BIOGRAPHY
Archimedes wasborn around
287 B.C. in the Greek city-
state of Syracuse on the
island of Sicily.
He died around 212 B.C. at
the age of 75.
He is a Greek mathematician,
engineer, inventor, physicist,
and astronomer
He was the son of Phidias, an
astronomer.
3.
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• According toPlutarch,
Archimedes came from
the same royal family as
the city’s ruler, King
Hieron II.
• Archimedes stayed in
Syracuse his whole life,
except for the time
when he went to
Alexandria.
4.
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• It wassaid that while he
was in Alexandria, he
studied with the pupils of
Euclid and became friends
with Conon of Samos and
with Eratosthenes.
• Upon his return to
Syracuse from Egypt, he
devoted his life to the
study of mathematics.
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• It seemedthat it was
the devotion to Hieron
that induced
Archimedes to divert his
mathematical studies to
his engineering skills.
• In fact, many of his
inventions were created
at Hieron’s request.
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• He alsoinvented
various war machines in
defending his city
against the Romans.
• Because of these
machines, Roman
soldiers were in abject
terror and refused to
advance.
7.
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• When thedefenders, had feasted
and drank their fill a religious
festival, pro-Roman sympathizers
inside the city directed the
enemy to a weak point in the
walls. Marcellus gave explicit
orders to his officers that the life
and household of Archimedes
should be spared; but before
they could locate the great
scientist, he had been slain by a
common soldier.
8.
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• Accounts ofhis death has
been told in various forms:
– Traditional Story
• He was absorbed in a
geometrical problem whose
diagram was drawn in the
sand. As the shadow of an
approaching Roman soldier
fell over his diagrams, the
agitated mathematician
called out, “Don’t disturb
my circles!” The soldier,
insulted at having orders
thus given to him, retaliated
by drawing his sword
10.
…continuation
–Another legend
• Archimedeswas slain by looters who supposed
that his astronomical instruments, constructed
of polished brass, were actually made of gold.
MEASUREMENT OF ACIRCLE
• Archimedes was the first one to precisely
calculate the value of pi. He accomplished this
by finding the areas of 2 polygons: the
polygon that was inscribed inside the circle,
and the polygon in which a circle was
circumscribed.
14.
MEASUREMENT OF ACIRCLE
• Archimedes didn’t calculate the exact value of
pi, but rather came up with a very close
approximation – he used 96-sided polygons to
come up with a value that fell between 3.1408
and 3.14285
15.
ON SPHERE ANDCYLINDER
With cylinder circumscribing a sphere, he
showed that the surface area of a sphere is
four times that of a great circle. He also finds
the area of any segment of a sphere and
shows that the volume of a sphere is 2/3 the
volume of a circumscribed cylinder.
16.
THE SAND RECKONER
•Greek mathematical notation was not
positional; it utilized many symbols and was
cumbersome to work with.
17.
THE SAND RECKONER
•The "M" is a myriad, and represents 10,000. The Greek work
is murious (uncountable, pl. murioi). The Romans converted to
this to myriad.
• The Sand Reckoner is a remarkable work in which Archimedes
proposes a number system that uses powers of a myriad (base
100,000,000) and is capable of expressing numbers up to 8 x
1063
in modern notation.
• He argues in this work that this number is large enough to
count the number of grains of sand
which could be fitted into the universe.
18.
ARCHIMEDEAN SPIRAL
• Thisspiral was studied by Archimedes in about
225 BC in a work On Spirals. It had already
been considered by his friend Conon.
• Archimedes was able to work out the lengths
of various tangents to the spiral. It can be used
to trisect an angle and square the circle.
BOUYANCY
King Hieron IIhad given the goldsmith a
particular amount of gold to melt down and
make into a crown. When the crown was made
and returned to the king, the king was
suspicious that the goldsmith had stolen some
of the gold and replaced it with an equal weight
of silver.
The king turned to Archimedes for help…
21.
BOUYANCY
Archimedes happened togo to the
bath, and on getting a tub observed
that the more water ran out over the
tub. As this pointed out the way to
explain the case in question, he
jumped out of the tub and rushed
home naked, crying with a loud voice
that he had found what he was
seeking; for he, as he ran, shouted
repeatedly in Greek, ‘EUREKA,
EUREKA,’ meaning “I have found it.”
23.
THE LAW OFLEVER
• Archimedes did not invent the lever, however he gave an
explanation about the principle
• Earlier descriptions of the lever are found in
the Peripatetic school of the followers of Aristotle.
• According to Pappus of Alexandria, Archimedes' work on
levers caused him to remark: "Give me a place to stand on,
and I will move the Earth.“
• 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.
25.
ARCHIMEDES SCREW
• Amachine for raising water, allegedly invented
by Archimedes for removing water from the
hold of a large ship. One form consists of a
circular pipe enclosing a helix and inclined at an
angle of about 45 degrees to the horizontal with
its lower end dipped in the water; rotation of
the device causes the water to rise in the pipe.
Other forms consist of a helix revolving in a fixed
cylinder or a helical tube wound around a shaft.
26.
ARCHIMEDES SCREW
• Modernscrew pumps, consisting of helices
rotating in open inclined troughs, are effective
for pumping sewage in wastewater treatment
plants. The open troughs and the design of the
screws permit the passage of debris without
clogging.