ABSTRACT
“Eureka!” Archimedes exclaimed, so the story goes, when he jumped into a full bathtub and water overflowed onto the ground. Water was displaced by his mass and he discovered his ‘Principle of Displacement’, that the volume of displaced fluid is equal to the volume of the submerged object. As is characteristic of ‘principles’, ‘concepts’, and ‘abstraction’, these are ideas that often have far-flung applications both in obvious ways and in unforeseen ways. In an urban setting, it is often a matter of debate among planners, engineers, municipal authorities, real estate developers, and members of the public as to whether one should be permitted to build new structures within an existing urban floodplain. If one focuses on Archimedes’ principle, it seems obvious that no new construction should ever be permitted within a floodplain. The floodplain was carved out by an overflowing creek. Beyond the demonstration/education value, there is the general value of tracking change over time.
