The Gold Crown

The king of Syracuse, Hiero, wanted a golden crown. He weighed a lump of gold and ordered a goldsmith to make him a crown with it. The goldsmith returned with a crown that weighed exactly the same as the lump of gold. The king was happy.

After a while, however, the king grew suspicious. The goldsmith might not have put all the gold into the crown. He might have used some other metal. The king called Archimedes to help him determine whether any other metal had been mixed into the crown.

Archimedes thought and thought, but he couldn't figure out a way to determine whether the goldsmith had melted silver in the crown. One day he decided to go to the baths. As he got into the tub, some water sloshed out. He had solved his problem. Archimedes ran out on the streets shouting "Eureka, Eureka!" He was so excited that he hadn’t bothered to put his clothes on!

The experiment was very simple. Archimedes filled a jar to the brim, dropped the crown in it, and gathered the water that flowed out. Then he replaced the water in the jar and dropped in a lump of gold the same weight as the crown. He found that the lump of gold caused less water to overflow than the crown. This meant that the crown occupied more volume, or space, than the lump of gold. This, in turn meant that the crown was not all-pure gold and that the king had been cheated.

Death of Archimedes

212 BC- When a Roman army under Marcellus attacked the Greek city-state of Syracuse, a seaport on Sicily, Archimedes organized the defense. He invented some mechanical weapons, which he mounted on the city’s walls. These machines were tested in battle. The Romans lost. Marcellus then decided to besiege the city. The Roman army set camp.

During a truce, Marcellus studied the city’s walls from the inside. He noticed that one place in the wall did not have traps there. During a celebration, the Syracusans feasted. Marcellus led some Romans to the undefended part of the wall. No one noticed them.

Whhen the Romans began looting, the Roman general gave orders that Archimedes was to be spared. Unfortunately, Archimedes was working out a problem. He had not noticed that the city was captured. A Roman soldier came and asked him to go with him. When Archimedes refused to go until he had finished working out his problem, the enraged soldier unsheathed his blade and killed him.