41 Facts About Archimedes

1.

Archimedes of Syracuse was a Greek mathematician, physicist, engineer, astronomer, and inventor from the ancient city of Syracuse in Sicily.

FactSnippet No. 563,305
2.

Archimedes was one of the first to apply mathematics to physical phenomena, founding hydrostatics and statics.

FactSnippet No. 563,306
3.

Archimedes is credited with designing innovative machines, such as his screw pump, compound pulleys, and defensive war machines to protect his native Syracuse from invasion.

FactSnippet No. 563,307
4.

Archimedes died during the siege of Syracuse, when he was killed by a Roman soldier despite orders that he should not be harmed.

FactSnippet No. 563,308
5.

Archimedes was born c ?287 BC in the seaport city of Syracuse, Sicily, at that time a self-governing colony in Magna Graecia.

FactSnippet No. 563,309
6.

Standard versions of Archimedes' life were written long after his death by Greek and Roman historians.

FactSnippet No. 563,310
7.

Plutarch wrote in his Parallel Lives that Archimedes was related to King Hiero II, the ruler of Syracuse.

FactSnippet No. 563,311
8.

Archimedes provides at least two accounts on how Archimedes died after the city was taken.

FactSnippet No. 563,312
9.

Archimedes had to solve the problem without damaging the crown, so he could not melt it down into a regularly shaped body in order to calculate its density.

FactSnippet No. 563,313
10.

In Vitruvius' account, Archimedes noticed while taking a bath that the level of the water in the tub rose as he got in, and realized that this effect could be used to determine the crown's volume.

FactSnippet No. 563,314
11.

Since a ship of this size would leak a considerable amount of water through the hull, Archimedes' screw was purportedly developed in order to remove the bilge water.

FactSnippet No. 563,315
12.

Archimedes' machine was a device with a revolving screw-shaped blade inside a cylinder.

FactSnippet No. 563,316
13.

Archimedes' screw is still in use today for pumping liquids and granulated solids such as coal and grain.

FactSnippet No. 563,317
14.

The world's first seagoing steamship with a screw propeller was the SS Archimedes, which was launched in 1839 and named in honor of Archimedes and his work on the screw.

FactSnippet No. 563,318
15.

Claw of Archimedes is a weapon that he is said to have designed in order to defend the city of Syracuse.

FactSnippet No. 563,319
16.

Plutarch describes how Archimedes designed block-and-tackle pulley systems, allowing sailors to use the principle of leverage to lift objects that would otherwise have been too heavy to move.

FactSnippet No. 563,320
17.

Archimedes has been credited with improving the power and accuracy of the catapult, and with inventing the odometer during the First Punic War.

FactSnippet No. 563,321
18.

Archimedes discusses astronomical measurements of the Earth, Sun, and Moon, as well as Aristarchus' heliocentric model of the universe, in the Sand-Reckoner.

FactSnippet No. 563,322
19.

Pappus of Alexandria stated that Archimedes had written a manuscript on the construction of these mechanisms entitled On Sphere-Making.

FactSnippet No. 563,323
20.

Archimedes was able to use indivisibles in a way that is similar to modern integral calculus.

FactSnippet No. 563,324
21.

Archimedes proved that the area of a circle was equal to p multiplied by the square of the radius of the circle.

FactSnippet No. 563,325
22.

Archimedes introduced this result without offering any explanation of how he had obtained it.

FactSnippet No. 563,326
23.

In Quadrature of the Parabola, Archimedes proved that the area enclosed by a parabola and a straight line is times the area of a corresponding inscribed triangle as shown in the figure at right.

FactSnippet No. 563,327
24.

Archimedes expressed the solution to the problem as an infinite geometric series with the common ratio :.

FactSnippet No. 563,328
25.

Archimedes proposed a number system using powers of a myriad of myriads and concluded that the number of grains of sand required to fill the universe would be 8 vigintillion, or 810.

FactSnippet No. 563,329
26.

Works of Archimedes were written in Doric Greek, the dialect of ancient Syracuse.

FactSnippet No. 563,330
27.

The written work of Archimedes has not survived as well as that of Euclid, and seven of his treatises are known to have existed only through references made to them by other authors.

FactSnippet No. 563,331
28.

Archimedes made his work known through correspondence with the mathematicians in Alexandria.

FactSnippet No. 563,332
29.

In Proposition II, Archimedes gives an approximation of the value of pi, showing that it is greater than and less than.

FactSnippet No. 563,333
30.

The introductory letter states that Archimedes' father was an astronomer named Phidias.

FactSnippet No. 563,334
31.

Archimedes uses the principles derived to calculate the areas and centers of gravity of various geometric figures including triangles, parallelograms and parabolas.

FactSnippet No. 563,335
32.

Archimedes achieves this by calculating the value of a geometric series that sums to infinity with the ratio.

FactSnippet No. 563,336
33.

The fluids described by Archimedes are not since he assumes the existence of a point towards which all things fall in order to derive the spherical shape.

FactSnippet No. 563,337
34.

Archimedes calculates the areas of the 14 pieces which can be assembled to form a square.

FactSnippet No. 563,338
35.

Reviel Netz of Stanford University argued in 2003 that Archimedes was attempting to determine how many ways the pieces could be assembled into the shape of a square.

FactSnippet No. 563,339
36.

Archimedes' Book of Lemmas or Liber Assumptorum is a treatise with 15 propositions on the nature of circles.

FactSnippet No. 563,340
37.

Archimedes confirmed that it was indeed a palimpsest, a document with text that had been written over an erased older work.

FactSnippet No. 563,341
38.

So, since Archimedes led more than anyone else to the formation of the calculus and since he was the pioneer of the application of mathematics to the physical world, it turns out that Western science is but a series of footnotes to Archimedes.

FactSnippet No. 563,342
39.

Galileo called him "superhuman" and "my master", while Huygens said, "I think Archimedes is comparable to no one" and modeled his work after him.

FactSnippet No. 563,343
40.

The inscription around the head of Archimedes is a quote attributed to 1st century AD poet Manilius, which reads in Latin: Transire suum pectus mundoque potiri.

FactSnippet No. 563,344
41.

Archimedes has appeared on postage stamps issued by East Germany, Greece (1983), Italy (1983), Nicaragua (1971), San Marino (1982), and Spain (1963).

FactSnippet No. 563,345