitting next to and a whole city away from their own building, unvisible there now they had come through, all the way across the Breach, back home.
China Miéville (The City & the City)
—¿De verdad saltan? —Sí, de verdad. Pueden saltar cincuenta veces la longitud de su cuerpo. Es como si un hombre de un metro ochenta saltara la longitud de un campo de fútbol y lo sorprendente es que prácticamente no tienen músculos en las piernas. Así que, podríais
John Verdon (No abras los ojos)
schoolroom, and though this was not a VERY good opportunity for showing off her knowledge, as there was no one to listen to her, still it was good practice to say it over) '--yes, that's about the right distance--but then I wonder what Latitude or Longitude I've got to?
Lewis Carroll (Alice's Adventures in Wonderland)
Having established itself securely on shipboard, the chronometer was soon taken for granted, like any other essential thing, and the whole question of its contentious history, along with the name of its original inventor, dropped from the consciousness of the seamen who used it every day.
Dava Sobel (Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time)
As an explorer Columbus was mediocre at best. He knew less about the sea than did the average sailor on his ships, could never determine the latitude and longitude of his discoveries, mistook islands for vast continents, and treated his crew badly. But in one area he was a genius: He knew how to sell himself.
Robert Greene (The 48 Laws of Power)
But I’ve kissed your mouth, that corner, that place it goes, so many times now. I’ve memorised it. Topography on the map of you, a world I’m still charting. I know it. I added it to the key. Here: inches to miles. I can multiply it out, read your latitude and longitude. Recite your coordinates like la rosaria.
Casey McQuiston (Red, White & Royal Blue)
After Simla, I must mention Darjeeling, with its pretty white houses, overlooked by Mount Kinchinjinga, 312 miles to the north of Calcutta, 6,900 feet above the level of the sea, about the eighty-sixth degree of longitude, and the twenty-seventh degree of latitude—a charming situation, in the most beautiful country in the world.   Other
Jules Verne (The Steam House)
17 para que habite Cristo por la fe en vuestros corazones, a fin de que, arraigados y cimentados en amor, 18 seáis plenamente capaces de comprender con todos los santos cuál sea la anchura, la longitud, la profundidad y la altura, 19 y de conocer el amor de Cristo, que excede a todo conocimiento, para que seáis llenos de toda la plenitud de Dios.
Casiodoro de Reina (Reina Valera 1960)
(...) Así que intenta no tomártelo tan a pecho. Nosotros (con "nosotros" me refiero a la gente normal y a la que no lo somos tanto), todos nosotros somos seres imperfectos que vivimos en un mundo imperfecto. Y no podemos vivir de una manera tan rígida, midiendo la longitud con una regla y los ángulos con un transportador como si la vida fuera un depósito bancario. ¿No te parece?
Haruki Murakami (Norwegian Wood)
the beaches. In literally hundreds of instances, a vessel’s ignorance of her longitude led swiftly to her destruction. Launched on a mix of bravery and greed, the sea captains of the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries relied on “dead reckoning” to gauge their distance east or west of home port. The captain would throw a log overboard and observe how quickly the ship receded from this temporary guidepost. He noted the crude speedometer reading in his ship’s logbook, along with the direction of travel, which he took from the stars or a compass, and the length of time on a particular course, counted with a sandglass or a pocket watch. Factoring in the effects of ocean currents, fickle winds, and errors in judgment, he then determined his longitude. He routinely missed his mark, of course—searching
Dava Sobel (Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of his Time)
IN 1493, WHEN COLUMBUS returned from his unimaginable voyage, a Spanish-born pope granted all of the lands on the other side of the ocean, everything west of a line of longitude some three hundred miles west of Cape Verde, to Spain, and granted what lay east of that line, western Africa, to Portugal, the pope claiming the authority to divvy up lands inhabited by tens of millions of people as if he were the god of Genesis.
Jill Lepore (These Truths: A History of the United States)
«los países no son más que diferentes máscaras para intentar esconder, en vano, el verdadero rostro del mundo. Un rostro que se ríe de las longitudes y latitudes impuestas por los hombres para así convencerse de que no están perdidos y de que conocen el camino de regreso a ese artificio más o menos compartible, a ese espejismo consensuado que, para tranquilizarse y no sentirse tan perdidos como están, han dado en llamar casa».
Rodrigo Fresán (Melvill)
It is not possible that you will repent unless you are aware of your sin; it is not likely that you will look to Christ unless you first know what it is for which you are to look to him. Therefore, I pray you, set apart some season every day, or at least some season as often as you can get it, in which the business of your mind shall be to take your longitude and latitude, that you may know exactly where you are. You may be drifting towards the rocks, and you may be wrecked before you know your danger. I implore you, do not let your ship go at full steam through a fog; but slacken speed a bit, and heave the lead, to see whether you are in deep waters or shallow. I am not asking you to do more than any kind and wise man would advise you to do; do I even ask you more than your own conscience tells you is right? Sit alone a while, that you may carefully consider your case.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon
Hitherto, Jack had been too busy working up his crew to pay much attention to the education of his midshipmen, but he had looked at yesterday's slips and they, with a very suspicious unanimity, had shown the Sophie in 39°2I'N, which was fair enough, but also in a longitude that she could only have reached by cleaving the mountain-range behind Valencia to a depth of thirty-seven miles. 'What do you mean by sending me this nonsense?' he asked them. It was not really an answerable question; nor were many of the others that he propounded, and they did not, in fact, attempt to answer them; but they agreed that they were not there to amuse themselves, nor for their manly beauty, but rather to learn their professions; that their journals (which they fetched) were neither accurate, full, nor up to date, and that the ship's cat would have written them better; that they would for the future pay the greatest attention to Mr Marshall's observation and reckoning; that they would prick the chart daily with him; and that no man was fit to pass for a lieutenant, let alone bear any command ('May God forgive me,' said Jack, in an internal aside) who could not instantly tell the position of his ship to within a minute – nay, to within thirty seconds. Furthermore, they would show up their journals every Sunday, cleanly and legibly written.
Patrick O'Brian (Master & Commander (Aubrey & Maturin, #1))
It was the eternal contest for reputation and prestige that encouraged Londoners to endow new hospitals or write great plays or crack the problem of longitude for the navy. No matter how agreeable your surroundings, you couldn’t get famous by sitting around in some village, and that is still true today. You need people to acknowledge what you have done; you need a gallery for the applause; and above all you need to know what everyone else is up to.
Boris Johnson (Johnson's Life of London: The People Who Made the City that Made the World)
Three or four times only in my youth did I glimpse the Joyous Isles, before they were lost to fogs, depressions, cold fronts, ill winds, and contrary tides … I mistook them for adulthood. Assuming they were a fixed feature in my life’s voyage, I neglected to record their latitude, their longitude, their approach. Young ruddy fool. What wouldn’t I give now for a never-changing map of the ever-constant ineffable? To possess, as it were, an atlas of clouds.
David Mitchell (Cloud Atlas)
managing director, the intelligent Cyrus Field, purposed even covering all the islands of Oceanica with a vast electrical network, an immense enterprise, and one worthy of American genius. To the corvette Susquehanna had been confided the first operations of sounding. It was on the night of the 11th-12th of December, she was in exactly 27@ 7’ north latitude, and 41@ 37’ west longitude, on the meridian of Washington. The moon, then in her last quarter, was beginning to rise above the horizon.
Jules Verne (Oakshot Complete Works of Jules Verne)
The evidence presented by the ancient maps appears to suggest the existence in remote times, before the rise of any of the known cultures, of a true civilization, of a comparatively advanced sort, which either was localized in one area but had worldwide commerce, or was, in a real sense, a worldwide culture. This culture, at least in some respects, may well have been more advanced than the civilizations of Egypt, Babylonia, Greece, and Rome. In astronomy, nautical science, mapmaking and possibly ship-building, it was perhaps more advanced than any state of culture before the 18th Century of the Christian Era. It was in the 18th Century that we first developed a practical means of finding longitude. It was in the 18th Century that we first accurately measured the circumference of the earth. Not until the 19th Century did we begin to send out ships for purposes of whaling or exploration into the Arctic or Antarctic Seas. The maps indicate that some ancient people may have done all these things.
Charles H. Hapgood (Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings: Evidence of Advanced Civilization in the Ice Age)
Lo que caracteriza a la sociedad actual es la falta de energía de enlace dialógico. Cuando del escenario desaparece lo dialógico, surge un teatro de las afectaciones. Estas no están estructuradas dialógicamente. Implican una negación de lo distinto. Los sentimientos son narrativos. Las emociones son impulsivas. Ni las emociones ni las afectaciones despliegan un espacio narrativo. El teatro de las afectaciones no narra. Más bien, una masa de afectaciones se carga directamente sobre el escenario. En eso consiste su carácter pornográfico. Los sentimientos tienen también una temporalidad distinta a las emociones y las afectaciones. Poseen una duración, una longitud narrativa. Las emociones son esencialmente más pasajeras que los sentimientos. Las afectaciones se limitan a un momento. Y los sentimientos son los únicos que tienen acceso a lo dialógico, al otro. Por eso existe la empatía, mientras que no hay una emoción o una afectación conjuntas. Tanto las afectaciones como las emociones son expresión de un sujeto aislado y monológico.
Byung-Chul Han (La salvación de lo bello)
You've asked me what the lobster is weaving there with his golden feet? I reply, the ocean knows this. You say, what is the ascidia waiting for in its transparent bell? What is it waiting for? I tell you it is waiting for time, like you. You ask me whom the Macrocystis alga hugs in its arms? Study, study it, at a certain hour, in a certain sea I know. You question me about the wicked tusk of the narwhal, and I reply by describing how the sea unicorn with the harpoon in it dies. You enquire about the kingfisher's feathers, which tremble in the pure springs of the southern tides? Or you've found in the cards a new question touching on the crystal architecture of the sea anemone, and you'll deal that to me now? You want to understand the electric nature of the ocean spines? The armored stalactite that breaks as it walks? The hook of the angler fish, the music stretched out in the deep places like a thread in the water? I want to tell you the ocean knows this, that life in its jewel boxes is endless as the sand, impossible to count, pure, and among the blood-colored grapes time has made the petal hard and shiny, made the jellyfish full of light and untied its knot, letting its musical threads fall from a horn of plenty made of infinite mother-of-pearl. I am nothing but the empty net which has gone on ahead of human eyes, dead in those darknesses, of fingers accustomed to the triangle, longitudes on the timid globe of an orange. I walked around as you do, investigating the endless star, and in my net, during the night, I woke up naked, the only thing caught, a fish trapped inside the wind.
Pablo Neruda
In 1884, at the International Meridian Conference held in Washington, D.C., representatives from twenty-six countries voted to make the common practice official. They declared the Greenwich meridian the prime meridian of the world. This decision did not sit well with the French, however, who continued to recognize their own Paris Observatory meridian, a little more than two degrees east of Greenwich, as the starting line for another twenty-seven years, until 1911. (Even then, they hesitated to refer directly to Greenwich mean time, preferring the locution “Paris Mean Time, retarded by nine minutes twenty-one seconds.”)
Dava Sobel (Longitude: A journey through time, astronomy, and horology)
Most of these maps were of the Mediterranean and the Black Sea. But maps of other areas survived. These included maps of the Americas and maps of the Arctic and Antarctic seas. It becomes clear that the ancient voyagers traveled from pole to pole. Unbelievable as it may appear, the evidence nevertheless indicates that some ancient people explored the coasts of Antatica when its coasts were free of ice. It is clear, too, that they had an instrument of navigation for accurately finding the longitudes of places that was far superior to anything posessed by the peoples of ancient, medieval, or modern times until the second half of the 18th Century.
Charles H. Hapgood (Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings: Evidence of Advanced Civilization in the Ice Age)
—Si es el arma secreta —comenté—, espero que sea buena. —Lo es —repuso el sonriente holograma del poeta. Hizo otra seña y A. Bettik desenrolló el cilindro. Era una alfombra de menos de dos metros de longitud y poco más de un metro de ancho. La tela estaba carcomida y desleída, pero vi diseños y patrones intricados. Había una compleja urdimbre de hebras de oro que aún eran tan brillantes como... —Dios mío —exclamé, comprendiendo de golpe—. Una alfombra voladora. El holo de Martin Silenus se aclaró la garganta como si fuera a escupir. —No una alfombra voladora —gruñó—. La alfombra voladora. Retrocedí un paso. Esto era material de leyenda, y yo estaba casi de pie sobre ella.
Dan Simmons (Endymion)
Come on, Princess," he called to the bench, and Carlotta bounced up. She was wide like the rest of them, but no man could fairly say she was too wide. The most that could be said was that she did not have much further to go before she would have to start squeezing it in and strapping it up, which she clearly did not do now. She let it hang where it was, and it did very nicely by itself. As she passed among the boys they looked her over with unconcealed envy, as though they knew she had something they didn't have but were not quite sure what it was. One thing was certain, she got more exercise than they did. The next to be noticed were her braids, they hung forward over her terrain, ignoring as much as possible her contours, like two shiny black meridianal lines demarking her longitudes as far down as the equator. It was not hard to imagine oneself spending a long lifetime on that bare little island alone, with no plan or ambition, too overcome with the heat to continue on south to the pole, far less return to the continents. Nothing productive could ever be accomplished there, but there would be comfort such as few men have known, there would be torpor. The body swelled with such thoughts, the mind shrank from them, and the longing eyes traveled finally up north, to where those meridians came together at a point above a bland white area vaguely charted, with few landmarks, no doubt sparsely inhabited. There the imagination halted.
Douglas Woolf (Wall to Wall (American Literature))
As far as one journeys, as much as a man sees, from the turrets of the Taj Mahal to the Siberian wilds, he may eventually come to an unfortunate conclusion—usually while he’s lying in bed, staring at the thatched ceiling of some substandard accommodation in Indochina,” writes Swithin in his last book, the posthumously published Whereabouts, 1917 (1918). “It is impossible to rid himself of the relentless, cloying fever commonly known as Home. After seventy-three years of anguish I have found a cure, however. You must go home again, grit your teeth and however arduous the exercise, determine, without embellishment, your exact coordinates at Home, your longitudes and latitudes. Only then, will you stop looking back and see the spectacular view in front of you.
Marisha Pessl (Special Topics in Calamity Physics)
Butterhorn?” Ben asked, holding out a bag full of pastries. “Well, you did condemn yourself to bad luck just to get them for me,” I said, “So absolutely!” “Yeah,” Ben agreed, “they’d better be worth it.” “Mmmm, completely worth it,” I said with my mouth full. “The rest of you have to have some of these.” “Hmmm,” Sage mused, examining his, “no garlic. I’m not entirely sure my taste buds will know how to handle this.” “Um, you guys,” Rayna asked, “where am I driving?” “Excellent question-let’s find out!” I pulled the cribbage board out of duffel bag and handed it to Sage, pointing out the longitude and latitude notations on the back. “Where is that?” Sage took out his phone, then entered the coordinates. “Interesting.” “What?” I asked. “It’s not Antarctica, is it? I didn’t pack a parka.
Hilary Duff (Elixir (Elixir, #1))
A VALEDICTION: OF THE BOOK I'll tell thee now (dear love) what thou shalt do To anger destiny, as she doth us; How I shall stay, though she eloign me thus, And how posterity shall know it too; How thine may out-endure Sibyl's glory, and obscure Her who from Pindar could allure, And her, through whose help Lucan is not lame, And her, whose book (they say) Homer did find, and name. Study our manuscripts, those myriads Of letters, which have past 'twixt thee and me; Thence write our annals, and in them will be To all whom love's subliming fire invades, Rule and example found; There the faith of any ground No schismatic will dare to wound, That sees, how Love this grace to us affords, To make, to keep, to use, to be these his records. This book, as long-lived as the elements, Or as the world's form, this all-graved tome In cypher writ, or new made idiom; We for Love's clergy only are instruments; When this book is made thus, Should again the ravenous Vandals and Goths invade us, Learning were safe; in this our universe, Schools might learn sciences, spheres music, angels verse. Here Love's divines—since all divinity Is love or wonder—may find all they seek, Whether abstract spiritual love they like, Their souls exhaled with what they do not see; Or, loth so to amuse Faith's infirmity, they choose Something which they may see and use; For, though mind be the heaven, where love doth sit, Beauty a convenient type may be to figure it. Here more than in their books may lawyers find, Both by what titles mistresses are ours, And how prerogative these states devours, Transferred from Love himself, to womankind; Who, though from heart and eyes, They exact great subsidies, Forsake him who on them relies; And for the cause, honour, or conscience give; Chimeras vain as they or their prerogative. Here statesmen, (or of them, they which can read) May of their occupation find the grounds; Love, and their art, alike it deadly wounds, If to consider what 'tis, one proceed. In both they do excel Who the present govern well, Whose weakness none doth, or dares tell; In this thy book, such will there something see, As in the Bible some can find out alchemy. Thus vent thy thoughts; abroad I'll study thee, As he removes far off, that great heights takes; How great love is, presence best trial makes, But absence tries how long this love will be; To take a latitude Sun, or stars, are fitliest viewed At their brightest, but to conclude Of longitudes, what other way have we, But to mark when and where the dark eclipses be?
John Donne (The Love Poems)
I wonder how many miles I've fallen by this time?' she said aloud. 'I must be getting somewhere near the centre of the earth. Let me see: that would be four thousand miles down, I think--' (for, you see, Alice had learnt several things of this sort in her lessons in the schoolroom, and though this was not a VERY good opportunity for showing off her knowledge, as there was no one to listen to her, still it was good practice to say it over) '--yes, that's about the right distance--but then I wonder what Latitude or Longitude I've got to?' (Alice had no idea what Latitude was, or Longitude either, but thought they were nice grand words to say.) Presently she began again. 'I wonder if I shall fall right through the earth! How funny it'll seem to come out among the people that walk with their heads downward! The Antipathies, I think--' (she was rather glad there
Lewis Carroll (Alice's Adventures in Wonderland)
La doctora von Blimenstein había convencido al pobre hombre de que sus temores tenían un origen puramente sexual y eran consecuencia de una sensación de desajuste provocada por la idea de que su pene no era tan largo ni tan potente como una pitón adulta y le había enviado de nuevo a trabajar en el serpentario, donde, tres semanas después, le había mordido, esta vez con fatales consecuencias, una mamba negra cuya longitud intentaba él comparar con la de su propio miembro erecto, el cual sabía que alcanzaba los dieciocho centímetros de longitud. «Treinta y cinco centímetros», acababa de deducir, apoyando la cabeza de la mamba contra su glans penis. Fue prácticamente lo último que pudo decir, pues la mamba, con ferocidad plenamente justificada por la absurda comparación, hundió los colmillos en su contrapartida simbólica. Tras lo cual, la doctora von Blimenstein se había apartado del psicoanálisis y se había decidido por un enfoque más conductista.
Tom Sharpe (Riotous Assembly)
Drinking Problem Yeah, you think you've got bugs You think you've got a problem Baby, you don't think enough At least I know who my At least I know who my friends are At least I know who my At least I know who my At least I know who my At least I know who my At least I know who my At least I know who my At least I know who my At least I know who my Yeah man you think you've got bugs Felt a lot of longitudes You've already done too much At least I know who my Even with your resolutions Hypocrisy is digging in You don't need a point of reference You just need to be afraid Even though I can't believe you It's not like I don't want to Anyone can make excuses At least I know who my Come on in if you think you've got bugs Come on in if you think you've got bugs Come on in if you think you've got bugs Come on in if you think you've got bugs Come on in if you think you've got bugs Come on in if you think you've got bugs At least I know who my At least I know who my friends are
Surfer Blood
Humans recognize the duality, autonomy, and latitude range of the mind and the body, and all humans comprehend their impending mortality. Unlike other animals, humankind knows despair brought about by understanding the inevitability of death of all living creatures. The radius of human thought touching upon the longitude of our transient existence causes infinite pain. Seeking to ameliorate existential anguish incites us to ponder spiritual matters, and this sphere of mental activity spurs us to contemplate the perimeter of unknown frontiers. Our ability to understand the compass of life and death allows us to view the circumference of the world as consisting of a past, a present, and a future in relation to our own lives. How a person views the range of their earthly life and how a person rationalizes their march towards a deathly outback creates a system of beliefs that separate people into classes, and the variations amongst class members’ belief systems supplements who we think we are.
Kilroy J. Oldster (Dead Toad Scrolls)
For example, the central idea in Einstein's theory of general relativity is that gravity is not some mysterious, attractive force that acts across space but rather a manifestation of the geometry of the inextricably linked space and time. Let me explain, using a simple example, how a geometrical property of space could be perceived as an attractive force, such as gravity. Imagine two people who start to travel precisely northward from two different point on Earth's equator. This means that at their starting points, these people travel along parallel lines (two longitudes), which, according to the plane geometry we learn in school, should never meet. Clearly, however, these two people will meet at the North Pole. if these people did not know that they were really traveling on the curved surface of a sphere, they would conclude that they must have experienced some attractive force, since they arrived at the same point in spite of starting their motions along parallel lines. Therefore, the geometrical curvature of space can manifest itself as an attractive force.
Mario Livio (The Golden Ratio: The Story of Phi, the World's Most Astonishing Number)
In 1498, Vasco da Gama the Portuguese navigator explored this eastern coast of Africa flanking the Indian Ocean. This led him to open a trade route to Asia and occupy Mozambique to the Portuguese colony. In 1840, it came under the control of the Sultan of Zanzibar and became a British protectorate in 1895, with Mombasa as its capital. Nairobi, lying 300 miles to the northwest of Mombasa is the largest city in Kenya. It became the capital in 1907 and is the fastest growing urban area in the Republic having become independent of the United Kingdom on December 12, 1963 and declared a republic the following year on December 12, 1964. Kenya is divided by the 38th meridian of longitude into two very different halves. The eastern half of Kenya slopes towards the coral-backed seashore of the Indian Ocean while the western side rises through a series of hills to the African Shear Zone or Central Rift. West of the Rift, the lowest part of a westward-sloping plateau contains Lake Victoria. This, the largest lake in Africa, receives most of its water from rain, the Kagera River and countless small streams. Its only outlet is the White Nile River which is part of the longest river on Earth. Combined, the Blue Nile and the White Nile, stretches 4,160 miles before emptying into the Mediterranean Sea.
Hank Bracker
I dreamt of a City to the West of here,” Dixon tries to recall, scrying in his Coffee-Mug, the wind blowing Wood-smoke in his eyes, “at some great Confluence of Rivers, or upon a Harbor in some inland Sea,— a large City,— busy, prospering, sacred.” “A Sylvan Philadelphia. . . .” “Well . . . well yes, now tha put it thah’ way,— ” “I hope you are prepar’d for the possibility, that waking Philadelphia is as sacred as anything over here will ever get, Dixon,— observe you not, as we move West, more and more of those Forces, which Cities upon Coasts have learn’d to push away, and leave to Back Inhabitants,— the Lightning, the Winter, an Indifference to Pain, not to mention Fire, Blood, and so forth, all measur’d upon a Scale far from Philadelphian,— whereunto we, and our Royal Commission, and our battery of costly Instruments, are but Fleas in the Flea Circus. We trespass, each day ever more deeply, into a world of less restraint in ev’rything,— no law, no convergence upon any idea of how life is to be,— an Interior that grows meanwhile ever more forested, more savage and perilous, until,— perhaps at the very Longitude of your ‘City,’— we must reach at last an Anti-City,— some concentration of Fate,— some final condition of Abandonment,— wherein all are unredeemably alone and at Hazard as deep as their souls may bear,— lost Creatures that make the very Seneca seem Christian and merciful.
Thomas Pynchon (Mason & Dixon)
I dreamt of a City to the West of here,” Dixon tries to recall, scrying in his Coffee-Mug, the wind blowing Wood-smoke in his eyes, “at some great Confluence of Rivers, or upon a Harbor in some inland Sea,— a large City,— busy, prospering, sacred.” “A Sylvan Philadelphia. . . .” “Well . . . well yes, now tha put it thah’ way,— ” “I hope you are prepar’d for the possibility, that waking Philadelphia is as sacred as anything over here will ever get, Dixon,— observe you not, as we move West, more and more of those Forces, which Cities upon Coasts have learn’d to push away, and leave to Back Inhabitants,— the Lightning, the Winter, an Indifference to Pain, not to mention Fire, Blood, and so forth, all measur’d upon a Scale far from Philadelphian,— whereunto we, and our Royal Commission, and our battery of costly Instruments, are but Fleas in the Flea Circus. We trespass, each day ever more deeply, into a world of less restraint in ev’rything,— no law, no convergence upon any idea of how life is to be,— an Interior that grows meanwhile ever more forested, more savage and perilous, until,— perhaps at the very Longitude of your ‘City,’— we must reach at last an Anti-City,— some concentration of Fate,— some final condition of Abandonment,— wherein all are unredeemably alone and at Hazard as deep as their souls may bear,— lost Creatures that make the very Seneca seem Christian and merciful.” “Eeh, chirpy today . . . ?
Thomas Pynchon (Mason & Dixon)
Eastern Standard Time Poetry speaks to all people, it is said, but here I would like to address only those in my own time zone, this proper slice of longitude that runs from pole to snowy pole down the globe through Montreal to Bogota. Oh, fellow inhabitants of this singular band, sitting up in your many beds this morning— the sun falling through the windows and casting a shadow on the sundial— consider those in other zones who cannot hear these words. They are not slipping into a bathrobe as we are, or following the smell of coffee in a timely fashion. Rather, they are at work already, leaning on copy machines, hammering nails into a house-frame. They are not swallowing a vitamin like us; rather they are smoking a cigarette under a half moon, even jumping around on a dance floor, or just now sliding under the covers, pulling down the little chains on their bed lamps. But we are not like these others, for at this very moment on the face of the earth, we are standing under a hot shower, or we are eating our breakfast, considered by people of all zones to be the most important meal of the day. Later, when the time is right, we might sit down with the boss, wash the car, or linger at a candle-lit table, but now is the hour for pouring the juice and flipping the eggs with one eye on the toaster. So let us slice a banana and uncap the jam, lift our brimming spoons of milk, and leave it to the others to lower a flag or spin absurdly in a barber's chair— those antipodal oddballs, always early or late. Let us praise Sir Stanford Fleming the Canadian genius who first scored with these lines the length of the spinning earth. Let us move together through the rest of this day passing in unison from light to shadow, coasting over the crest of noon into the valley of the evening and then, holding hands, slip into the deeper valley of night.
Billy Collins (The Trouble With Poetry - And Other Poems)
Lo que sigue es una pregunta de un examen de física en la Universidad de Copenhague: «Describa cómo se puede determinar la altura de un rascacielos con un barómetro». Un alumno respondió: «Se ata un largo cabo de cuerda al cuello del barómetro y entonces se descuelga el barómetro desde el tejado del rascacielos hasta el suelo. La longitud de la cuerda más la longitud del barómetro será igual a la altura del edificio». Esta original respuesta irritó tanto al examinador que el estudiante fue suspendido. El estudiante recurrió basándose en que su respuesta era indiscutiblemente correcta y la universidad nombró un árbitro independiente para decidir el caso. El árbitro juzgó que la respuesta era realmente correcta pero no mostraba ningún conocimiento apreciable de la física. Para resolver el problema se decidió llamar al estudiante y concederle seis minutos para que pudiera dar una respuesta oral que mostrase al menos una mínima familiaridad con los principios básicos de la física. Durante cinco minutos, el estudiante se sentó en silencio, centrado en sus pensamientos. El árbitro le recordó que el tiempo estaba corriendo, a lo que el estudiante respondió que tenía varias respuestas pero que no sabía cuál utilizar. Al ser advertido de que debía apresurarse, el estudiante respondió como sigue: «En primer lugar, se puede llevar el barómetro hasta el tejado del rascacielos, dejarlo caer desde el borde y medir el tiempo que tarda en llegar al suelo. La altura del edificio puede calcularse entonces a partir de la fórmula H = 0.5gt2. Pero ¡adiós barómetro! »O si hay sol, se podría medir la altura del barómetro, ponerlo luego vertical y medir la longitud de la sombra. Luego se podría medir la longitud de la sombra del rascacielos y, a partir de ahí, es una simple cuestión de aritmética proporcional calcular la altura del rascacielos. »Pero si uno quiere ser muy científico, se podría atar un corto cabo de cuerda al barómetro y hacerlo oscilar como un péndulo, primero al nivel del suelo y luego en el tejado del rascacielos. La altura se calcula por la diferencia en la fuerza gravitatoria restauradora T = 2π(l/g)1/2. »O si el rascacielos tiene una escalera de emergencia exterior, sería más fácil subirla y marcar la altura del rascacielos en longitudes del barómetro, y luego sumarlas. »Por supuesto, si simplemente se quiere ser aburrido y ortodoxo, se podría utilizar el barómetro para medir la presión del aire en el tejado del rascacielos y en el suelo, y convertir la diferencia de milibares en metros para saber la altura del edificio. »Pero puesto que continuamente se nos exhorta a ejercer la independencia mental y aplicar métodos científicos, indudablemente la mejor manera sería llamar a la puerta del conserje y decirle “Si usted quiere un bonito barómetro nuevo, le daré este si me dice la altura de este rascacielos”». El estudiante era Niels Bohr
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