Archimedes’ Principle

The principle of buoyance states that the upward force that is exerted on a body immersed in a fluid is equal to the weight of the fluid that the body displaces.  When I was a little girl, my mother would tell me about Archimedes’ Principle every time I took a bath.  I began to associate force with time; that is, the longer one is submerged in fluid the more force and time it will take to remove one from it.  As soon as I was deemed old enough to forgo bath-time for showers, I did so excitedly, as much because I didn’t want to waste the time in the bath as because there was no force in shower water forcing my body up or down.

Force is a strange thing.  In physics, it is something that causes the change in direction of an object.  As much as the weight of my body was displacing the water in the bathtub, so too was the force I was exerting to be there.  I used to chew over these notions while I danced in the shower water, thinking that I’d never have to return to a bath.

I’ve carried this idea with me through adolescence and adulthood.  Baths have widely seemed like a waste of time – way too much force unnecessarily exerted for no definable end.  A few winters ago, I made bath bombs and scented salts for my girlfriends for holiday gifts.  Everyone raved about them, and I took their word because baths were just something I didn’t have time to experience.  And besides, who wants to spend twenty minutes fighting Archimedes’ Principle?  Simi raved about them, and said the bombs were a highlight to her day.

Now in my third day of this bullshit flu that has rendered me just about useless, I am starting to go a little mad.  It’s said when Archimedes put into thought his principle for the first time, he ran through the streets naked, and most folks on the street thought he was stark raving mad.  I felt a little like Archimedes this afternoon – not that I’d just discovered an amazing pinnacle of physics, just a touch stir crazy.  Fevers and illness do something to the brain, I think.  They call to times when there was a person wants for things she can no longer experience – a mother’s touch, that exact feeling of being warm and cozy, camped on the sofa.  So, I decided to return to my roots.

I drew a bath.

Water as hot as the tap could make it, and a few dollops of coconut oil for good measure, Mozart’s Concerto for Flute and Harp in C Major, and a cup of peppermint tea. The water enveloped me, warmed my core like I haven’t been warm in days, and calmed me.  I thought back to Archimedes.  Force and buoyancy.  Time and the ways in which one spends it.  I spent the better part of an hour in that bath, draining and refilling water as needed until my fingers became raisins, my heart rate elevated like I was running and my soul finally calm.

Holy shit, that crazy Greek dude might’ve been on to something.