Page 140 - 182910043-Traveller-G5-Literature-English-FY_Neat

to the gold given to the goldsmith by the king. The
king looked at the colour of the crown. He had a
suspicion. The goldsmith could have stolen some from
the gold handed over to him. The king wanted to find
out the truth. The king said to Archimedes, ‘Find out
how much gold has been stolen.’

But how was Archimedes to do that? Archimedes
thought about the problem day and night! One brim
suspicion day, Archimedes was about to take his bath. He
was busy thinking about the problem and did not notice that the
bathtub was already full to the brim. As he slid into the bathtub, a
large quantity of water flowed
over the brim of the bathtub. What words did
He noticed this and suddenly Archimedes shout
realised that he had the answer ? when he found
to his problem. He jumped out the solution to the
Archimedes
of the bathtub, shouting ‘Eureka! king’s problem?
Eureka!’ ‘Eureka’ in Greek means ‘I have found it’.

Do you know that different metals of the same weight have different volumes?
Objects, when put in water, displace water. The volume of the water displaced by
the object is equal to the volume of the object. For example, an iron cube weighing a
kilogram will displace some water. However, an aluminium cube of the same weight
will displace more water than the iron cube.

Archimedes knew all these theories. Using this knowledge, Archimedes worked out a
plan to find out the purity of the gold in the crown. Archimedes took two bowls. He
filled both the bowls with water to the brim. Then, he placed each bowl separately in
the middle of a large vessel. He placed the crown in a bowl. Water overflowed and
collected at the bottom of the outer vessel.

Then, he took a cube of pure gold. This cube was equal in weight to the crown. He
kept this gold cube in the middle of the second bowl. Again, water overflowed and
got collected at the bottom of the outer bowl.

Archimedes then measured the quantities of water in these two outer vessels. He
found out the difference between the two quantities. The crown had displaced more
water, while the gold cube displaced less. However, since both the crown and the
gold cube were of the same weight, they should have displaced the same amount of
water.

Therefore, it became clear that the crown had other metals mixed in it. These metals
took up more space in water than pure gold.

136

English_G5_TB_Book.indb 136 11/23/2017 4:41:45 PM