Impia tortorum longos hic turba furores

Sanguinis innocui non satiata aluit.

Sospite nunc patria, fracto nunc funeris antro,

Mors ubi dira fuit vita salusque patent.

The Grand Inquisitor summoned his assistant.

"The prisoner, this ..." he could barely bring himself to say the words, "this Man of Science. What have you learned?"

The assistant was a valued servant and could talk more freely than others in the presence of the Grand Inquisitor.

"We took the prisoner in shackles to the highest tower of the town, Your Worship, so that he could demonstrate his experiments."

"Go on."

"Firstly, he said he needed to establish what he called the local conditions, since he maintained that they can vary over our kingdom. He bade one of our soldiers climb partway up the tower and release a weight, whose descent he timed."

"Curious."

"Then we ascended to the pinnacle of the tower and suspended another weight on the end of a great length of hemp, Your Worship, in accordance with his instructions; but he neither knew the weight, nor the length."

"What next?"

"At the bottom of the tower, we displaced the weight horizontally such that the suspending line made a small angle to the vertical; then on the prisoner's mark, we released the weight so that it might freely swing to and fro."

"Do not insult my intelligence, assistant, I know well how a pendulum works!" barked the Grand Inquisitor.

The assistant regained his composure and continued.

"The prisoner measured but two things: the period of one complete swing and the initial angle of displacement."

"And ..."

"And, Your Worship, after a number of calculations on the parchment that we provided him with, the prisoner was then able to tell us the exact length of the suspending line, and the speed of the weight at the lowest part of the arc that it described."

"What sorcery is this? Was he correct?"

"Yes, Your Worship, our own advisors were able to confirm by measurements that the prisoner's calculations were indeed correct."

"Show me."

The assistant passed the Grand Inquisitor some parchment annotated with many figures and symbols.

"What do these mean?" demanded the Grand Inquisitor, pointing at unfamiliar units of measurement in the prisoner's workings.

"The prisoner worked in units he called métrico, although our own advisors have confirmed the final results."

The Grand Inquisitor thought carefully for several minutes, stroking his beard absent-mindedly; then he made an announcement.

"We shall establish further trials for the prisoner; perhaps we can learn more from this Man of Science before his fate is sealed ..."

Residential Geocoin (May 2013)

Amberel kindly custom-made one of his Top Cache geocoins for this cache. It is called El Tesoro de Torquemada and is trackable on its geocaching.com webpage. I have chosen to hide it as a RESIDENTIAL geocoin alongside the logbook. I hope that you will discover it, if you like to see coins and collect icons (as I do).