Archimedes and the principle of density

Archimedes was a Greek scholar born in 287 BCE in Syracuse, which is modern-day Sicily. His father was an astronomer, but not a very famous one, whose name was Phidias. Archimedes studied in the great ancient center of learning Alexandria, Egypt. He went on to study a broad range of fields in science and math such as hydrostatics, geometry, and calculus (Rorres, 1995). He also studied astronomy like his father and helped to invent the planetarium (Rorres, 1995). Furthermore, Archimedes is known as the father of integral calculus (Rorres, 1995). Archimedes is famous in part because he developed the method to measure the density of objects (Rorres, 1995). This method is sometimes known as pycnometry or as the Archimedes' Principle (Rorres, 1995). In addition to his work on calculating density, Archimedes invented many important things including advanced pulley systems and some war machines (Rorres, 1995). Archimedes is considered to be one of the greatest mathematicians of all time because of his many important discoveries.

Apparently, Archimedes discovered his method of measuring density by observing how his body displaced water when he was sitting in a pool. "He realized that the amount of water that spilled was equal in volume to the space that his body occupied," (Day & Capri, 2002). Archimedes applied what he learned about the displacement of water to a variety of physical objects. Archimedes soon observed how different objects had different densities. When their weight is equal, objects with a high density will take up less space than objects with low density. Another way of phrasing the issue is, "the more mass an object contains in a given space, the denser it is," (Day & Capri, 2002).

The history of Archimedes's discovery shows that the mathematician applied the knowledge to determining how pure the king's crown was. The king was concerned that his crown was not made of pure gold. Back in ancient Greece, it was not yet possible to determine the quantity of gold in any given object. Archimedes figured out how to measure the amount of gold in an object by applying the Archimedean principle. Basically, Archimedes decided to "weigh" gold by placing a set amount into a tub of water and then measuring how much water was displaced. For the experiment, Archimedes made sure the amount of gold he measured was the same mass as the king's crown. Then, Archimedes "weighed" the king's crown's density by placing it in water and measuring how much was displaced. By doing this, Archimedes was able to determine that the crown was not made of pure gold. The crown displaced less water than the same amount of gold. Archimedes was able to help the king discover the truth about the craftsman who was making his crown and lying about its gold content (Day & Capri, 2002).