2006-10-06 02:06:30 · 7 answers · asked by UNIVERSAL 1 in Science & Mathematics ➔ Other - Science
He discovered the principle of displacement while taking a bath. This allowed him to measure the volume of a solid object and, using that information, divide by mass to determine density. Density allowed him to determine the purity of metals which allowed him to solve a problem given to him which required him to find out if a piece of jewlery was pure gold or if it had been mixed with another metal so that the jewler could steal some gold.
He yelled out "Eureka (I have found it)" and ran through the streets naked.
2006-10-06 02:14:59 · answer #1 · answered by insideoutsock 3 · 2⤊ 0⤋
"Eureka" is Greek for "I have found it." Archimedes was known in his days for being a person who could think his way through problems, and one day the King came to him with a problem: The King had been given a crown that was supposedly made out of gold, but he had reason to believe that it was actually silver that was plated with gold. He wanted to find out if this was the case, but he didn't know how to prove it without actually cutting the crown open. So one day, while Archimedes was thinking about this he got into a bathtub and the water overflowed the sides. That's when he hit on the idea that is now known as Archimedes' Principle -- the idea that a certain material of a certain weight will displace an amount of water that is equal to its volume when submerged in water. Once he figured that out, he ran naked through the streets screaming "Eureka!" Since gold and silver are different metals with different weights, he was able to determine by submerging the crown in water that it DID NOT displace an amount of water that was equal in volume to a crown made of solid gold.
2006-10-06 02:17:46 · answer #2 · answered by sarge927 7 · 1⤊ 0⤋
Good stuff from most answerers so far. The king had given the goldsmith a pound of gold, and got back a crown weighing a pound which looked the same colour, but he still thought the goldsmith might have cheated him. He could have pocketed a few ounces of gold and made the crown of maybe as little as 18 carat gold (18 parts gold and 6 parts silver), but no less, or the colour would have been a giveaway. Alternatively he could have pocketed quite a lot of gold and built the crown as a thick layer of the original gold over a copper or silver inner form. But 24 carat gold is densest of all, 18 carat gold is less dense, and copper and silver are less dense again, so the answer to whether the crown had been alloyed or base-metal filled lay in its VOLUME.
Supposedly when Archimedes jumped into his brim-full bathtub and it overflowed, he twigged that the volume of water which spilled out was equal to the volume of his own body, so here was a way of getting the exact volume of a hard-to-measure irregular solid. As far as I remember, the goldsmith was found to be a fraud, and never goldsmithed again.
2006-10-06 05:22:30 · answer #3 · answered by Anonymous · 1⤊ 0⤋
in the bathtub when he discovered water displacement. I'm not sure exactly what year, but it was before the common era (over 2000 years).
as the story goes, he was trying to figure out how to see if the someone had stolen gold from the kings crown. When he got into the tub and saw the watter spill, he understood that the more dense an object, the more water it displaces. So they got a weight equal to what the crown was SUPPOSED to weigh, and saw how much water it displaced, then put in the crown to see if it displaced the same ammount
2006-10-06 02:17:08 · answer #4 · answered by minds over matter 2 · 0⤊ 1⤋
Archimedes discovered his principle while in bath tub. He ran out of it naked shouting "eureka" "eureka". Eureka means I found out.
2006-10-06 02:13:25 · answer #5 · answered by J.SWAMY I ఇ జ స్వామి 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Wow! Thankss! I was asking myself the same question yesterday
2016-08-23 08:15:04 · answer #6 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
Was thinking to ask this question too
2016-08-08 16:34:15 · answer #7 · answered by ? 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋