Archimedes’s Eureka Moment and Asteroid 5261 Eureka – Manchester, UK - Extraterrestrial Locations on Waymarking.com

The statue
The statue stands in a railway viaduct arch on Altrincham Street outside the student union building for what used to be UMIST, but has now merged with another university to become simply Manchester University.

The sculptor was Thompson Dagnall and it was unveiled in September 1990. The statue shows Archimedes leaping naked from his bath whilst experiencing his Eureka moment.

After it was first opened the sight of a naked man leaping from his batch proved to be too tempting to the students to leave him alone. They used to climb into the bath with him and he started to be damaged, including losing his nose.

These days the sculpture is protected by strong railings and he has been given a new nose.

Archimedes
Archimedes (287 BC – 212 BC) is a famous Greek mathematician, physicist and engineer and inventor who is regarded as being many years ahead of his time with his achievements.

Most people have heard the story of his Eureka moment, but not everyone knows the story behind it.

King Hiero II had asked a goldsmith to make a crown for him and supplied the gold. He suspected that the goldsmith had cheated him and used some silver in the crown. He asked Archimedes to test the crown for him, but without melting it down.

At first Archimedes couldn’t think of a way of doing it, but one day getting in to his bath he noticed that the level of the water rose. He suddenly realised that the amount of water displaced would equal the volume of his body. He supposedly became so excited that he leapt from the bath and ran through the streets naked shouting ‘Eureka’ (Greek for “I have found it”). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eureka_(word)

He went on to test the crown and proved that the crown indeed had some silver content, proving the king was correct to be suspicious..

In reality there are difficulties in measuring volume this way, and it is not totally accurate. However most people have experienced ‘Eureka’ moments in their life when they suddenly think of something out of the blue. Although most people don’t then run round the streets naked.

This website describes a modern day experiment to test the principle using some gold cuff links. http://www.u-picardie.fr/~dellis/Documents/PhysicsEducation/Archimedes%20and%20the%20golden%20crown.pdf

Asteroid 5261 Eureka
This asteroid was the first Mars trojan asteroid discovered. A trojan asteroid is an asteroid that shares an orbit with a planet.

Jupiter has a large collection of Trojan asteroids, but it wasn’t known whether Mars had any. In June 1990 astronomer David Levy and Henry Holt had their own Eureka moment when they discovered this asteroid and named it Eureka. http://www.orbitsimulator.com/gravity/articles/eureka.html

It was discovered at the Palomar Observatory, San Diego, California.

It is believed that the asteroid has been a Mars Trojan asteroid for most of the life of the Solar System. Since 1990 three other Mars Trojan asteroids have been discovered.

Although it caused such excitement for David Levy and Henry Holt it is a very small asteroid and only has a diameter between 2 and 4 km.

Website of the Extraterrestrial Location: [Web Link] Website of location on Earth: [Web Link] Celestial Body: Asteroid

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