Wednesday, October 10

Eureka

Archimedes chillaxes ca 230 BC

Eitan comes home filled with physics. "We are studying Archimedes theory that if you put a solid object into a liquid, you can find the mass of the solid object by seeing how much the water goes up" (now he watches the Simpsons - the one where Bart buys a python for $5 a foot that eats Martin's hamster in show-and-tell).

It all started when King Hiero II was sceptical about his new laurel leaf-shaped crown. The king wanted to know whether the crown was solid gold, or if some other metal had been added.  It was up to Archimedes to figure this out. Only there was one catch: he couldn't destroy the crown.  Now 25 more 12-year olds in on the trick.

My physics weak at best for what I learned en francais at College de Candolle.  Too bad as I find it interesting - certainly more so than chemistry which I pursued through several semesters at Brown despite the miserable lab work. Any case, no need to know physics when I can outsource to Eric.