It seems to me that the Greek philosopher and scientist, Archimedes, was like the forgetful scientist. And a few tales of his life support this theory.
Born in 287 B.C. on the island of Sicily, he had the good fortune — for him and us — to have a wealthy astronomer for a father. He enrolled in an Alexandrian school based on the principles of Euclid — the father of plane geometry. (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 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. (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. (“Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world,” he said.)
And speaking of heavy objects, my very favorite math story is about our dear, old, absent-minded Archimedes. Apparently his good buddy King Hiero hired a goldsmith to make him a crown of the shiny stuff. 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.
So Hiero took his crown to the smartest man he knew, Archimedes, who gave the problem some deep thought. 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). He got so excited that he ran through the streets naked and shouting, “Eureka! Eureka!” or “I’ve got it! I’ve got it!”
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. And Archimedes’ discovery has certainly stood the test of time. See, when he got into his bath, Archimedes noticed that his body caused some of the water to spill over the side. That got him thinking about the relationship between the volume of his body and the amount of water that was displaced. 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.
P.S. Apparently the goldsmith was trying to pull one over on the king. The crown was made of iron and covered in gold.
But when it came to mathematics, geometry was his thing. (Duh. It was ancient Greece, after all.) The man had an obsession with circles. 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 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.
Archimedes’ death is a testament to his ability to focus on his studies with no regard to the world around him. 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.
Did anything about Archimedes surprise you? Which of his discoveries have you counted on at home or work? Share your responses in the comments section.
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