More than 2,000 years ago, Hiero II, the ruler ofSyracuse, Sicily, was feeling frustrated. He had given a local goldsmith a nice piece of gold and asked for him to create a beautiful crown. However, when the craftsman delivered the final project, Hiero had the strong suspicion that he had pocketed some of the gold and made the crown out of a mixture of gold andother, cheaper metals. He asked the goldsmith, who of course assured him that the crown was entirely gold. But he couldn’t shake the feeling that he had been cheated. So, he summoned Archimedes, a local physicist and brilliant scientist, and asked if he could figure out a way to test the composition of the crownwithout melting it down (which was the only way to ascertain composition at thetime). Archimedes spent weeks trying to devise a strategy. Every day, he would sit in his studyand ponder different scientific principles and approaches. And every day he returned home without answers. Finally, there was one day he was just exhausted. After hours of trying without luck, he decided to visit the bathhouse. It was there, as he sat down in the hot water, that he suddenly had an epiphany. Henoticed that his body entering the water displaced water corresponding to thevolume of his body. If that was true, he thought, then he could test the contents of the crown by placing the amount of gold Hiero had given for the project in water and then seeing if that gold displaced the same amount ofwater as the crown that had been fashioned. His mind was racing. I’ve got it! He jumped out of the bath, shrieking “Eureka, I’ve got it!” He was so excited, he couldn’t wait. He took off running naked through the streets of Syracuseshouting “Eureka! I’ve got it!” Archimedes was right on the money. He performed his experiment and proved that the crown had indeed been constructed of a blend of metals, and the goldsmith had indeedpocketed some of the gold intended for the crown. And he didn’t just solve the problem, he invented a principle which is still utilized today. Known as the Archimedes Principle, his discovery more than 2,000 years ago still helps us to design ships and submarines, to study fluid mechanics, and with important engineering and physics projects. Here’s what I find so amazing about Archimedes’ discovery. He went to the bathhouse not because he was intending to continue his research and when he sat down inthat water, it wasn’t that he was trying to evaluate how much fluid would be displaced. However, somehow it happened that when he changed his physical environment, that change affected his internal environment and allowed him to expand his thinking and to solve the problem. We’ve all lived this. We’ve been in that struggle—trying to write a paper or solve a puzzle or figure out a plan for dinner. We too have found ourselves spinning wheels until we make the choice to do something else or go somewhere else and suddenly a dazzling new idea comes to us.
