Archimedes, (born c. 287 bce, Syracuse, Sicily [Italy]—died 212/211 bce, Syracuse), the most-famous mathematician and inventor in ancient Greece. Archimedes is especially important for his discovery of the relation between the surface and volume of a sphere and its circumscribing cylinder.
He is most famous for discovering the law of hydrostatics, sometimes known as 'Archimedes' principle', stating that a body immersed in fluid loses weight equal to the weight of the amount of fluid it displaces.
Archimedes. reportedly proclaimed "Eureka! Eureka!" after he had stepped into a bath and noticed that the water level rose, whereupon he suddenly understood that the volume of water displaced must be equal to the volume of the part of his body he had submerged.
Archimedes was so thrilled and excited with this discovery that he immediately hopped out of the bath and ran onto the streets to tell the king, shouting loudly 'Eureka! Eureka!' (I have found it!
"Eureka" comes from the Ancient Greek word εὕρηκα heúrēka, meaning "I have found (it)", which is the first person singular perfect indicative active of the verb
Archimedes' principle states: An object immersed in a fluid experiences a buoyant force that is equal in magnitude to the force of gravity on the displaced fluid.
For example, a ship that is launched sinks into the ocean until the weight of the water it displaces is just equal to its own weight. As the ship is loaded, it sinks deeper, displacing more water, and so the magnitude of the buoyant force continuously matches the weight of the ship and its cargo.
Archimedes' Greatest Achievements.- In the 3rd Century BC, Archimedes: invented the sciences of mechanics and hydrostatics. discovered the laws of levers and pulleys, which allow us to move heavy objects using small forces. Invented one of the most fundamental concepts of physics – the center of gravity.
Archimedes is especially important for his discovery of the relation between the surface and volume of a sphere and its circumscribing cylinder.
Archimedes the greatest mathematician of ancient history, and one of the greatest of all time, anticipated modern calculus and analysis by applying concepts of infinitesimals and the method of exhaustion to derive and rigorously prove a range of geometrical theorems, including: the area of a circle; .
Archimedes proved, among many other geometrical results, that the volume of a sphere is two-thirds the volume of a circumscribed cylinder. This he considered his most significant accomplishments, requesting that a representation of a cylinder circumscribing a sphere be inscribed on his tomb.
Archimedes wrote nine treatises that survive. In On the Sphere and Cylinder, he showed that the surface area of a sphere with radius r is 4πr2 and that the volume of a sphere inscribed within a cylinder is two-thirds that of the cylinder. (Archimedes was so proud of the latter result that a diagram of it was engraved on his tomb.) In Measurement of the Circle, he showed that pi lies between 3 10/71 and 3 1/7. In On Floating Bodies, he wrote the first description of how objects behave when floating in water.
Archimedes' father was Phidias, an astronomer. We know nothing else about Phidias other than this one fact and we only know this since Archimedes gives us this information in one of his works, The Sandreckoner.
Archimedes died during the Siege of Syracuse, where he was killed by a Roman soldier despite orders that he should not be harmed.
Archimedes
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