Above: A sink full of dirty dishes--the water level is where it needs to be so it doesn't overflow.
In my apartment we don't have a dishwasher. This means every day we hand wash all of our dishes. It involves filling the sink with soapy water, placing the dishes in the water, scrubbing, rinsing, and drying. Some people may think this is just a mindless chore, but after learning about Archimedes and his buoyancy principle I have started to think about the dishes differently. Each time I fill the sink with water, without realizing what I'm doing, I make sure to not fill it all the way up because I don't want the sink to overflow when the dishes are placed into the water. Doing this exemplifies the buoyancy principle. Thank goodness Archimedes figured out that water levels rise when objects are placed in it because it allows everyone when doing the dishes to have some idea of what level the water should be at, so they don't have an extra mess to clean up when they are done. This may seem like a simple connection to history, but to me I didn't even realize I was using the buoyancy principle every day. It was a "great" realization and is very applicable to cooking, since cooking always involves dirty dishes.
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