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RESEARCH ARTICLE
Hidetaka KUROKI
Abstract After Archimedes and Vitruvius era, for more buoyancy though he knew Archimedes’ great achieve-
than 2000 years, it has been believed that the displaced ments well, suggesting that Archimedes found the density
water measurement of golden crown is impossible, and at of things at his Eureka moment.
his Eureka moment, Archimedes discovered the law of More than 1500 years later, Galileo Galilei wrote his first
buoyancy (Proposition 7 of his principles) and proved the short treatise entitled “La Bilancetta” (The Little Balance)
theft of a goldsmith by weighing the golden crown in in 1586 [3] and stated his disbelief in the story of Vitruvius.
water. Galileo thought that the measurement of displaced (or
A previous study showed that a small amount of overflowed) water volume by a golden crown (maybe the
displaced water was able to be measured with enough shape was a wreath) was impossible. Finally, he concluded
accuracy by the introduced method. Archimedes measured that Archimedes had found the law of buoyancy and
the weight of displaced water. He did not find the law of measured the weight of those things in water to prove the
buoyancy but rather specific gravity of things at the theft of a goldsmith at the moment.
moment. Even in modern times, it is believed that the measure-
After which, Archimedes continued to measure the ment of displaced water volume is impossible [4].
specific gravity of various solids and fluids. Through these The rationale is as follows. The golden crown is
measurements, he reached the discovery of the law of supposed to be 1000 g, and 30% of the gold of the
buoyancy directly by experiment. In this paper, the process crown was stolen and replaced with silver. The volume
to the discovery of Archimedes’ principle (Proposition 5) difference between the golden crown and the same weight
is presented. of a pure gold lump will be only 13 cm3 if the opening
diameter of the vessel is 20 cm; the difference of 13 cm3 is
Keywords Archimedes’ principle, buoyancy, specific only 0.4 mm in water height. Such a small difference
gravity, Eureka, Vitruvius, displaced water, balance, cannot be measured.
floating body Furthermore, The New Encyclopaedia Britannica says
“The story that he determined the proportion of gold and
silver in a wreath made for Hieron by weighing it in water
1 Introduction is probably true” [5].
Numerous books or writings about the Eureka story
Archimedes ran through a street in Syracuse naked with have been made through more than 2000 years worldwide.
much joy shouting “Eureka! (I found it)” repeatedly. This As a result, these conclusions were made, and there seem
story was reported by Vitruvius, an architect during the 1st to be no comments about the process to the great discovery.
century BC, in his book Ten Books on Architecture [1,2]. A paper titled “What did Archimedes find at “Eureka”
Archimedes has been widely believed to be the one that moment?” was presented at the Archimedes 2010
discovered the law of buoyancy at that time. conference in Syracuse [6]. In the paper, the following
However, Vitruvius did not mention about the law of items are pointed:
1) The displaced water volume measurement by a
golden crown is possible with enough accuracy by the
Received July 19, 2015; accepted October 20, 2015 introduced method through the use of items that Archi-
Hidetaka KUROKI ( )✉ medes could prepare.
2) Archimedes could not express displaced water
Okazaki, Aichi-ken 444-0076, Japan
E-mail: hide-emon5303@outlook.com volume numerically. There were no glass-made accurate
Hidetaka KUROKI. The process from the Eureka moment to the discovery of Archimedes’ principle 27
4) The water drop intervals become longer. Then, the 4.2.1 Measurement at forcibly sunk condition
flow stops (Fig. 2, right). This is the basic measuring point
(OFP). This point may be considered as the ‘very brim’ Floating objects are sunk forcibly by using a 3-needle-
point that Vitruvius wrote in his book. device and the displaced water is measured. The results are
5) Next, the cup is changed to a measuring cup to receive shown in Table 2.
the displaced water.
6) An object is put into the vessel. It should not be 4.2.2 Measurement at naturally floating condition
placed so roughly, but also not so quietly.
7) At first, water flows out rapidly. The flow decreases The floating objects are measured at a naturally floating
slowly and changes to water drops, then stops at OFP. condition (Table 3).
8) The water cup is taken off and its weight is measured The weights of the floating objects are found just the
by a balance. By using a counter weight equal to the empty same as displaced water weights.
cup, only the displaced water is easily weighed as shown in
Fig. 3. 4.3 Liquids
9) The measured object is taken out from the vessel and
wiped off to dry for the next measurement. The displaced liquid weight by each object is divided by
the displaced water weight that is measured in former
measurements. Here, these solid objects are used only for
4 Specific gravity measurement of various volumetric bodies.
things
4.3.1 Sea water
The results in each table are the average of 10 measure-
The SG of sea water is shown in Table 4, which is
ments.
determined as 1.02.
4.1 Solid objects heavier than water
4.3.2 10% salt water
The weight of a measured object is divided by the
displaced water weight. The SG values in Table 1 is The SG of 10% salt water is determined as 1.08 (it is found
clarified by Archimedes by this experiment for the first as lighter than 1.10) as shown in Table 5.
time in the world.
4.3.3 Olive oil
4.2 Solid objects lighter than water
The liquid characteristics of olive oil are much different
Three floating objects are tested (Fig. 4). from water, such as viscosity, surface tension, SG, etc.
Table 1 Specific gravity measurement of the chosen heavier solid In the Archimedes era, a clepsydra is used for time
objects keeping. It is a vessel having a hole at the bottom. And it
Object Weight/g Displaced water/g Specific gravity sinks in water for an arranged time length. An example of
Gold lump 1000.0 51.4 19.5 clepsydra is shown in Fig. 7. This sinks around 2 min after
Silver lump 1000.0 95.3 10.5
immersed in water. Archimedes might use a clepsydra like
this (in this paper, a countdown timer is used). The results
GC25S 1000.0 65.3 15.3
of Table 6 are the average of 5 measurement data.
Natural stone 610.1 227.2 2.7 The SG of olive oil is determined as 0.91. As the
beeswax is 0.95 heavier than olive oil, it sinks.
From these results, the SG of various solids and liquids
Therefore, its measuring condition is also different from are clearly presented. However, Archimedes did not
water. The tongue attached under the beak of the vessel mention anything regarding this in his writings. The
needs to be a large triangle shape (its width at the end of the physical properties, such as SG, may not be worthwhile for
beak is 20 mm and its length is 40 mm) and a time of more him.
than 20 min is needed to finish dropping.
Figure 5 shows the dropped olive oil weight curves after 4.3.4 Notice of principle of floatation by Archimedes
the changing point of continuous flow to drops. The results
show the different curves. In item 4.2.2, the weights of floating objects are the same
Figure 6 shows the curves on 2 to 20 min (cleared to 0 g as the weights of displaced water. “Maybe, this is the
at 2 min), which show very similar curves. At 20 min, their principle of floatation” Archimedes noticed. “Any solid
difference is only 1.3 g. Then the 2 min after changing lighter than water will, if placed in water, be so far
point is chosen as the end point for the olive oil flow. immersed that the weight of the solid will be equal to the
Table 2 Specific gravity measurement at forcibly sunk condition Table 3 Displaced water measurement of floating objects
Object Weight/g Displaced water/g Specific gravity Object Weight/g Displaced water/g Difference/g
Beeswax 261.9 275.5 0.95 Beeswax 261.9 261.8 –0.1
Wood block 132.9 303.7 0.44 Wood block 132.9 133.1 + 0.8
Glass cup 210.0 – – Glass cup 210.0 210.0 0.0
*: Beeswax sinks in olive oil; **: Wood Block is forcibly sunk by 3-needle-
device.
Fig. 7 Clepsydra, as 2 min timer The displaced liquid weight is measured in sea water being
SG = 1.02. As shown in Table 7, difference is only – 0.5 to
weight of water displaced”. However, only water is 0.4 g. Displaced sea water weight is also equal to object
measured so far. Other liquids are tested for generalization. weight.
4.4 Floating object measurement in various liquids 4.4.2 10% salt water
The displaced liquid weights by floating objects are Displaced liquid weight is measured in 10% salt water
measured in various liquids having different SG. being SG = 1.08. As shown in Table 8, difference is at most
Hidetaka KUROKI. The process from the Eureka moment to the discovery of Archimedes’ principle 31
4.4.3 Olive oil Fig. 8 Volume difference of displaced liquid by glass cup
5 Flow from Eureka moment to the The process to the discovery has not been explained until
discovery now.
However, in this paper, the process from the Eureka
moment to the discovery of Proposition 5 is clarified in this
Even nowadays, the process by which Archimedes
paper.
discovered the law of buoyancy has not been made clear.
Afterwards, Archimedes measured the weight of heavier
In the previous and current paper [6], the process from
solids in liquids and found Proposition 7. This is a very
the Eureka moment to the discovery is shown.
accurate method even in nowadays. It is used for
The flow is summarized as follows: investigating the purity of noble metal accessories.
1) In a bath, Archimedes suddenly got the solution of Archimedes’ interest was mainly in the mathematical
King Hieron’s problem and ran naked on a Syracuse street, principle. He also made many great developments on the
shouting “Eureka”. field of mechanics. His achievements are recognized as the
2) He measured a small amount of the displaced water of
important foundations for modern mechanics.
the crown by using a certain method.
This paper clearly showed the process on how
3) There were no glass-made measuring cylinders in his
Archimedes discovered the law of buoyancy, one of his
era. Thus, he measured the weight of the displaced water.
great achievements, through an experiment.
He determined the purity of the golden crown and proved
the theft of the goldsmith.
4) At the Eureka moment, Archimedes found the SG of
things.
References
5) After this moment, he continued to determine the SG
of many kinds of solids and liquids. 1. Pollio M V. Ten Books on Architecture (trans. Morgan M H).
6) During these measurements, he noticed that the Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2010 (Original work published
displaced water weights are the same as floating bodies. 1st century BC)
7) By conducting experiments on other liquids having 2. Pollio M V. Kenchikusho (in Japanese, trans. Morita Keiichi). Tokyo:
different SGs, he reached the discovery of the law of Toukai University Press, 1979 (Original work published 1st century
buoyancy (Proposition 5). BC)
3. Galileo Galilei. The Little Balance (in Japanese, trans. Toshiyuki
Fujita). Skaino-Meicho, 1975, 21: 36–41 (Original work published
6 Conclusions 1586)
4. Archimedes Homepage by Prof. Chris Rorres of Drexel University.
http://www.math.nyu.edu/~crorres/Archimedes
After the Archimedes and Vitruvius era, for more than 5. Encyclopaedia Britannica Inc. The New Encyclopaedia Britannica.
2000 years, it has been thought that the displaced water is 15th ed. Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2007
so little that the measurement of a golden crown is 6. Kuroki H. What did Archimedes find at “Eureka” moment? In:
impossible. Thus, at the Eureka moment, Archimedes Paipetis S A, Ceccarelli M, eds. The Genius of Archimedes—23
found the law of buoyancy and proved the theft by Centuries of Influence on Mathematics, Science and Engineering.
weighing it in water. This relates to Proposition 7 of Amsterdam: Springer, 2010, 265–276
Archimedes’ the principle. Proposition 5 is the most 7. Heath T L. The Works of Archimedes. Cambridge: Cambridge
famous but seems to be considered as a theoretical clause. University Press, 1897, 253–260