Elephant fallen into well saved by Archimedes’ Principle

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Elephant fallen into well saved by Archimedes’ Principle

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Sagaya Fernando
Mumbai: 3 February 2020

The ancient Greek mathematician Archimedes came to the rescue of a juvenile elephant that had fallen into a well with a few feet of water, in India.

Making use of Archimedes’ Principle, forest officials in the state of Jharkhand rescued the young elephant in a matter of hours which would have otherwise taken a day or two.

Archimedes, born in 3rd century BC, is most famous for discovering the law of hydrostatics, sometimes known as ‘Archimedes’ principle’, stating that a body immersed in fluid loses weight equal to the weight of the amount of fluid it displaces. Archimedes is supposed to have made this discovery when stepping into his bath, causing him to exclaim ‘Eureka!’ Archimedes’ Principle, also known as the physical law of buoyancy, says that anybody partly or completely submerged in a fluid is acted upon by an upward force. The magnitude of the upward force is equal to the weight of the fluid displaced by the body.

“On January 27 night a herd of elephants were passing through Bharno block of Gumla district. In the darkness, a juvenile elephant aged about 7 to 8 years fell into a 25 feet deep open well near Amaliya village. We were informed about it, but as it was pitch-dark we could start the rescue efforts only in the morning. Our team reached the spot at 5 am and kept a watch on the trapped elephant,” informed Gumla Divisional Forest Officer Srikant Verma.

He added, “Based on the sounds being made by the trapped elephant we understood that it was not hurt. In the meantime, we brought an excavator to dig a ramp into the well to bring out the elephant. But when we noticed that the elephant was buoyant in the well water, and responding well, we decided to pump in more water into the well from another well near well. We installed three pump sets to transfer water from the other well to the one where the elephant was trapped. In about 2 hours and 15 minutes, as the water level rose, the juvenile elephant also floated to the top.”

“Though we had created a ramp at the edge of the well, the elephant scared at the sight of the excavator, made its own efforts using its trunk and forelegs to come out of the well and made a run to the forest nearby. Fortunately, the elephant was unhurt, and the rescue efforts concluded in a short period. Otherwise, digging a ramp into the well would have taken 25 to 30 hours, and the young elephant would have been stressed up more,” said DFO Verma.

The forest officials are being praised for their scientific thinking and simple rescue effort to save the trapped juvenile elephant.

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