Archimedes Accomplishments

Archimedes was an Ancient Greek mathematician, engineer, astronomer, physicist, and inventor. Archimedes was born in the port of Syracuse, Sicily in the colony of Magna Graecia (Which was in ancient greece) in the year 287 B.C. Which was also when the romans were in war with Pyrrhus of Epirus. Archimedes was born to astronomer Phidias. Not much is known about his father and his name and profession is known because it was mentioned in one of archimedes’ works “The Sand Reckoner”. It is unknown if archimedes had any siblings.

Archimedes studied in Alexandria, Egypt. That was where the library of alexandria was located. The library, begun under Ptolemy I was completed by Ptolemy II. No one is positive how many books were held in the library in Alexandria but historians has estimated 500,000. In Archimedes time the library was the premier learning institute of the world. To procure all of the books the library had

This caused Archimedes to devise many war machines during siege of Syracuse by the Romans. Such as the heat ray which allowed him to burn ships with mirrors from the shores of Syracuse. He also did routine tasks ordered by the king such as verifying that the royal crown was indeed 100% gold. Archimedes thought that if gold or any other object was submerged in water the object would displace an equal weight of water as the object or gold. He tested his theory using a piece of gold equal to the weight of the royal crown. He submerged the piece of gold and it measured equal in weight of water displaced as weight of gold piece. He then submerged the crown which did not displace its weight in water. Which confirmed that the gold crown was gold and silver mixed. From this discovery, the famous Archimedes’ law came “A body immersed in a liquid or gas will displace so much liquid equal to the volume of the body immersed”. This was just one of his multitude of discoveries and