100 Historical Stories That Unlock Teenage Wisdom

Chapter 20 9 The Scientist Running Naked on the Street

Chapter 29 The scientist who ran naked on the street

——Be selfless when thinking. There are some people around us who seem to be "weird", but they always produce very good results and express very incisive views.Their "strangeness" is because they forget themselves in their thinking.

In the 15th century BC, Archimedes was born in the ancient city of Syracuse in Sicily. His father was an astronomer. Archimedes was influenced by a good family education since he was a child.When Archimedes was young, he went to Alexandria, Egypt to study. After returning home, he devoted himself to the study of mathematics and had unique insights in physics.

Once, King Hero of Syracuse asked a craftsman to make a pure gold crown in order to prepare for an important ceremony.After the crown was laid, both the ministers and King Hero felt that there was something wrong with the quality of the crown.However, no strong evidence could be produced to prove that the crown was adulterated, because the crown weighed the same as the gold given to the craftsman.In order to prove whether the crown was adulterated, King Hero accepted a minister's suggestion and immediately sent someone to find Archimedes.After Archimedes received this difficult question, he had no idea for a while.But he said to the king: "Your Majesty, please give me seven days, and I promise to give you an answer after seven days."

Archimedes bid farewell to the king, returned home, closed the door, and did not receive any guests.He thought and thought, five days passed, and he still got nothing.On the sixth day, his wife suggested that he go for a walk.So he decided to take a shower first.The past few days have been too tense, he wants to relax, ease his nervous nerves, and then think again.

The tub was steaming hot and full of water.Archimedes took off his clothes and jumped into the bath. He found that when his feet went into the bath, the hot water overflowed a lot, and when his whole body entered, the hot water overflowed the floor.

Suddenly, inspiration came, and finally there was a way to solve the mystery of the crown.He was so happy that he even forgot to put on his clothes and ran out of the bathhouse naked.While running, he kept shouting: "I found it, I found it!" Everyone on the street looked at him strangely, but he ignored it completely.

When he got home, he thought about it with a clear mind, and did an experiment to verify it, and then immediately went to the palace to ask to see the king.

Archimedes asked his servants to bring a small basin, fill it with water, and prepare a piece of gold with the same weight as the crown and a large empty basin.He first put the gold into a basin full of water, let the overflowing water flow into the large empty basin, and then filled it with a small cup.He put the crown into a small basin filled with water in the same way, and demonstrated it again.He compared the water in the two cups and found that more water overflowed from soaking the crown than from soaking pure gold.Accordingly, Archimedes judged that the crown was not made of pure gold.

After watching the whole process of the experiment and listening to Archimedes' analysis, the king immediately sent someone to find the craftsman.Facing the facts, the craftsmen had no choice but to speak out about the adulteration.

Archimedes was obsessed with science to the point of madness: when taking a bath, he used balm to draw geometric curves on his body; when eating, he used a knife and fork to divide the food into several parts in a bowl for geometric analysis; When warming, geometric figures are drawn in the ashes of the brazier.

When Archimedes was 72 years old, Rome launched a war of aggression against Syracuse.Archimedes used his wisdom to help Syracuse soldiers repel the enemy's attack many times.But after three years of defense, Syracuse was captured by the Roman army because of the lack of ammunition and food.When Roman soldiers stormed into Archimedes' residence, he was concentrating on studying the geometric figures painted on the ground.He was completely immersed in his own mathematical kingdom, forgetting everything around him.When he found that someone stepped on the geometric figure he drew on the ground, he said very unhappy: "Please go away, don't destroy my picture!" The Roman soldiers were furious and threw him off the ground He grabbed it, but he didn't panic at all, and said unhurriedly: "Please give me a little more time to solve this geometry problem. I can't leave unsolved problems for future generations!"

Wisdom Interpretation:

Many scientists are regarded as weirdos and lunatics by the people around them, because they have reached a state of ecstasy in their concentration. Concentration can sublimate your thoughts and allow you to find beautiful agility in the ordinary, so young friends, learn Focus on doing things, then you will find that there are many beautiful things in life waiting for us to develop.

(End of this chapter)