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[cheezluva.livejournal.com]

Didn't someone ask how Archimedes's principle applied to the scene at the river in The Thief? I think it was in the discussion at allreaders.com. Anyway, this is from the author's note in The Thief:

Archimedes was real. He was a mathematician, mechanic, and physicist in the third century b.c His work survives to this day. One of his theories was that a constant amount of water must pass each point in a river in a fixed amount of time. Therefore the water in a river runs fastest at its narrowest point. Gen had this in mind when he and the magus and Athonis crossed the rapids of the Seperchia.

So he wasn't talking about the actual Archimedes's Principle, but one of his theories.