Archimedes


 * "Give me a place to stand and I will move the Earth"**

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Archimedes was born in 287 BCE in Syracuse, Sicily. He has been described as one of the greatest mathematician of all time. Archimedes was the son of an astronomer and was an aristocrat himself. Not much is known about his early life, but he most likely studied under the followers of Euclid in Alexandria, Egypt. His work was mostly theoretical, but well very well known.======

The king of Syracuse once asked him to figure out how to determine if one of his crowns was pure gold (without destroying the crown). The crown weighed correctly, but that didn’t guarantee it’s authenticity. As the story goes, Archimedes lowered himself into a bath and noticed that his body displaced some of the water over the edge. This led to him realizing that the crown should weight the same amount and displace the same volume as pure gold of an equal weight. The part of the story where Archimedes is so overjoyed by this discovery that he ran naked through the streets saying “Eureka!” (I have found it!) is most likely a myth. The Archimedes Principle resulted.

The “Archimedes Principle” is the principle which states that any body that is partially or completely immersed in a fluid (liquid or gas) at rest is buoyed up by a force equal to the weight of the displaced fluid. Archimedes also invented and discovered many other things. He discovered the relation between the volume and surface of a sphere and a cylinder. Invented the Archimedes Screw, which was a hydraulic screw that was a cylinder or spiral chamber containing a continuous screw extending the length of the cylinder.

"Give me a place to stand and I will move the earth" Archimedes was quoted saying after he discovered the laws of levers and pulleys. A pulley is a wheel with a grove around the edge for holding a rope, and reduce the amount of force needed to lift the load. Archimedes' Claw, which lifted and dropped Roman warships, was a combination of pulleys and a lever. Archimedes didn’t invent the lever, he discovered the ratio of the effort applied to the load moved. A catapult, which is another invention of Archimedes, is just a lever in reverse; a heavy weight is dropped on the short side, catapulting the lighter weight from the long side.

Archimedes died around 212 BCE in Syracuse by a Roman solider who didn't know who he was at the age of 75.

Citations: http://vacuumprocess.net/archimedes_s.jpg

Crepeau, Bob. "Archimedes: Inventions and Discoveries." __EBSCOhost__. 2001. EBSCOhost, 2/26/08 .

Rorres, Chris. __Archimedes Home Page__. 2/25/08 http://www.cs.drexel.edu/~crorres/Archimedes/contents.html.

Archimedes. 2/26/08 <[|http://scidiv.bcc.ctc.edu/Math/Archimedes.html>.]

"**Archimedes**." __Encyclopædia Britannica__. 2008. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. 27 Feb. 2008 <[|__http://www.search.eb.com.prxy1.ursus.maine.edu/eb/article-214869__]>.

"**Archimedes' principle**." __Encyclopædia Britannica__. 2008. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. 27 Feb. 2008 <[|__http://www.search.eb.com.prxy1.ursus.maine.edu/eb/article-9009286__]>.