Archimedes - The Man Who Ran Naked in the
Street
Archimedes is one of the most famous mathematicians
of all time and,
perhaps, the first engineer.
Although he spoke and wrote Greek,
he lived in Syracuse in Sicily, now a part
of Italy,
and probably never visited Greece.
Archimedes was born about 287 B.C.E.
We know nothing about his childhood
but perhaps he studied at the greatest library
in the world at that time
in Alexandria in Egypt.
But we don’t know for sure.
We’re just guessing.
We know Archimedes very well today because
of some stories about him.
The difficulty is that they’re probably
not true.
The best example is when he got a great idea
in the bath
that helped him to understand a scientific
problem.
He was so excited that he jumped out and ran
down the street.
He was shouting “Eureka!”
(or “Hooray!” in English).
Of course, he was naked.
Now we think it probably didn’t happen.
But we know what the scientific problem was
and we know that it was Archimedes who found
the answer.
The king had some gold and he wanted to make
a crown for himself.
He gave the gold to a craftsman and got his
crown.
But the king was clever and asked himself:
did the craftsman keep some of the gold
and put a cheaper metal (like silver) in it?
He asked Archimedes to find out if this was
true.
The idea that Archimedes had when he got into
his bath
was that the amount of water that comes out
of a bath
when you put an object into it
is the same as the volume of the object.
So, the great mathematician weighed the crown
and then got a piece of gold of the same weight
and put it in a full glass of water.
He saw how much water came out of the glass
and then did the same thing with a piece of
silver
that weighed the same as the piece of gold.
Because the silver was lighter than the gold,
the piece was bigger and more water came out
of the glass.
Archimedes then put the crown in the water.
Again, more water came out than when he put
the gold in
so he knew that the crown was not just made
of gold.
There was also silver in it.
We don’t know what happened to the craftsman
but it was probably not a very nice day for
him
when he saw the king again.
Archimedes was also interested in the effect
of weight,
volume and shape on how objects float
and if a ship was going to sink.
Why did Archimedes want to know this?
The King of Syracuse needed to understand
how to build the best ships
because the Romans wanted to take the city
for their empire.
Because Sicily is an island, they had to come
in ships
and so the Greeks needed better ships to stop
them.
So, Archimedes worked hard to solve the problems
of his king and city.
For example, he made catapults to use against
the Roman ships.
To do this, he needed to know how much weight
to put on a lever
and where to put it.
In this way, he understood that a small weight
can move a greater weight.
It all depends where you put the weights.
It’s like a seesaw in a children’s playground.
A small child can sit on one end of the seesaw
and move a fat man on the other side
– but the fat man must be nearer to the
centre.
The story about catapults is probably true.
But there are also stories about Archimedes
using mirrors and glass
and burning Roman ships with the sun.
They’re probably not true.
In 212 B.C.E., the Romans took Syracuse.
Archimedes was thinking about a mathematical
problem
when they came into the city.
The Romans knew that Archimedes was very clever
and could help them a lot.
They did not want him dead.
One story says that a Roman soldier killed
him
because Archimedes continued to work on circles
– a maths problem
– and said he had no time to see the Roman
general.
And so Archimedes died.
The Arabs translated his work into their language
and later the Europeans translated the Arabic
to Latin.
That is how we know about Archimedes.
He was teaching people – first, the Arabs
and then Europeans
– hundreds of years after his death.
