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"ARCHIMEDES"
Jarrett DeCorte
English 2
Archimedes was born in the city of Syracuse, a Greek seaport colony on the island of Sicily, located south of Rome. This city was boasted to be the biggest Greek city in the ancient world. The population was almost half a million. Today the city is not as nearly as large as that.
Archimedes was the son of Phidias, who was a great astronomer. No one knows exactly what year he was born, but many have guessed. The estimate of his birth is about 287 BC. Since Archimedes was a native of Syracuse, most of his greatest achievements occurred in that city. For these great achievements he was known as "The wise one", "The master", and " The great geometer".
Archimedes was the most original and the most profound mathematician of ancient times. He made huge contributions to the field of math. For instance, he extended the "method of exhaustion" (a way of figuring the area and volume of 2-D Lamina and 3-D Solids). The expansion of this method led to a higher field of Mathematics called "calculus". Isaac Newton and other great mathematicians expanded upon Archimedes’ ideas almost a century after Archimedes died. Even though most of his inventions were misplaced with the records of proofs and theorems, we still use his calculations to this day.
Archimedes once said " give me a place to stand on, and I will move the entire earth." Even though Archimedes denies himself saying that phrase, that is the way that it is remembered. When he said this to King Heino, of Syracuse, the king took him literally. The king asked him to prove his statement. Archimedes was told to beach a fully loaded ship with three masts. Not even a hundred men could do the job! But Archimedes supposedly moved the boat on the beach using pulleys and levers. This way of using pulleys and levers is also called block and tackle (which is a combination of pulleys that wrap around each other, in order to strengthen the amount of force being applied). That is the only way that people today could beach a ship that big. So it is figured that that is the way Archimedes did it. So Archimedes is credited with inventing the block and tackle. As soon as King Heiro saw Archimedes beach the boat, he exclaimed, "From this day forth Archimedes is to be believed in everything that he may say".
There are many stories about how Archimedes helped King Heiro solve unsolvable problems of the time. Of course none of these original ideas from Archimedes were ever written down. And if they were, they were lost over the last centuries. There are legends that talk about how Archimedes helped the King, but again they are only legends.
People have said that King Heiro once had ordered a gold crown and told a blacksmith the exact amount of metal which should be used to make it. When the king received the crown from the blacksmith it was the same weight which he requested, but he had a feeling that the blacksmith used some metal not as fine as gold itself. Since the King could not solve this logical problem, he hired Archimedes to solve it for him.
One day while Archimedes was taking a bath he noticed that when he sat in the bathtub, the water rose higher. He was so excited with his new discovery that he jumped out of the bathtub and ran through the streets naked yelling "Eureka! ( I have found it). When he told the King that all he had to do was to get the amount of gold that was supposed to be in the crown and measure that against the crown itself. Since gold is 19 times as heavy as water, the gold will lose nineteenth of its weight when dipped into water. If the volume of the crown is the same as the real gold, it will be declared "pure gold". If not, the blacksmith put some metal that was not as pure (as heavy) as gold, probably silver. As it turned out the blacksmith did put some other metal in the crown. Archimedes could tell by the difference in the volume between the real gold and the crown. The blacksmith must have been beyond his time, since now all you buy is gold in karats. Gold that is pure is so expensive that hardly anyone owns 100% gold (gold that is pure). This problem of Archimedes is called the "Buoyancy Principle" or "Archimedes Principle". Buoyancy is the loss of weight of an object which seems to incur when it is placed in a liquid. The amount of water that the object displaces, is the weight of the object in the liquid.
One of Archimedes inventions was the "Archimedean screw". The "Archimedean screw" was a screw like device which was used to raise water from a lower level to a higher level by turning a crank. This device is still used today by farmers and others. When this device was unearthed in an ancient Roman mine in Spain, it was undoubtedly Archimedes’ because of the design of it at the time.
One of Archimedes equations was named " The Spiral of Archimedes". With this configuration, Archimedes was able to figure out the lengths of various tangents to the spiral. It can be used to trisect an angle and square the circle. The curve can be used (as a cam) to convert uniform angular motion into uniform linear motion. This cam consists of one arch of the spiral above the x-axis together with its reflection in the x-axis. Rotating this with uniform angular velocity about its center will result in uniform linear motion of the point where it crosses the y-axis. Taking the pole as the center of inversion, the spiral Archimedes = (r = a8) which inverts into the hyperbolic spiral ( r = a / 8).
Another one of Archimedes experiments consisted of calculating the density of aluminum and then comparing the result with known textbook values. This is called "Archimedes’ Law Demo". In a complete version of the experiment, one immerses the block in a vessel which is placed in initial equilibrium on a pan balance. The measured weight reduction of the aluminum after immersion should be very closely equal to the apparent weight of the vessel.
About one century after Archimedes death, the new ruler of Syracuse, who was Cicero, searched for Archimedes tomb. When Cicero came across the tomb of Archimedes, he found it in very poor shape from vandalism and wear and tear. Cicero remembered that the city of Syracuse was once called "the most learned city in Greece". Cicero restored Archimedes tomb to honor him in remembrance of the past. Cicero noted that the tomb was easily recognized as Archimedes tomb by the decoration of the tomb, which consisted of a cylinder surrounding a sphere. This decoration on this tomb was placed there by the request of Archimedes himself in order for him to be buried with the knowledge of so-called "his most valued achievement". The cylinder and the sphere stood for the ratio 2:3, which is the ratio in finding the area and the volume of a shape.
This new King Cicero came across a planetarium that was built by Archimedes. The planetarium was full of old equations that Archimedes wrote. Archimedes was one of the first people to write out complete charts of stars that are known today as small stars in our solar system. The tomb of Archimedes or the planetarium have not been discovered today. It is said that the last person to see either of them was King Cicero.
Archimedes made many inventions which helped protect the city of Syracuse from the Romans invasion in 212 BC. One of his inventions consisted of the catapult, which threw huge poles out of the walls of Syracuse at the Roman ships which either caused them to sink or to roll over. The ships of Marcellus, the Roman commander, learned quickly to keep their distance from the island. Another invention of Archimedes was the shiny mirror which reflected the sun’s rays at the Roman’s ships. When the sun reflected the sun, it was so hot that it caught the ships on fire. So there was no way that the Romans could attack the city during the day. When the army finally did attack the great fortress walls, another one of Archimedes inventions stopped them in there tracks. There was some sort of device that shot arrows, sticks and stones through the wall at the Romans as they climbed the walls of Syracuse. Legend has it that whenever a Roman soldier saw any type of object coming toward him, he would flee in fear and shout, " There it is again! Archimedes is aiming some machine at us!"
During a truce declared by both sides of war, Marcellus was allowed briefly to enter the gates of Syracuse. While he was within the enemy’s gates, he examined the interior of the walls of Syracuse. He saw all sorts of devices covering the inside of the wall except for one side which was under construction. The next night, when the Syracusans "were given up to wine and sport celebrating the Goddess Artemis," Marcellus and a small Roman party climbed the part of the wall which was under construction. They made it safely over the gates of Syracuse, and opened the gates of the city to allow all of the Romans into the city to plumage and pilfer the city to shreds. Two thousand Syracusans were tortured and beheaded by the Romans. Before the attack Marcellus ordered that Archimedes was not to be killed, but to be taken to be the property of Marcellus. A soldier came across Archimedes and ordered him to get up and leave with him. Archimedes refused to go until he was done with the problem that he was drawing in the sand. The soldier was angered and killed Archimedes right there kneeling on the ground.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
1) Archimedes: Greatest Scientist of the Ancient World, Author: DC Ipsen, Pages 3-17
2) The World Book Encyclopedia, Volume A, Pages 604-605
3) An Incomplete Education, Authors: Judy Jones and William Wilson, Page 521
4) The Internet
