Great Western Coffee Shop

Looking close to us, or far ahead?

(http://www.wellho.net/pix/focus_near.jpg)

(http://www.wellho.net/pix/focus_far.jpg)

Let's make both clear, please

I don't think there's much point in trying to look very far ahead at the moment. As the Danish proverb has it:


...and never was this more true than today.

Newquay?

I thought that quote was attributed to Neils Bohr but then again, he was from Denmark of course. Like you said though, never was this more true than today.

Disappointingly, the origin is vague: https://quoteinvestigator.com/tag/niels-bohr/

I could have predicted that ... or maybe I will.

I have always liked his (supposed) answer, when at Copenhagen university, to the question "Given a barometer how would you determine the height of a tall building?".

His answers were:

• Tying a piece of string to the barometer, lowering the barometer from the roof to the ground, and measuring the length of the string and barometer.
• Dropping the barometer off the roof, measuring the time it takes to hit the ground, and calculating the building's height assuming constant acceleration under gravity.
• When the sun is shining, standing the barometer up, measuring the height of the barometer and the lengths of the shadows of both barometer and building, and finding the building's height using similar triangles.
• Tying a piece of string to the barometer, and swinging it like a pendulum both on the ground and on the roof, and from the known pendulum length and swing period, calculate the gravitational field for the two cases. Use Newton's law of gravitation to calculate the radial altitude of both the ground and the roof. The difference will be the height of the building.
• Tying a piece of string to the barometer, which is as long as the height of the building, and swinging it like a pendulum, and from the swing period, calculate the pendulum length.
• Marking off the number of barometer lengths vertically along the emergency staircase, and multiplying this with the length of the barometer.
• Trading the barometer for the correct information with the building's janitor or superintendent.
• Measuring the pressure difference between ground and roof and calculating the height difference (the expected answer).