Archimedes

Archimedes

Archimedes of Syracuse was Greek mathematician, physicist, engineer, inventor, and astronomer. He lived during the 3rd century BC. According to history he was in the bath one day when he discovered the principle of buoyancy. He noticed that as he lowered himself into the bath, the water displaced by his body overflowed the sides and he realized that there was a relationship between his weight and the volume of water displaced. It is said that he ran naked into the street yelling "eureka"(I found it).

Archimedes was on a mission to solve a question that was asked of him by King Hieron II of Syracuse, the home of Archimedes which was a Greek city at the time. The question that the king had asked was about his crown. Was it pure gold or partly silver? Archimedes reasoned that if the crown had any silver in it, it would take up more space than a pure gold crown of the same weight because silver is not as dense as gold. He compared the crown's volume (measured by the amount of water displaced) with the volume of equal weights of gold and then silver, he found the answer. He had to inform his king that the crown was not pure gold.