![]() Where Vitruvius got this story, almost two centuries after Archimedes' death, he doesn't say. The great sage's notorious dash appears in Vitruvius' book right after instructions on how to use the Pythagorean theorem to compute the optimum rise of a staircase. (Here, too, is the description that inspired Leonardo da Vinci's famous drawing of the Vitruvian Man.) Vitruvius was a great admirer of classical Greek geometers, especially Archimedes. To residents of this long-ago Sicilian city-state, Archimedes had always occupied an enchanted middle ground: one foot planted squarely in the world of men, the other dancing to some private muse of nature.ĭid Archimedes really run stark naked through the streets of Syracuse? And, if he did, what bolt of inspiration sparked his unclothed euphoria? Archimedes' streak is among the oldest running accounts of the dazzle of scientific genius, vying with Plato's story of Archimedes' predecessor Thales absentmindedly falling down a well while pondering the stars.Īrchimedes' naked run first appears, paradoxically, in the work On architecture by the first-century B.C. That Archimedes seemed oblivious to his own nakedness and to onlookers' bemused stares was perhaps only mildly scandalous, given his reputation for eccentricity. ![]() It was Archimedes, celebrated mathematician, scientist, inventor, and confidant of the king. Stories say that his last words were, “Do not disturb my circles.” These were said to the Roman soldier who killed him, as Archimedes studied.ĭid anything about Archimedes surprise you? Which of his discoveries have you counted on at home or work? Share your responses in the comments section.The citizens of ancient Syracuse would have recognized the man who is said to have bustled past them naked and dripping and shouting, "Eureka!" (I have found it!). (It was between 3 10/71 and 3 1/7.) He used the same “method of exhaustion” to find the area of a circle and the volume of a sphere.Īrchimedes’ death is a testament to his ability to focus on his studies with no regard to the world around him. In order to better estimate the value of π (or the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter), he drew a 96-side regular polygon. It was ancient Greece, after all.) The man had an obsession with circles. The crown was made of iron and covered in gold.īut when it came to mathematics, geometry was his thing. Apparently the goldsmith was trying to pull one over on the king. By replicating the experiment with gold and silver, he realized he had discovered the principle of displacement - if an object sinks in water, the amount of water that is displaced (or overflows) is equal to the volume of that object. That got him thinking about the relationship between the volume of his body and the amount of water that was displaced. See, when he got into his bath, Archimedes noticed that his body caused some of the water to spill over the side. And Archimedes’ discovery has certainly stood the test of time. Nobody knows for sure if this is a true story, but it sure got the attention of my high school math students back in the day. He got so excited that he ran through the streets naked and shouting, “Eureka! Eureka!” or “I’ve got it! I’ve got it!” But it wasn’t until he lowered himself into one of the city’s public baths that the solution hit him like a ton of bricks (or a crown of gold). So Hiero took his crown to the smartest man he knew, Archimedes, who gave the problem some deep thought. But the king was suspicious that the goldsmith was cheating him - giving him a crown made of a composite of gold and another (cheaper) metal. Apparently his good buddy King Hiero hired a goldsmith to make him a crown of the shiny stuff. (“Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world,” he said.)Īnd speaking of heavy objects, my very favorite math story is about our dear, old, absent-minded Archimedes. ![]() (Contraptions based on his design are still being used today.) He also explained how levers and pulleys work, developing new ways to move even heavier objects. He must have gotten a good education, because Archimedes went on to apply mathematics to building tools, like the Archimedes screw, which is used to efficiently pump water from one place to another. (You know: points, lines, planes, if the corresponding sides of two triangles are congruent then so are the triangles and vertical-angles-are-always-congruent.) He enrolled in an Alexandrian school based on the principles of Euclid - the father of plane geometry. on the island of Sicily, he had the good fortune - for him and us - to have a wealthy astronomer for a father. And a few tales of his life support this theory.īorn in 287 B.C. It seems to me that the Greek philosopher and scientist, Archimedes, was like the forgetful scientist.
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