2020年9月4日版 Weighing the Elephant

Weighing the Elephant 第2672期
A long time ago, there were no elephants in China. One day, a Chinese emperor received an elephant as a gift from another country.
People were very excited to see this big animal. Everyone was curious about it and had a question: How much does it weigh? But there was a problem: How to weigh it? At that time, no scales(称) in China were big enough to weigh such a huge animal.
The emperor had a six-year-old son named Cao Chong. He said, “Father, I know how to weigh it.” The ministers(大臣) didn’t believe the boy. But after he told them his idea, they all thought it was a good one.
“Here’s what you do,” said the boy. “Let the elephant stand in a big boat on the water. Draw a line on the side of the boat at the water level. Then bring the boat to shore and let the elephant off. Gather a lot of big stones. Put the stones on the boat until the boat sinks to the same water level. Then take the stones out of the boat and weigh them one by one. Add up the weight of each stone. Now you know how much the elephant weighs.”
“Wonderful! Wonderful!” shouted the ministers. Soon everyone in the country knew that the king had a clever son.