Archimedes of Syracuse

• Archimedes was a citizen of Greece. He was

born in 287 B.C. in a city called Syracuse, on
the Island of Sicily. His father Phidias was an
astronomer.
• Many of the things we know about the
universe began with Archimedes.
• Archimedes: Unusual character of ancient
times.
• Many of his ideas and discoveries were new.
• He was a polymath.
• Probably he is the first military engineer.
• He is the founder of mathematical physics.
• He was not only interested in theoretical
issues, but also invented technical devices.
• He invented the Archimedean screw. It is a
device that is still used to drain or irrigate
fields and load grain and run high speed
machine.
• He also invented the war machines for
defending the city of Syracuse against a great
Roman fleet and army.
• He was the first to show that numbers
unimaginably big, bigger then all the things
there are, could be written and used.
• In my opinion, the most important thing
Archimedes gave to the world was a logical
way of thinking about mathematics. So that, it
can be said he is founder of mathematical
physics.
 Archimedes and His Lever
• He discovered that a lever had to be free to
move on some point.
• The work done on it -the push or pull- is the
force.
• The work to be done is the resistance.
• The point on which the lever turns or moves is
the fulcrum.
Levers
 Archimedes and King Hiero’s Crown
• “In the first century BC the Roman architect Vitruvius related a story of
how Archimedes uncovered a fraud in the manufacture of a golden
crown commissioned by Hiero II, the king of Syracuse. The crown
(corona in Vitruvius’s Latin) would have been in the form of a wreath,
such as one of the three pictured from grave sites in Macedonia and the
Dardanelles. Hiero would have placed such a wreath on the statue of a
god or goddess. Suspecting that the goldsmith might have replaced
some of the gold given to him by an equal weight of silver, Hiero asked
Archimedes to determine whether the wreath was pure gold. And
because the wreath was a holy object dedicated to the gods, he could
not disturb the wreath in any way. (In modern terms, he was to perform
nondestructive testing). Archimedes’ solution to the problem, as
described by Vitruvius, is neatly summarized in the following excerpt
from an advertisement:”
• The solution which occurred when he stepped into
his bath and caused it to overflow was to put a
weight of gold equal to the crown, and known to
be pure, into a bowl which was filled with water to
the brim. Then the gold would be removed and the
king’s crown put in, in its place. An alloy of lighter
silver would increase the bulk of the crown and
cause the bowl to overflow.
(https://www.math.nyu.edu/~crorres/Archimedes/
Crown/CrownIntro.html)
 What is he found?
• He found that some materials are heavier than
the others. We can say they are more dense.
Gold is heavier than iron. Iron is heavier than
wood.
 Archimedes and Astronomy
• The Egyptians and Babylonians was great
practical astronomers. The made careful
observations and kept careful records. But the
Greeks approached astronomy more abstract
than the Egyptians and the Babylonians. Greek
word “Cosmos” mean “orderly and
harmonious arrangement”.
• Archimedes built an instrument for measuring
the angles of rising Sun.
• Source: Archimedes and The Door of Science,
Jeanne Bendick.