Ganesh shouted ‘Eureka’

RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE

It was in the early seventies, half a century back when there were two marriages in our family in a gap of three days. The household wore a festive look when the close relatives were invited or invited themselves to stay back for a week.

A cousin of ours from Mysuru took us all to a movie in a nearby cinema house but disappeared himself during the interval, never to be seen for the next 24 hours. The next day he returned from a short and furtive visit to the then Madras. He was beaming from ear to ear and displayed to the inquisitive group of children and grownups, his recent acquisition of a 25gm 24K gold biscuit from his discreet contact in his rendezvous. Many of us had not seen a gold biscuit.

Having just come out of college, one of the young ones wanted to prove a point and measured the size of the piece with a small scale and found to our utter dismay it was rather a bit too large for the 25gm. Having ensured, the weight from a nearby jeweller, I whispered in his ears that he had been cheated and it was not 24K gold, can’t even be 22K for that matter. Not to be proved a sucker in front of all, he suddenly disappeared from the scene, and apparently rushed to Madras to meet the seller in vain. Being a businessman, I am sure he took the loss in his stride, but never tried to resell to a gullible buyer. He was too honest for that. In fact, after several years, he showed us the good old biscuit which he kept as a memento.

When I narrated this story to my eight-year-old grandson Ganesh, he thought for a while and asked how do you find the volume of a piece of jewellery like a necklace or a ring, to prove it is good gold given the weight.

"Oh that’s what Archimedes discovered," I said. He replied, "I know, Archimedes thatha, the guy who said, if you immerse something in water, level increases." I raised my eyebrows, first for someone calling the great Archimedes a guy, and then for over-simplifying a great discovery some 2000 years back. Even a crow knows, when pebbles are dropped in a pot, the water level increases for it to drink easily. That’s not the point. When he was challenged by the king to find out if his crown was pure gold, he could measure the weight, but not its volume to check if the crown was conforming to 19.3 gm per cc of pure gold. Later when he soaked himself in a bathtub and found himself lighter and figured the loss of weight can be related to the volume immersed, the great Archimedes Principle was born.

Ganesh said ‘that’s cool’ and shouted Eureka, not very original I suppose.