Eureka! I have found it

Sham S. Misri

Hiero was the king of Syracuse. He wanted to wear the biggest crown in the world. Some say, the crown would have been in the form of a wreath, so that the king, Hiero would have placed such a wreath on the statue of a god or goddess. So he called in a famous goldsmith, who was skillful in all kinds of fine work, and gave him ten pounds of pure gold.

Sham S. Misri

"Take this," he said, "and fashion it into a crown that shall make every other king want it for his own. Be sure that you put into it every grain of the gold I give you, and do not mix any other metal with it."

"It shall be as you wish," said the goldsmith. "Here I receive from you ten pounds of pure gold; within ninety days I will return to you the finished crown which shall be of exactly the same weight."

Ninety days later, true to his word, the goldsmith brought the crown. It was a beautiful piece of work, and all who saw it said that it had not its equal in the world. Now King Hiero was sure that no other king had so fine a crown. After he had admired it, he weighed it on his own scales. It was exactly as heavy as he had ordered.

"You deserve great praise," he said to the goldsmith. "You have shaped the crown very skillfully and you have not lost a grain of my gold."

There was in the king's court a very wise man whose name was Archimedes. When he was called in to admire the king's crown he examined it very closely.

"Well, what do you think of it?" asked Hiero.

“‘Well, what do you think of it?' asked Hiero."

"The workmanship is indeed very beautiful," answered Archimedes, "but—but the gold—"

"The gold is all there," cried the king. "I weighed it on my own scales."

"True," said Archimedes, "but it does not appear to have the same rich red color that it had in the lump. It is not red at all, but a brilliant yellow, as you can plainly see." Suspecting that the goldsmith might have replaced some of the gold given to him by an equal weight of silver,

"Most gold is yellow," said Hiero; "but now that you speak of it I do remember that when this was in the lump it had a much richer color."

"What if the goldsmith has kept out a pound or two of the gold and made up the weight by adding brass or silver?" asked Archimedes.

"Oh, he could not do that," said Hiero; "the gold has merely changed its color in the working." But the more he thought of the matter the less pleased he was with the crown. At last he said to Archimedes, "Is there any way to find out whether that goldsmith really cheated me, or whether he honestly gave me back my gold?" Hiero asked Archimedes to determine whether the wreath was pure gold. And because the wreath was a holy object dedicated to the gods, he could not disturb the wreath in any way.

Archimedes took great delight in working out hard problems. He thought about the gold and tried to find some way by which it could be tested without doing harm to the crown.

One morning he was thinking of this question while he was getting ready for a bath. The great bowl or tub was full to the very edge, and as he stepped into it a quantity of water flowed out upon the stone floor. A similar thing had happened a hundred times before, but this was the first time that Archimedes had thought about it.

"How much water did I displace by getting into the tub?" he asked himself. "Anybody can see that I displaced a bulk of water equal to the bulk of my body. A man half my size would displace half as much.

"Now suppose, instead of putting myself into the tub, I had put Hiero's crown into it, it would have displaced a bulk of water equal to its own bulk. All let me see! Gold is much heavier than silver. Ten pounds of pure gold will not make so great a bulk as say eight pounds of gold mixed with two pounds of silver. If Hiero's crown is pure gold it will displace the same bulk of water as any other ten pounds of pure gold. But if it is part gold and part silver it will displace a larger bulk. I have it at last! Eureka! Eureka!"

Forgetful of everything else he leaped from the bath. Without stopping to dress himself, he ran through the streets to the king's palace shouting, "Eureka! Eureka! Eureka!" which in English means, "I have found it! I have found it! I have found it!"

The crown was tested. It was found to displace much more water than ten pounds of pure gold displaced. The guilt of the goldsmith was proved beyond a doubt.

 Archimedes (298 BC- 212 BC) was the greatest mathematician of ancient times. A native of Syracuse, in Sicily, he was killed during its capture by the Romans in the Second Punic War. Stories describe machines including the catapult, the compound pulley, and a burning-mirror invented by Archimedes for the defense of Syracuse. He spent some time in Egypt, where he invented a device now known as Archimedes' screw. This simple device could bring water from a lower to a high level.Archimedes is also remembered for demonstrating the principle of the lever. His famous saying  “Give me long lever and I will move the whole world."