Chambers's encyclopaedia; a dictionary of universal knowledge for the people . n that of the grains of sand that would till the sphereof the fixed stars, the diameter of which A. assumes at a certainnumber of stadia. The diflSculty lay in expressing such a vastnumber by means of the clumsy notation of Greek arithmetic, andthe device by which the difficulty is eluded is considered as afford-ing a striking instance of genius. ARCHIMEDES, the Principle of, is one of the most imp&c-tant in the science of Hydrostatics, and is so called because the dis-covery of it is generally ascribed to the S
Chambers's encyclopaedia; a dictionary of universal knowledge for the people . n that of the grains of sand that would till the sphereof the fixed stars, the diameter of which A. assumes at a certainnumber of stadia. The diflSculty lay in expressing such a vastnumber by means of the clumsy notation of Greek arithmetic, andthe device by which the difficulty is eluded is considered as afford-ing a striking instance of genius. ARCHIMEDES, the Principle of, is one of the most imp&c-tant in the science of Hydrostatics, and is so called because the dis-covery of it is generally ascribed to the Syracusan may be thus stated : A body when immersed in a fluid loses ex-actly as much of its weight as is equal to the weight of the fluid itdisplaces; or: A fluid sustains as much of the weight of a bodyimmersed in it as is equal to the weight of the lluid displaced byit. It is proved experimentally in the following way. A delicatebalance is so arranged that two brass cylinders, A and B, may besuspended from one of the scale-pans, the one under the The lower cylinder, B, is solid, or closed all round, and fitsaccurately into the upper cylinder. A, which is hollow. Whenthe two cylinders are placed under the one scale, pan-weights areplaced upon the other until perfect equilibrium is obtained. Thecylinder B is now Immersed in water, and in consequence of thebuoyant tendency of the water exerted upon it, the equilibrium isdestroyed; but it may be completely restored by filling the hollowcylinder, A, with water. The amount of weight wliicli B haslost by being placed in the water, is thus found to be exactly thesame as tlie weight of a quantity of water equal to its own bulk,or which is the same thing, to the quantity of water displaced byit. When bodies lighter than water are wholly immersed in it,they displace an amount of water of greater weight than theirown, so that if left free to adjust themselves, tliey swim on thesurface, only as much of their bulk be
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