Eureka! I think I figured it out!

Archimedes, 265 BC

War is on the horizon. There is no way to avoid it. The Roman forces approach closer and closer every day that passes by. Despite this, I am still able to have immense successes in Syracuse. It started a while ago when King Hiero II, who happens to be a close family member to me, approached me with a question he wanted answered. As a token of his appreciation for being selected as king, he asked a goldsmith to make him a pure golden crown. Soon after he received the crown, rumors spread to him that the crown was not made of pure gold, but rather had a large amount of silver instead. You might think that this is the part of the story where Hiero has the goldsmith executed. Instead, he managed to approach the situation with a calm mind and asked me if there was any way to figure out his dilemma. While my education and studies in math had prepared me well for any problem that arose in mathematics, I was ill prepared when he asked me to help. I began to ponder the many ways to figure out his dilemma. While the most obvious would have been to just melt it down, Hiero needed it unharmed for when he offered it to the gods as a sign of thanks. No other ways were emerging in my head. The stress began to creep into my soul, so I decided that his crown could wait until after I took a bath. The water felt marvelous as I lowered myself into the water, and the water rose to meet my face. Wait! That was it! That was how I would be able to figure out his crown problem. The volume of any object submersed in water would be the exact same as the volume of water that was displaced. I stood up and shouted “Eureka,”

I even yelled this my entire way back to my house where I began to formulate ideas on how to test it. It was an obvious fact to someone like me that gold is denser than silver. Therefore, a piece of gold and a piece of silver, even if they had the same weight, would have different volumes. So if I was able to figure out the amount of water that was displaced from the crown, and compare it to the amount of water that was displaced from a chunk of gold weighing the same amount, then I could figure out if the goldsmith had cheated our king. After performing our tests, I determined that the crown was not made of pure gold. My fame and popularity are at an all time high now because of this. Despite the highs that come out of this, I am getting tired of being a second hand man to Hiero. He uses me when it is convenient, then just assumes that I am okay with it. For example, he was having issues with the irrigation of his fields. In order to fix this, he dumped the responsibility on me. I came up with an ingenious invention, if I do say so myself. It is a water screw, it takes water from a lower source, and brings it to a higher source. This drawing will explain it better.

When I came up with this idea, not only did he not show much appreciation, but he also tried to take the credit for it. These are the type of things that a king should not do. I hope he realizes for my sake and his that he is wrong. Until next time.

Archimedes

Picture 1:

"Presenting Warren "Archimedes" Buffett's Amazing 24 Hour Monster Bank of America Due Diligence Session." Http://www.zerohedge.com/. Zero Hedge. Web. 20 May 2014.

Picture 2:

Wikipedia. "Archimedes' Screw." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 16 May 2014. Web. 20 May 2014.