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Gravity's Engines
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Editor's note: The following is an excerpt from They Called Me Mad: Genius, Madness and the Scientists Who Pushed the Limits of Knowledge by John Monahan (on sale December 7 from Berkley). In it Monahan takes the reader from Archimedes archetypical "Eureka!" moment to J. Robert Oppenheimer's fraught findings.
His genius shone like a beacon throughout the Hellenistic world, and his dazzling mathematical insights and wondrous inventions continue to fascinate us to this day. Unfortunately much of his actual life is obscured by the mists of time. In the absence of facts, a body of legend has grown, punctuated by secondhand and thirdhand accounts of varying accuracy. Galileo venerated him. The Fields Medal, one of the most prestigious prizes for mathematicians bears his image. The tenth-century Islamic geometer Abū Sahl al-Kūhī was so impressed by his works that he called him the “imam of mathematics” (Hirshfeld, 2009). He is credited with calculating pi and the volume of the universe, discovering principles of buoyancy, inventing water pumps, and building war engines capable of grinding the Roman army to a halt. Not to mention inventing what may have been the world’s first death ray. The name of this legendary genius, perhaps the greatest mathematician and inventor of all time, is Archimedes.
His life began on the sun-drenched shores of the island of Sicily, in the city-state of Syracuse. Originally a Greek colony, sitting at the nexus of Mediterranean trade, it was one of the most influential cities of the ancient world, described by Cicero as, “the greatest Greek City and the most beautiful of them all.” Its harbor was filled with Egyptian, Greek, and Phoenician trading vessels bearing all manner of oils, wines, and exotic spices. Unlike most of the other city-states of the time, the leaders of Syracuse had managed to safely navigate the treacherous political waters between Rome and Carthage, the super-powers of the day. So at the time of Archimedes’ birth, Syracuse enjoyed an unusual period of peace and prosperity.
Exact dates are difficult, but it is believed that Archimedes was born around 287 b.c.e. His father was the astronomer Pheidias, who passed on to the young Archimedes his love for the stars, the planets, and the other wonders of the universe. Starting around the age of seven, the boy Archimedes would have received the formal education typical of Greek males, including lessons in Greek grammar, literature, and music as well as training in sports such as running and throwing the discus and javelin.
When Archimedes was a teenager, something occurred that would have important implications for the young man. Around 270 b.c.e., Hieron, a military commander and illegitimate son of a Syracusan nobleman, seized power and became king of Syracuse. Archimedes and Hieron were friends; some have even suggested they may have been related. Whether or not that was true, the two men would form a long-lasting relationship that would serve them both well.
Shortly after Hieron took the throne, Pheidias sent the young Archimedes to continue his education across the sea in the storied city of Alexandria. Founded in Egypt near the Nile Delta by the legendary Alexander the Great, the city had been built by one of Alexander’s generals, Ptolemy. When he succeeded Alexander and became king of Egypt, Ptolemy I dedicated the city to the pursuit of culture and learning, turning it into the greatest intellectual center in the ancient world.
The city was home to the temple of the Muses, the origin of our word museum. This wasn’t one building, but a complex of buildings, including lecture halls, dissection rooms, botanical gardens, and even a zoo, in addition to accommodations for visiting scholars from all over the known world. Next to the museum was the famous Library of Alexandria. At the time, the library was the greatest repository of knowledge civilization had ever known, containing over half a million works.
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8 Comments
Add CommentI hate to be a party pooper (okay, actually I love to be a party pooper), but he didn't _coin_ the word eureka. The story just made the word famous. Literal translation: "I have found (it)."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe amount of water displaced by his body was EQUAL to the volume of his body. Yes, you could say a 1:1 ratio is a proportion, but equal is clearer.
It states that in the article. Of course if you had read it you would have known. When they say he "coined" it they are refering to its modern usage rather than creating a entirely new word. People don't say Eureka! because they are trying to say "I have it" in greek, they say it because of the modern context of the word which is derived from the Archimedes story.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHowever, he probably wasn't the first greek to say "eureka!" after discovering something, so claiming that he coined the term in that context is at best speculative.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisCorrection to the article. The modern notation of Archimedes' big number is 10^63 (10 raised to 63) not 1063. He invented the exponential notation for expressing big numbers.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisArchimedes' calculation is very impressive if you realize that his number (10^63) is much larger than the no. of stars in the visible universe (10^21) and the no. of atoms in the whole earth (10^50) considering that the no. of stars and atoms were estimated only in 20th and 19th century respectively.
His estimate of the size of the universe is equivalent to 3.4 lightyears in diameter. That's twice larger than the entire solar system. His contemporaries thought the sun was smaller than the island of Crete. Archimedes was lightyears ahead of his time.
Not sure I'll want to buy this book if the extract is representative of the whole volume.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisConon of Samos did not DISCOVER the constellation Comar Berenices. A constellation is a grouping of star that human being associate to a shape. Nothing to discover there, merely to associate.
And about Pi, the fact that the actual figure is between Archimedes' estimates is not amazing. Given the methodology followed it has to be that close. It is only a proof of the precision of the measures made by Archimedes and his dedication. But that in itself is worth praise.
"He further made the connection that if he placed the crown into a given amount of water, and it displaced more water than the same weight of pure gold, then the crown and the pure gold must have a different volume. In other words, if they had a different volume, then the crown could not be pure gold."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this- I don't think this is right. If you submerge a bar of pure gold of certain weight, and measure the volume of water displaced, you can calculate the density of pure gold : which is mass/volume. Now by submerging the crown in water and measuring the volume of water displaced, you can measure the volume of the crown, if you can weigh the crown, then you can calculate its density and thereby determine its purity.
@South Indian. You are not correct in your rejection of the proposition, but you are both correct in your different descriptions of the same relationship. If the presumed alloying material had a lower density, then the debased gold crown would have a higher volume and therefore displace more water for an equivalent mass. In other words the alloy crown would have a lower density. Your methodology isto determine the actual water displacement of a known quantity of pure gold and compare it with the displaced quantity of the crown ofequivalent mass. If the crown was made partly of an alloying metal of lower density than gold then it would displace more water as specified. I believe that both methodologies are essential equivalent.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNice work for helping in recalling others colleagues on memory of our pass scientist in this Excerpt. Good Work, thou there are unjustifiable flaws in the article all in all good presentation of recall.
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