Science is peppered with stories of discovery, with some of the biggest breakthroughs coming from seemingly everyday occurrences. One of the oldest and well-known tale revolves around Archimedes' legendary “Eureka!” moment when he realised the principle of buoyancy while taking a bath. But did the event actually happen, or was it an ancient story that got misinterpreted as the years went by? Let's have a closer look into this discovery story. The story Archimedes's tale takes place some 2,200 years ago when King Hieron II of Syracuse in Sicily gave a jeweller a bar of gold and ordered him to make it into a crown. The king, however, suspected that the jeweller had substituted some of the gold for cheaper metal like silver, while pocketing the leftover gold. The king had no way of proving his suspicions, so he asked Archimedes – a Greek mathematician, engineer, inventor, and astronomer – to find a definitive answer. Archimedes had spent a long time t...
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