Archimedes and His Contribution to Science

LAM HO VINH NGO PHYSICS 100 HONOR PROJECT RAY E. ETHERIDGE Archimedes and his contributions to science Archimedes of Syracuse was a Greek mathematician, physicist, engineer, inventor and astronomer. Little was known of his personal life, even though people regard him as one of the leading contributors to classical antiquity. One of his most outstanding contributions was the foundation of hydrostatics, statics and principles of lever. He also invented many mechanisms such as siege machines screw pump named after his name. Archimedes grew up in the Greek city-state of Syracuse on the island of Sicily. His father was an astronomer named Phidias. Archimedes is known to be a relative of Hiero II, who was the king of Syracuse during Archimedes' life. Hiero and Archimedes were very close friends. However, nothing else is known about any other members of Archimedes' family. Archimedes lived in Syracuse for his whole life, except for when he went to school in Alexandria, and at one point it was up to Archimedes' inventions to save Syracuse from being taken by the Romans. Generally considered as one of the greatest mathematicians ever, he was not known much during his era until 530 AD, when a compilation of his inventions was made. He died during the Siege of Syracuse, when the Romans invaders broke into the city and a soldier killed Archimedes despite his superior’s order to spare the genius scientist. {draw:frame} Many of Archimedes’s inventions were siege weapons used to protect his home city. Among those were the Claw of Archimedes, and the debatable Archimedes heat ray. Many later generations have done experiments to test this heat ray’s availability. The TV show MythBusters and a group of MIT students set woods on flame, using many big round bronze mirrors. Even though many scientists argue that it would be much easier to set ships aflame using fire arrows or catapults, since the heat ray must reach 300 degree Celsius (570 F) to make wood