Changes

Jump to navigation Jump to search
653 bytes added ,  19:20, March 31, 2007
no edit summary
Line 6: Line 6:  
Archimedes also discovered the "Archimedes' principle", allegedly when he was sitting in a bathtub one day, recognizing that volume of a body can be measured by seeing how much the water rises when the body is submerged. He supposedly ran into town naked from his bathtub declaring “Eureka!”, meaning “I have found it!”  
 
Archimedes also discovered the "Archimedes' principle", allegedly when he was sitting in a bathtub one day, recognizing that volume of a body can be measured by seeing how much the water rises when the body is submerged. He supposedly ran into town naked from his bathtub declaring “Eureka!”, meaning “I have found it!”  
   −
Archimedes did a tremendous amount of ground-breaking work on [[lever]]s and [[pulley]]s, enabling the Greeks to move heavier things than ever before. He once bragged “give me a place to stand on, and I will move the earth”. He also invented the [[Archimedes screw]], a device (consisting of a large screw inside a pipe) still used in irrigation today. Despite all this, he considered his greatest accomplishment to be his book on the [[sphere]] and the [[cylinder]]. He even had a sphere and cylinder engraved on his tombstone when he died.  
+
Archimedes did a tremendous amount of ground-breaking work on [[lever]]s and [[pulley]]s, enabling the Greeks to move heavier things than ever before. He once bragged “give me a place to stand on, and I will move the earth”. He also invented the [[Archimedes screw]], a device (consisting of a large screw inside a pipe) still used in irrigation today. Despite all this, he considered his greatest accomplishment to be his two-volume work, ''On the [[Sphere]] and [[Cylinder]]''. In this work, he used the method of exhaustion to estimate the area of a circle and the volume of a sphere by successive approximations.  This method is a precursor to the development of calculus, 2000 years later. He had a diagram of a sphere and cylinder engraved from this work on his tombstone when he died.  In 2005, a palimpsest was examined using X-ray technology to uncover some heretofore undiscovered works, including the ''Stomachion'', the most significant known use of combinatorics in the ancient world.  
    
In 212 B.C., the Roman army under command of General [[Marcellus]] succeeded in invading Syracuse.  Archimedes reportedly was absorbed in concentration, drawing figures in the dirt with a stick when a Roman soldier demanded he surrender.  Archimedes refused, saying his calculations were not yet complete and was slain on the spot.
 
In 212 B.C., the Roman army under command of General [[Marcellus]] succeeded in invading Syracuse.  Archimedes reportedly was absorbed in concentration, drawing figures in the dirt with a stick when a Roman soldier demanded he surrender.  Archimedes refused, saying his calculations were not yet complete and was slain on the spot.
 +
 +
==External Links==
 +
*[http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Biographies/Archimedes.html Mactutor's biography of Archimedes]
 +
*[http://www.archimedespalimpsest.org/ The Archimedes Palimpsest]
52

edits

Navigation menu