on soup and science

Sometimes when I'm making dinner, my mind wanders to Archimedes sitting in his bathtub. He was so excited to discover that the volume of his body elevated the water in the tub, that he yelled "Eureka!" and jumped naked into the streets, thrilled to the teeth with his new discovery.

Obviously, this man had never made soup in his life.

That makes me wonder if Archimedes had a wife, and if he ever posed his mathematical quandaries to her. Maybe she was standing in the kitchen that very afternoon making soup, watching the water level rise according to the volume of the vegetables, wishing her husband would hurry up and get out of the bath so that they could eat before it gets cold.

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