PHYSICIST ARCHIMEDES OF SYRACUSE (287 BC

C. IBID., CA. 212 BC)

Archimedes of Syracuse (Greek: Arkhim ds, Syracuse (Sicily), ca. 287

a C. C. ibdem, ca. 212 a.C.) was a Greek physicist, engineer, inventor, astronomer
and mathematician. Although few details of his life are known, he is considered one
of the most important scientists of classical antiquity. Among its advances in
physics are its fundamentals in hydrostatic, static and the explanation of the
principle of the lever. He is renowned for designing innovative machines, including
siege weapons and the Archimedes screw, which bears his name.
Modern experiments have proven the claims that architects have come to design
the shelling machines of ships that are enemies of water or set them on fire using a
series of mirrors.

It is considered that the architects were one of the greatest mathematicians of

antiquity and, in general, of all history. He used the exhaustive method to calculate
the area under the arc of a parabola with the summary of an infinite series, and
gave an extremely accurate approximation of the number pi.
He also defined the spiral that bears his name, formulas for the volumes of the
surfaces of the revolution and an ingenious system for very long numbers.

Archimedes died during the siege of Syracuse (214-212 BC), when he was killed
by a Roman soldier, a regret that there were orders that he would not be harmed.
A difference of his inventions, the mathematical writings of Archimedes were not
well-known in antiquity. The mathematicians of Alexandria read it and quoted it, but
the first comprehensive compilation of his work was not made until c. 530 d. By
Isidore of Miletus. Commentaries on the works of Archimedes written by Eutocius
in the sixth century were first opened by a wider audience. The translations of the
works by Archimedes have been very important in the Renaissance, while the
discovery in 1906 of Archimedes' unknown works in the Palimpsest of Archimedes
has helped him to understand how he obtained his mathematical results.

BIOGRAPHY

Bronze statue of Archimedes located at the Archenhold Observatory in Berlin. It

was sculpted by Gerhard Thieme and inaugurated in 1972.
There is little reliable data on Archimedes' life. Nevertheless, all the sources agree
that it was natural of Siracusa and that it died during the denouement of the
siracusa siege. Archimedes was born c. 287 a. C. in the maritime port of Syracuse
(Sicily, Italy), city that at that time was a colony of Magna Grecia. Knowing the date
of his death, the approximate date of birth is based on an affirmation of the
Byzantine historian Juan Tzetzes, who affirmed that Archimedes lived until the age
of 75 years.
According to a hypothesis of reading based on a corrupted passage of The sand-
meter, whose title in Greek is (Psammites) -, Archimedes mentions the
name of its father, Phidias, an astronomer.
Plutarch wrote in his book Lives Parallel (Life of Marcellus, 14, 7) that Archimedes
was related to the tyrant Hieron II of Syracuse. It is known that a friend of
Archimedes, Heraclides, wrote a biography about him but this book is not
conserved, being lost the details of its life. It is unknown, for example, if he ever
married or had children.
Among the few certain facts about his life, Diodorus Siculus gives us one according
to which it is possible that Archimedes, during his youth, studied in Alexandria, in
Egypt. The fact that Archimedes refers in his works to scientists whose activity was
developed in that city, pays the hypothesis: in fact, Archimedes refers to Conon de
Samos as his friend in On the sphere and cylinder, and two of his works (The
Method of Mechanical Theorems and the Problem of Livestock) are dedicated to
Eratosthenes of Cyrene.
Archimedes died c. 212 a. During the second Punic war, when Roman forces
commanded by General Marco Claudio Marcelo captured the city of Siracusa after
a siege of two years. Archimedes was especially distinguished during the siege of
Syracuse, where he developed weapons for the defense of the city. Polibio,
Plutarch, and Livy describe precisely their work in defense of the city as an
engineer, developing pieces of artillery and other devices capable of keeping the
enemy at bay.
Plutarch, in his accounts, goes so far as to say that the Romans were so nervous
with the inventions of Archimedes that the appearance of any beam or pulley on
the city walls was enough to provoke panic among the besiegers.
Archimedes was assassinated at the end of the siege by a Roman soldier,
contravening the orders of the Roman general, Marcelo, to respect the life of the
great Greek mathematician. There are several versions of the death of
Archimedes: Plutarch, in his story, gives us up to three different versions.
According to his most popular account, Archimedes was contemplating a
mathematical diagram when the city was taken. A Roman soldier ordered him to go
to meet the general, but Archimedes ignored this, saying that he had to solve the
problem first. The soldier, enraged at the answer, killed Archimedes with his sword.
However, Plutarch also provides two lesser-known accounts of Archimedes' death,
the first of which suggests that he might have been killed while attempting to
surrender to a Roman soldier, and while asking for more time to solve a problem in
which I was working.
According to the third story, Archimedes carried mathematical instruments, and
was killed because the soldier thought they were valuable objects. Titus Livius, for
his part, merely says that Archimedes was leaning over some drawings he had laid
out on the floor when a soldier who did not know who he was, killed him.
In any case, according to all accounts, General Marcelo was furious at the death of
Archimedes, because he considered it a valuable scientific asset, and had
previously ordered that he be not injured.

The last words attributed to Archimedes were "Do not bother my circles," referring
to the circles in the mathematical drawing he was supposedly studying when the
Roman soldier interrupted him. The phrase is often quoted in Latin as Noli turbare
circulo meos, but there is no evidence that Archimedes pronounced those words
and does not appear in Plutarch's accounts.

Cicero describes the tomb of Archimedes, which he would have visited, and
indicates that an inscribed sphere had been placed on it inside a cylinder.
Archimedes had proved that the volume and area of the sphere are two-thirds of
that of the cylinder inscribing it, including its bases, which was considered the
greatest of its mathematical discoveries. In the year 75 a. C., 137 years after his
death, the Roman orator Cicero was serving as quaestor in Sicily and heard stories
about Archimedes' tomb, but none of the locals was able to tell him exactly where
he was. Finally, he found the tomb near the door of Agrigento at Syracuse, in a
neglected and bushy condition. Cicero cleaned the tomb, and so he was able to
see the size and read some of the verses that had been written on it.

The accounts of Archimedes were written by the historians of ancient Rome long
after his death. Polybius's account of the siege of Syracuse in his Histories (book
VIII) was written about seventy years after the death of Archimedes, and was used
as a source of information by Plutarch and Livy. This account offers little
information about Archimedes as a person, and focuses on the war machines that
were said to have been built to defend the city.

DISCOVERIES AND INVENTIONS

THE GOLDEN CROWN
One of the best-known anecdotes about Archimedes tells how he invented a
method for determining the volume of an object with an irregular shape. According
to Vitruvius, Hiero II ordered the fabrication of a new crown in the form of a
triumphal crown, and he asked Archimedes to determine whether the crown was
made of gold alone or if, on the contrary, a dishonest goldsmith had added silver in
his realization. Archimedes had to solve the problem without damaging the crown,
so he could not melt it and turn it into a regular body to calculate its mass and
volume, hence its density. While taking a bath, he noticed that the water level was
rising in the bathtub when he entered, and so he realized that that effect could be
used to determine the volume of the crown. Because the water can not be
compressed, the crown, when submerged, would displace a quantity of water
equal to its own volume. By dividing the weight of the crown by the volume of
displaced water the density of the crown could be obtained.
The density of the crown would be less than the density of gold if other less dense
metals had been added to it. When Archimedes, during the bath, realized the
discovery, it is said that he ran naked in the streets, and that he was so moved by
his discovery that he forgot to dress. According to the account, the street shouted
"Eureka!" (In ancient Greek: "" meaning "I have found it!")
However, the history of the golden crown does not appear in Archimedes' known
works. In addition, it has been doubted that the method describing the story is
feasible because it would have required an extreme level of accuracy to measure
the volume of displaced water.

Instead, Archimedes might have sought a solution in which he applied the principle
of hydrostatics known as the principle of Archimedes, described in his treatise On
Floating Bodies. This principle states that every body submerged in a fluid
undergoes a thrust from the bottom up equal to the weight of the fluid dislodged.
Using this principle, it would have been possible to compare the density of the
golden crown with that of pure gold by using a balance.
Placing on one side of the balance the crown object of the investigation and in the
other a sample of pure gold of the same weight, it would proceed to submerge the
balance in the water; If the crown had less density than gold, it would displace
more water because of its greater volume and would experience a greater thrust
than the gold sample.
This difference in buoyancy would tip the balance accordingly. Galileo believed that
this method was "probably the same one that Archimedes used, because, in
addition to being very accurate, it is based on demonstrations discovered by
Archimedes himself."
Around the year 1586, Galileo Galilei invented a hydrostatic balance to weigh
metals in air and water that apparently would be inspired by the work of
Archimedes.

THE SIRACUS AND THE ARCHIMEDES SCREW

Much of Archimedes' work in the field of engineering emerged to meet the needs of
his hometown, Syracuse. The Greek writer Ateneo de Nucratis recounts that
Hiero II commissioned Archimedes to design a huge ship, the Siracus, which built
Corinthians under his supervision. The ship could be used for luxurious travel,
loading supplies and as a warship. Finally his name was changed to that of

Alexandria, when he was sent as a gift, along with a grain cargo, to King Ptolemy
III of Egypt.
It is said that the Siracus was the largest ship of the classical antiquity. According
to Ateneo, it was able to load 600 people and included among its facilities
decorative gardens, a gymnasium and a temple dedicated to the goddess
Aphrodite. Because a ship of this size would allow large amounts of water to pass
through the hull, the Archimedes screw was allegedly invented to extract the water
from the bilge.

The Archimedes machine was a mechanism with a blade shaped like a screw
inside a cylinder. It was turned by hand, and could also be used to transfer water
from low-water masses to irrigation canals.
In fact, Archimedes screw is still used today to pump liquids and semi-fluid solids,
such as coal, ice and cereals. Archimedes' screw, as Marco Vitruvius described it
in Roman times, may have been an improvement of the pumping screw that was
used to irrigate the hanging gardens of Babylon.

ARCHIMEDES' CLAW
Polybius narrates that Archimedes'
intervention in the Roman attack on
Syracuse was decisive, to the
point that he disrupted the
Roman hope of taking the city by
storm, having to modify his strategy
and pass the time of long duration, the situation that lasted Eight months, until the
final fall of the city. Among the mills that were used for such feat (catapults,
scorpions and cranes) is one that is his invention: the so-called manus ferrea. The
Romans drew all that the ships could to the wall to hook their stairs to the
fortifications and to be able to accede to its troops to the battlements. Then clutch
in action the claw, which consists of an arm resembling a crane from which hangs
a huge metal hook.
When the bottle was dropped in a boat, the arm was swinging upwards, raising the
bow of the boat out of the water and causing water to join the stern. He was
crippled by enemy wits and caused confusion, but it was not the only thing he did:
through a system of pulley and chains, he suddenly dropped the ship, causing an
escort to be carried out again at the wheel and sinking.
There have been modern experiments with the purpose of proving the viability of
the claw, and in a document of the year 2005 titled Superarms of the ancient world
a version of the claw was constructed and it was concluded that it was a feasible
device.