Archimedes and the Kings Crown

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This was the first lesson with a mixed year 3/4 class in a small rural primary school. The head, Laura, and I had worked together for years. Laura's brief was to teach the literacy hour using the context of history. Laura told me that the children had already had all the standard Greek stories, so I thought Archimedes might be a good addition. Indeed, Archimedes is an excellent subject, as he covers science, mathematics and a range of other subjects, including cunning plans to defeat enemy armies and navies.

The immediate appealing idea was to investigate how Archimedes solved the king's problem, that is, had the goldsmith swindled him by mixing silver with gold in making his crown? An article on the internet argued that Archimedes probably used a highly sophisticated way of solving the problem as opposed to the normal story. The traditional story says Archimedes had a brainwave while in the bath, his body having displaced an equal volume of water. Metals of different density displace different amounts of water for the same weight of metal, so he could work out if the crown was pure gold. The internet article pointed out that this is a facile solution and would have been useless for Greek crowns, which were wreaths made of a very small amount of metal, so the difference would be very hard to spot. If you want to know more, visit this wonderful website where I found the information I needed - it is great fun. Keep the Claw to the end!
www.mcs.drexel.edu/~crorres/Archimedes/contents.html

My own brief from Laura was to stress storytelling, building on an idea that Liz Raybould, a Shropshire teacher, had developed and was happy for me to adapt.

by Jon Nichol