Audiostretto 59/4/24 English

If you spill something, especially sweet liquid or something sticky, you have to clean it up, because otherwise the mess will remain and, in the worst case, be spread and create a hygiene problem. A wipe is worth its weight in gold in such a case. If you can moisten it, you can simply wipe over it a few times for smaller amounts and the mess is cleaned up. The spilled substance is then in the clot...

It's one of those terms that we rarely use and that sound a bit old-fashioned in Swiss German and not modern or trendy at the moment. I am thinking of the word tenacity. On the one hand, it sounds a bit dusty, and on the other hand, what it means is anything but trendy. Today, everything has to be done quickly and immediately. And if it doesn't work, an alternative has to be found immediat...

Maybe you are also one of those who like spaghetti. And as far as I know, spaghetti is always served with a sauce - be it Bolognese, Napoli, Verdura and others. In my experience, the spaghetti is then nicely turned into a kind of heap or almost a ball in the middle of the plate and the corresponding sauce is then served on top as a topping. The sauce and the spaghetti are not mixed in the best pos...

There is a well-known poem on the Roman Fountain by C.F. Meyer, which he published in 1882. It is relatively short and describes how the water of a fountain goes from one bowl to the next. So a giving and taking, a flowing and resting. It sounds so gentle and balanced. Perhaps it is, too, when you watch the water play. But what you can't see, or hardly see, is the considerable energy that brin...

There are different types of drones and they have developed enormously in recent years. One type is the so-called quadcopter. It has four rotors and can be steered so that it can fly in all directions without having to turn around first. So there is no front or back in the real sense. This construction reminded me of something quite different that took place more than a few thousand years ago: it...

In English there is a saying "the proof of the pudding is in the eating". In other words: try something out to see what you have or what it's good for. On the other hand, I often notice that, due to our spirit of the time, many people often have very concrete opinions about things that they don't even know from their own experience. People act as if they knew what it was all abou...

There are various symbols in figurative language or allegories. For example, the drop that makes a barrel overflow. In this case, the drop is not meant literally, but simply something very, very tiny, but enough to cause a situation to escalate in the end. Or the blind chicken that finds a grain of corn: It means that even the most incapable person can succeed in something, even if it is only a pu...

The other day I was thinking about how often, or rather how rarely, I still travel with cash and how dominant cashless payment has become for me and many others. You pay by mobile phone or hold your credit card up to a contactless sensor that securely handles the entire financial transaction. But what is behind all this? Establishing a bank connection from A to B, transferring the exact amount, re...

When I was swimming in the Rhine recently and a motorboat passing me at some distance caused considerable waves, I had great difficulty keeping my bearings while crawling. The ups and downs of the waves confused my sense of direction and I could no longer rely on it exclusively, but had to look up much more often to see which way I was swimming. I have experienced the same thing in my professional...

Have you ever had to defrost a refrigerator or freezer? Then you may have been amazed at how much ice has accumulated on the inside walls. Or maybe you have noticed that it takes a lot of force to open the door of the refrigerator or freezer immediately after it has just been closed. Both have to do with insulation. In other words, how well does the door close, or how well insulated or tightly doe...

If you imagine a radio or even have one in front of you, you will certainly see certain elements such as a tuning device for the stations, an on/off button, the loudspeaker and possibly more. And all this in an attractive design. Why so much effort? You could leave out the whole cover and the design and make the device smaller and cheaper. Maybe. But it would also be more dangerous. Dangerous for...

The term horizon originally comes from ancient Greek and means boundary line - which actually makes sense. It is the line that ultimately gives our farsightedness its limit. Seeing further is not possible. Not with all our efforts. And even if we were in a total plain - like on the beach of an ocean, for example, and looked across it - somewhere there is a limit, we simply cannot see any further....

If you want to protect something from external influences, then you surround it with a suitable cover or other protective mechanism. So if it needs to be resistant to sharp objects or blows, it needs to be a hard, tough shell. The harder, the better - but the harder, the more inflexible in most cases. So if you want to have maximum freedom of movement at the same time as maximum protection, you ca...

When I give you the keyword wild boar - what do you think of? Asterix and Obelix? Or a hairy pig's head with sickle-like, pointed canine teeth sticking out of its mouth on the right and left? Most - I suspect - are associations of a stereotypical kind. Simply because very few of us have had the opportunity to observe and study wild boar undisturbed over a longer period of time and thus form a...

I have never stood in front of a volcano that is erupting or a fountain from the earth's interior. The closest I've come in this direction were fountains that threw a dense jet of water from a pool into the air with enormous force. What a force, I thought, what a pressure must be needed here. After all, it is not only necessary to move the water, which is not light in itself, at an enormou...

In English, the term for the dial of a watch can be "watchface". Literally translated, it is the face of a watch. I like this term. It expresses: the face of the watch, its essence, so to speak, is expressed in the dial, in what is visible to the viewer. The movement behind it is not necessarily visible. But what the watch shows to the outside world - that is its face, its dial. It is th...

Imagine walking with your shoes over a fallow field after a rainy previous day. When you arrive home and step into the flat or house with your shoes, clods of soil come off the field and you dirty the entrance area. Annoying. In that case. So you see dirt in the ground that you have to clean up. But if you stand in front of the same field and plan to sow your seeds, you see in this soil the nutrie...

In our days, the term work-life balance is very prominent. It's about finding a good balance between work and leisure: Energy to work paired with enough relaxation time. That is understandable. But when I think about it and think of other areas where balance or equilibrium play a role - then artists who walk the high wire or otherwise balance come to mind. In their example, I perceive that the...

When I was a child and was asked by the sports club where my father worked as a volunteer what I could give him for Christmas, my mother gave me the tip: aftershave, a very specific one. That's how I grew up with the idea that an aftershave was part of a shave. When I was ready to shave and tried out my father's aftershave lotion, my skin, sore from shaving, burned like fire. But that'...

These days, as I create this episode, the temperatures outside are making huge leaps. From a great to extreme heat to a drop in temperature with heavy rain. And immediately the buzzword climate crisis and everything related to it becomes effective and prominent in the media. But I also see other things that change, even if not from one day to the next: nature, the types of grain that grow and ripe...

In our Swiss dialect there is the expression "Raschelsäggli", at least in Basel German. This refers to a small plastic bag of a very special material. The packaging usually says "Mehrzweckbeutel" (multi-purpose bag) - which is what nobody calls or uses in our country. But that at least gives the purpose. Such expressions are of course different and specific from region to regio...

Did you know that the average human pair of eyes has about 420 eyelashes? There are more above the eye than below. Did you also know what they are for? Or that practically all mammals have eyelashes? The eyelashes serve as protection for the eye in many ways. While the eyebrows keep the forehead sweat away from the eye, they keep particles away from the eye or favourably deflect wind so that the e...

At school we had the subject geometry. There we learned the special properties of special geometric shapes and how to construct them. For example, equilateral triangles or the centres of gravity of any triangle, or that the radius of a full circle can be drawn exactly seven times on it, or what special feature a Thales circle has, or how to construct median perpendiculars, and so on. These propert...

In the German language, when rudder is used, it is not quite clear what is meant: is it the rudder with which a rower actively propels and moves the motorless boat in the water or, in the case of a motor-driven boat or ship, is it the rear part that determines the direction of travel? Either way, the part belongs in the water to serve its purpose. Measured by its size, it is enormously effective:...

On a bicycle, the wheels have to be filled with air from time to time. To do this, the valve is screwed on and air is forced into the tube with overpressure. The valve is designed in such a way that air can get in but not out. The principle can also be found in other applications: a door or flap that can only be opened or moved in one direction, but is blocked in the other direction in such a way...