Page "Cao Chong" Paragraph 1

Cao Chong was born the oldest son of Cao Cao and Consort Huan.

According to the Records of Three Kingdoms by Chen Shou, Cao Chong had the intelligence of an adult around the age of five and six.

On one occasion, the southern warlord Sun Quan sent a gift of an elephant to Cao Cao, who wished to know the animal's weight.

No one could think of a method but young Cao Chong had an ingenious idea.

Somewhat similar to Archimedes ' solution to the legendary Problem of the Crown, Cao Chong asked to have the elephant loaded onto a boat, on which the water level was marked.

The elephant was then replaced with smaller weighable objects until the boat was submerged to the same level.

The weight of the elephant could then be found out by summing up the weights of all the objects.

According to Joseph Needham, although no official treatise in the likes of Archimedes ' principle was ever written regarding buoyancy in ancient China, there were observational precedents of it in the Rites of Zhou, compiled and edited during the early Han Dynasty ( 202 BCE-220 CE ).

Joseph Needham states: