1. Ryan Szymanski<br />Physics 1010<br />Final project<br />THE LIFE<br />OF<br />ARCHIMEDES<br />Archimedes was born in 287 BC in the city of Syracuse. “At the time Syracuse was an independent Greek city-state with a 500-year history.”(2 paragraph 1) not much of his personal life is known to use such as if he was ever married or had kids even his ancestry is something of a mystery Archimedes dose name his father as Phidias an astronomer who we know nothing about its also said that Archimedes is somehow related to king Hiero the 2nd the ruler of Syracuse it is rumored that Archimedes studded in Egypt, and Alexandria. Archimedes died in 212 BC during the second Punic war when the roman army conquered the city. The commander General Marcus considered Archimedes to be a valuable asset and had ordered that Archimedes was not to be harmed despite this Archimedes was killed in the war. There are many speculations on how he died the popular belief is that Archimedes was working on some mathematical problem when a roman soldier came to him and ordered him to go meet General Marcellus not wanting to leave his work Archimedes declined saying he had to finish working on his problem. At this the soldier became angered with Archimedes and killed him.<br />One of the more famous stories of Archimedes is when King Hiero the 2nd had a crown made for himself. The crown was to be made of pure gold. Unsure if he had been cheated the king asked Archimedes to find out without damaging the crown if it was indeed made of pure gold or not. While taking a bath Archimedes had an epiphany. noticing that the water level rose as he got in the bath he realized that he could use this to determine wither the crown was pure gold or not. It is said that Archimedes was so excited with this realization that he ran out of the bath and down the streets naked shouting “eureka!”(1 paragraph 10) By submerging the crown Archimedes could determine the volume of the crown based on how much water was displaced dividing the mass by the volume the density of the crown could be determined form there all he had to do is see if the density was lower than gold with that Archimedes was able to prove that silver had been mixed in with the gold.<br />Archimedes invented many things if order to help his city of Syracuse. One of which is the Archimedes screw a device to move water out of a ship. He created this because he had been charged to build a massive ship and one of the problems he faced was water leaking through the ship. So he created a cylinder that basically had a screw in it. The screw has turned by hand. This device is still in use today for both solids and liquids.<br />As situations change so too did Archimedes inventions. In order to help defend his city Archimedes created weapons of semi mass destruction. The claw of Archimedes was a crane like contraption with a large metal grappling hook they would drop the hook onto enemy ships and the crane would lift the ship out of the water and drop it damaging the enemy ship and sometimes sinking them.<br />Archimedes also created something like a giant magnifying glass. He would set up giant mirrors along the shores and focus them on an enemy ship trying to catch the ship on fire. As to wither Archimedes actually used this or if it actually worked is still in question.<br />Archimedes studied the principles behind levers and applied it to every day uses and made improvements to it. “Discovered the laws of levers and used pulleys.”(4 paragraph 2) “Archimedes was the greatest mathematician of his age.”(3 paragraph 1) “Archimedes produced the first known summation of an infinite series with a method that is still used in the area of calculus today.”(5 paragraph 3) <br />Bibliography<br />1 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archimedes<br />2 http://www.cs.drexel.edu/~crorres/Archimedes/contents.html<br />3 http://www-history.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/Mathematicians/Archimedes.html<br />4 http://scidiv.bellevuecollege.edu/math/archimedes.html<br />5 http://www.crystalinks.com/archimedes.html<br />