Eureka

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Eggs Benedict

Origin of Phrases - E

 

Eureka

It literally means "I have it" in Greek. Its first use in the form we use today was believed to have come from the Greek mathematician Archimedes in 287 B.C. Archimedes was trying to determine the amount of silver that had been used in making a crown for the king which had been ordered to be of pure gold. As he was preparing to take a bath one day he stepped into an overflowing tub and realized that an object surrounded by a fluid is buoyed up by a force equal to the weight of the fluid which it displaces (this would become Archimedes' law of hydrostatics). He concluded that if he weighed out an amount of gold equal to the weight of the crown and placed then separately into a full basin of water, the difference in the weight of the overflow would prove the crown was not solid gold. Archimedes was so excited by his discovery that he jumped out of his bath and ran home naked, all the while shouting "Eureka! Eureka!"