King and the Goldsmith
King had given a goldsmith some gold and asked him to make a wreath from it. When the goldsmith finished the wreath, he suspected the crafty goldsmith had pocketed some of the gold and replaced it with some cheaper metal. Yet the wreath weighed exactly the same as the original gold.
How could the fraud be proven ?
How could the fraud be proven ?
Labels: friday special, funphysics
posted by Rajesh Lal at
6:31 PM
32 Comments:
By asking Archimides.
By looking at the colour.
By looking at the colour.
By looking at the colour.
He asked Archemedes to compare the weight of the gold and the weight of the crown. Accidentally he found out that if a body is put in water, it displaces a volume of water equal to the mass of the body. This way he found out that he could measure the volume of all irregular solids. He thus put the gold crown and solid gold of equal mass in water. The crown displaced more water and thus had larger volume. Which signified that the crown had silver as silver displaced more water than gold. And they found out that the goldsmith had cheated on them
Come on that's not original answer eric, you are not thinking
There would have to be some sort of bonding agent to adhere the gold. Therefor the wreath should have weighed more than the original gold.
The King scratched the surface and found it was gold plated. The weight was immaterial because the size was larger.
Ask the goldsmith to walk on burning coal. If goldsmith lied , he would loose his confidence and slow down on coal thus burning himself else he would walk over coal quickly without hurting himself ;)
Review the surveillance camera videos the king had set up in the goldsmith's shop.
Gold is more pliable then most other metals. the king simply slightly bent the wreath at different points. If another metal was used it wouldn't bend as easy as the gold.
use nitric acid, gold is one of the only things in the world that wont be eaten away by the acid... If there is other metals the crown will be ruin ofcourse lol
Use a mass spectrometer to find the chemical composition of the crown.
eric is right :)
Oh anonymous under my first comment, you're just jealous you didn't get to it first....
melt it back down
umm... Well the simple answer would be to find it's denisty, because density is a characteristic property meaning it is unique to every substance meaning that if it was all gold then it would have a different density than real gold! :)
by looking at the density for sure.
but the king can ask hary potter to use his magic to reveal that the blacksmith cheated on him.;)
Because the weight of the metal and gold or the metal was fake thats why its cheap and is probably gold
yeaahhh
well he could check the density of the wreath if it wasn't 19.3 then it has other metals in it
kill the gold smith throw away the crown and get a new one. He is a king he can do what he wants.
kill the gold smith throw away the crown and get a new one. He is a king he can do what he wants.
EUREKA
The king of Sparta decided that he needed a new gold crown, which he could make from some of the booty he had gotten from his victories. The king gave his most reputable goldsmith a small brick of gold that measured 3 x 6 x 8 cm and weighed 2,765 gms, and ordered him to turn it into a new crown. Several weeks later, the goldsmith delivered the crown to the king, who weighed it and found it to be exactly 2,765 gms. The king was delighted, until he had a dream that the goldsmith had taken some of the gold and diluted it with some base metal to make up the difference in weight, and kept the unused gold for himself. The goldsmith had thought of this, but decided to risk his life on the fact that no one could calculate the volume of the crown, and that the king would not melt his crown back into a measurable block so that its density could be calculated. The goldsmith was right: the king didn't want to melt down the crown. Nevertheless, the king wanted assurance that he was not dooped, and gave public notice of a prize to anyone who could determine the volume of his crown. As legend has it, Archimedes was in the baths relaxing and watching the goings-on around him. He noticed that whenever someone got into a tub the water level rose. Suddenly an idea came to him: the concept of the conservation of matter. Total volume = volume A + volume B. He jumped up and ran naked down the street towards the palace shouting "Eureka! Eureka!", which means "I have found it" in ancient Greek. Now the king was not shocked to see this naked man knocking at his palace door because most men in those Spartan days wore little or nothing in that hot and humid climate. So the king invited Archimedes in, and soon the two were bent over a table upon which was a bucket, which was absolutely full to the brim, inside of another empty bucket. As the men slowly lowered the crown into the inner bucket, a little water spilled out into the outer bucket. Finally, the whole crown was submerged, and the inner bucket was carefully lifted out so that no splashing occurred. The water in the inner bucket was found to weigh 169 grams. Then Archimedes, who up to then was a nobody-geek in this city full of athletic warriors, explained to the king that the original block of gold was 144 cubic centimeters in size, which would displace 144 grams of water. Thus the new crown has more volume than the original gold brick, but weighs just the same. The goldsmith must have sliced off a piece of the gold brick and kept it for himself, then added something else to the remaining gold being careful to add enough of the base metal to make up the required original weight.
A very long and nerdy comment, Ronald. It's like you're retelling the story with the answer at the end.
Eric was the only who got this correct. me being in the Ninth grade knew this.... dont tell me that 24/25 people are ignorant to the fact of water displacement and density...
I'm the one who suggested density first!!! I'm in 9th grade!!!
Using displaced water to calculate the density may not be the solution.
We are assuming the crown is solid. The shape of the crown could be such that there are air pockets within the body of the crown, therefore throwing off the density calculaton. ie. the density of a hollow sphere vs. a solid sphere.
Eureka!!
eric is right in bfact archimedies ran NAKED to the king to show that he was right.
P.S.
THERE ARE NO CAMERAS IN KING TIMES
Well, u r all stupid. All he had to do was fill the wreath in the middle with something heavy other than gold, like metal, and take all that leftover gold for himself. Yummy.
you can check it with a magnet
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