Archimedes
Claimed by Scott Shaeffer (Shaeffernew)
Short Description of Topic
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.
Archimedes' Heat/Death Ray
See also
Are there related topics or categories in this wiki resource for the curious reader to explore? How does this topic fit into that context?
Further reading
Books, Articles or other print media on this topic
External links
Internet resources on this topic
References
This section contains the the references you used while writing this page
2. http://www.thefamouspeople.com/profiles/archimedes-422.php