Achimedes 250 BC The Greatest Mathematician Before Christ

Wow i get goose bumps just thinking about Archimedes. He is one of my favorite characters of all time. Thank goodness that by boys on Mythbusters (cable TV show) on Discovery channel have been highlighting Archimedes on several shows.

Let me first start off by saying that the Romans were trying to conquer Syracuse, Sicily (the "football" island at the end of the Italian BOOT !!...that is the only way students remember Italy...lol...or from the movie Patton...nah, they never saw Patton, that is an OLD movie)

Archimedes invented a few weapons. One of them was the gadipole. It would sling huge boulders at the Romans as they approach the castle. The Romans were aid to have said "Archimedes stood on top of the castle wall and lifted boulders weighing 500 lbs over his shoulders."

Another story goes that Archimedes was able to burn the Roman ships at sea as they crossed from Italy to Sicily. He used mirrors or some sort of glass and the sun's rays to set the ships on fire. The Roman soldiers said "Fire came from Archimedes EYES !!" He is a WITCH, a war lord, a magician, a Merlin, a GOD. (The boys at Myth Busters with the help of some MIT students tried this experiment and could NOT get it to work. Archimedes probably used he gadipole again to throw huge FIRE balls at the ships in the harbor.)

It is said that Archimedes was quoted as saying, "give me a place to put my lever and i will lift up the WORLD". And i believe him too.

So where do we start with the greatest mathematical mind Before Christ. (250 BC)

We have to mention Pythagoras 700 BC (another Greek who lived in Italy) and his famous formula a^2 + b^2 = c^2 (remember the 3-4-5 triangle ? i will have a blog on that soon)

and of course Euclid (300 BC) who lived in Alexandria, Egypt is probably the best known Greek mathematician. But he was just a book writer ("publish or perish" as the saying in the university goes). Alexander the Great conquered the know world (in Western Civilization history). And he brought all the great mathematical works to the University of Alexandria. Here Euclid was he department chair and wrote the number two best seller of ALL time...."The Elements". Which is still studied today in high school...."Euclidean Geometry" (i will write a blog about that too)

Getting back to Archimedes. The story goes that the king wanted to know if his crown was really made out of gold or not. So he asked Archimedes. Now Archimedes knew that one needed to know the Volume of the crown to know the density, but the crown was nice like a box (Volume = length X height X width).

While Archimedes was taking a bath, the idea came to him...."water displacement".

You put the crown in a tank of water and whatever amount of water that is displaced will give you the volume of the crown.

It is said that Archimedes was so excited that he ran down the street towards the King naked.....yelling "Eureka !!" (I found it !!)

COMMENTS:

(checked it out...interesting stuff...congrats!...from a 60 yr old lawyer)