The "Eureka" story about Archimedes and the bath tub was as well known in Galileo's day as it is in ours. Galileo, who was a great admirer of Archimedes and adopted many of his methods, probably read it in one of the editions of Vitruvius's The Ten Books on Architecture,[1] which was very popular in Renaissance Europe. Supposedly, it was in the bath tub that Archimedes figured out the solution to the problem posed to him by the king of Syracuse: was a crown (or wreath) supposedly made of pure gold in fact entirely gold? He measured the amount of water displaced by the crown and by an equal weight of gold, and found that the crown displaced more water. Its specific gravity was thus less than that of gold, and therefore it had been adulterated with another metal.
Weighing precious metals in air and then in water was presumably a practice that was common among jewelers in Europe. Galileo had some ideas for refining the practice and, at the age of 22, he wrote a little tract about it, which he entitled La Bilancetta, or "The Little Balance." What Galileo described was an accurate balance for weighing things in air and water, in which the part of the arm on which the counter weight was hung was wrapped with metal wire. The amount by which the counterweight had to be moved when weighing in water could then be determined very accurately by counting the number of turns of the wire, and the proportion of, say, gold to silver in the object could be read off directly.
This little tract illustrates the mixture of the theoretical and practical that marks Galileo's science in contrast to that of most of his contemporaries.
Notes: [1] There are many editions of The Ten Books on Architecture. The story of Archimedes is related in the introduction to Book IX.
Sources: The tract is available in English translation in Laura Fermi and Gilberta Bernardini, Galileo and the Scientific Revolution (New York: Basic Books, 1961), pp. 133-14
Hydrostatic paradox means that the weight of water can be used to counterbalance the weight of anything else.
The tesla coil was invented in 1891 and is still being used today.
Mathematical solutions or rules that he was responsible for developing are still being used today.
yes, e=mc2 is used in nuclear fusion labs .
Balance, usually a triple-beam balance or a digital balance
The hydrostatic balance was an accurate balance that could weigh objects both in water and in the air. Galileo got the idea from the "Eureka" story about Archimedes and the King of Syracuse's crown in which Archimedes had to prove if the king's crown was made of real gold or not. Galileo used some of Archimedes ideas and built his own invention which he called the hydrostatic balance.
yes it is still used today
the tank is still used today. For example the M1 Abrams is still used
long houses are not still used today
yes its still used today
water
yes it is still being used today.......depends where your at.
Hydrostatic paradox means that the weight of water can be used to counterbalance the weight of anything else.
Yes teepees are still used today by uncommon are unknown idians.
Yes, trains are still being used today in large quantities.
Yes it is still used today
Their laws are still used today.