Archimedes

Claimed by Scott Shaeffer (Shaeffernew)

Archimedes was a great "Renaissance Man" even though he was not in the Renaissance. He invented many outstanding machines that were practical in their time and some that seemed a little out there. Archimedes also led the way for areas of physics such as in the field of buoyancy and hydrostatics. He was also a brilliant mathematician and could accurately give the answer to the square root of 3 to a good amount of decimal place accuracy even though his explanation for how he did it is mysterious and a little foggy. Archimedes is a notable scientist and deserves recognition for his work.

Personal Life

[1]

The Life of Archimedes

Archimedes was born in Syracuse in 287 BC with Phidias as his father. The mother is not known. Archimedes was a famous Greek mathematician, engineer, inventor, physicist, and renowned thinker and problem solver. He laid the foundations for many prominent fields of physics and math such as hydrostatics and buoyancy. Not much is known about his earlier life and childhood due to absent records and historical mysteries, but we know assumptions about his earlier life. Specifically, only a handful of his personal works lasted through the Middle Ages [2] and this is what caused him to become such an influential scientist and inventor. Also, one of the few things researchers and historians can agree on is that Archimedes began his studies in a school run by Euclid (a Greek mathematician) in Alexandria, Egypt [2]. These are just the few personal things we know about Archimedes, but we know a lot more from his works and inventions. Archimedes died in 212 BC at around 75 years old in Syracuse, Sicily [3].

Scientific Contributions

Archimedes' Principle

Archimedes discovered how to find the volume of an irregularly shaped object by submerging it in a liquid and measuring the displacement of the fluid. This later led him to conclude the idea of buoyancy. Archimedes wanted to calculate this value for any object. Archimedes would derive a ratio relationship between the density of the object over the density of the fluid he submerged the object in which is proportional to the weight of the object over the weight of the displaced fluid. This was his way of modeling the buoyant force on an object that was either fully or partially submerged in a known fluid. For example, if you drop a paper boat in a lake, the boat floats because the weight of the water displaced by the paper boat is greater than the weight of the portion of paper causing the displacement (buoyancy is keeping the boat afloat i.e. buoyant force). This law of physics (Archimedes’ principle) is the foundation of fluid mechanics.

Inventions

Archimedes invented a number of notable inventions in his time. In the time, Archimedes created many things that would help Syracuse in the event of an attack from an enemy nation such as the Romans. So Archimedes would focus his efforts in inventing practical things. Now it is important to know the terrain of the Syracuse in order to understand the method to Archimedes' madness.

Syracuse is not a typical beach side landmass, it has very high, steep, and rocky cliffs. Archimedes understood this and came up with an invention that would harness the energy of the sun to be used against incoming enemy vessels, it later became famously known as Archimedes' Heat Ray. This heat ray would be made up of a series of mirrors and reflectors (possibly bronze and copper shields in his time) that would be placed in different locations along the cliff and pointed and a single point in which the suns rays would be amplified together to catch ships on fire. This invention actually works according to resent more modern tests, but the conditions for it to works are very hard to come by due to weather patterns and strength of reflectors. But it is possible! This idea was also supported and practical based off of the terrain of Syracuse because there are high cliffs that are perfect positions for reflecting the suns rays on enemy vessels. However, since Syracuse lies on the eastern location of Sicily, the enemy raiders would have to have had attacked in the earlier mornings for the heat ray to have worked.

Another notable invention made by Archimedes was called the Archimedes' Screw. The purpose of this invention was to pump out water front he hulls of massive ships that were so heavy they would leak a considerable amount. So Archimedes took it upon himself to find a solution, and he did find a genius one at that. The Archimedes screw is a hollowed out cylinder with a screw/twisted platform coiling up the inside of the cylinder. The machine was hand cranked and proved very successful! This design is still in use today and has been since in many industries and factories. [3]