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Fan girls for Archimedes

Archimedes, we learned in eighth-grade science, had been in the bathtub when he came up with his Principle.

He yelled “Eureka!”

We weren’t told when this happened, just that he was “an ancient Greek.” We pictured an unhinged geezer, flailing nakedly, proclaiming his greatness.

My best friend, “M,” and I were grossed out by the old guy’s flashing. We were self-conscious, body-obsessed 13-year-olds. “Archimedes must’ve been a dirty old man,” we concluded.

Still, to learn his silly principle, we invented a jingle:

Any object

Placed in a fluid

Is buoyed up by a force

Equal to the weight

Of the fluid it displaces

Unh. (Our closing grunt.)

Decades later, at a teachers’ meeting, I recited that jingle, and an audience member cried, “That’s a rap!”

I couldn’t bring myself to claim that two teenaged white girls in Lakewood, Ohio, had invented rap. We had, though, discovered that you can memorize almost anything with the right rhythm.

So I can still recite Archimedes’ Principle if needed. And I still don’t know what it means. But I do keep my toga on.


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The Bathtub Principle, explained

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One Comment

  1. Nancy Grush Nancy Grush

    Emily,

    I loved it! You hit a homerun; the ball made it over the fence and into a pond…

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