Etymology: Origin of the Word Eureka!

The word Eureka with an exclamation point provokes energy. It also recognizes the phenomenal power of stimuli to activate new thoughts. It invokes the moment of inspiration, the instant in which something new is born.
A stimulus was, in fact, responsible for the creation of the word Eureka! In the original Greek, "Eureka!" means "I have found it!" According to Greek legend, a mathematician and physicist named Archimedes coined the term after being stimulated in a hot tub.
He was settling in for a long soak one day around 250 B.C. At the time, he was preoccupied with finding a way to determine the proportion of real gold to ordinary metal in King Hieron's crown. The king wanted to make sure the crown he was wearing was pure gold and not some cheap imitation. At the time, the weight of gold per unit volume was well known. But given the intricate nature of the crown's design, it was impossible to measure its volume.
Anyway, as Archimedes was lowering himself into the tub, he noticed his bath water rising in proportion to his entry into the tub. The lower he sunk, the higher the water rose, until it overflowed.
The stimulus of the overflowing hot tub gave Archimedes a revelation. He suddenly realized he could measure the volume of the crown by simply dunking it in a tub filled to the brim, then measuring the water that overflowed.
He leaped from his tub and ran naked into the street hollering "Eureka!" Thus, in the white-hot grip of inspiration, Archimedes also invented streaking. And it didn't end there -- the hot tub stimulus further led Archimedes to the discovery of the law of specific gravity and the general science of hydrostatics.

Did you know?

Streaking is the act of taking off one's clothes and running nude through a public place. It is a light-hearted form of public nudity not intended to shock but, rather, to amuse potential spectators.