Archimedes - Eureka!

I came across this sculpture the other day and decided to come back to blip another day as it looked really intriguing. It's quite close to where I work so I can easily get there in my 40 minute lunch break.

Imagine my surprise when I noticed my friend and fellow blipper NellieD had also noticed this statue today! Great minds! Hehe.

It's a very strange looking statue! The plaque just says

"Archimedes
by
Thompson W Dagnall"

So I looked it up and it's Archimedes jumping out of his bath in a eureka moment - apparently before running down the streets naked shouting Eureka!

"Most people have heard the story of his Eureka moment, but not everyone knows the story behind it.


King Hiero II had asked a goldsmith to make a crown for him and supplied the gold. He suspected that the goldsmith had cheated him and used some silver in the crown. He asked Archimedes to test the crown for him, but without melting it down. 

At first Archimedes couldn’t think of a way of doing it, but one day getting in to his bath he noticed that the level of the water rose. He suddenly realised that the amount of water displaced would equal the volume of his body. He supposedly became so excited that he leapt from the bath and ran through the streets naked shouting ‘Eureka’ (Greek for “I have found it”). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eureka_(word)

He went on to test the crown and proved that the crown indeed had some silver content.

In reality there are difficulties in measuring volume this way, and it is not totally accurate."

When the statue was first erected the local students couldn't resist getting into the bath with the naked Archimedes and were a bit clumsy and broke his nose off. Over the years he's had attention from a few students and been photographed wearing sunglasses, with a rose in his mouth and with a road cone!

I also noticed a plaque right near the statue to say that there are trees nearby which were grown from clippings of the tree which is famous for Newton developing his theory of gravitation!