Math Mondays: Ranking Archimedes Top 5 Contributions to Humanity
Niles.Piles | March 27, 2023, 11 p.m.
Today we take the time to look back on the life of one of our favorite and most beloved Greek mathematicians. No, we’re not here to talk about Aristarchus of Samos (he was more of an astronomer, we’ll hit him in a future blog), today we talk about Archimedes of Syracuse (one of the brightest minds of Boeheim’s coaching tree [jk]), not only a mathematician, but also a physicist, astronomer, engineer, a father, a husband, a son, and an uncle (I owe a fact check on 3 of those). For that reason, we take the time today to look back on some Arch’s top contributions to the world.
5. The area of a Circle
A = 2πr
Man, who woulda thought. Big time discovery. Major props to big A for pulling that one out.
4. The Lever
Let’s preface this by saying that he didn’t actually invent the lever but he came up with the math behind it. Kind of like how we all knew that apples fell from trees but Newton told us way too much more detail about why it actually happened.
3. Heat ray
Alright now we’re getting into the good stuff. Our guy Arch lined up a bunch of mirrors using parabolas and other precursor principles to calculus that he came up with to heat up ships (allegedly). Still cool (or hot I guess [boo]). *Emphasis on the parenthesized “allegedly”, lotta debate on whether or not it actually worked or was even plausible ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
4. Archimedes' Claw
We already did 4. Change that to a 2! The claw, now this is something to get excited about. Archimedes' claw is something in itself that really is remarkable. I think the only way to picture this one is to think of there being a city wall along the sea (perhaps like kings landing if you’re a GoT or HoTD fan) and that there’s a comically gigantic claw that swings out and grabs a ship to capsize it. I know, right? Why didn’t you think of that? Overall, an ingenious idea, if you have a ship coming at your city just swing a giant claw at it like a catapult and destroy it, simple as that. Surprisingly, there were multiple shows pre-2010 that tested the viability of this invention and believe it or not both instances came back as plausible ( myth not busted ). Apparently the invention was created to defend Syracuse which ended up falling to the Romans in the siege of Syracuse in 212 BC where Archimedes ended up croaking, so although plausible maybe it was indeed not viable.
1. Archimedes Principle
Ok number 1. Drum roll please…. Why the drum roll you ask? You already know what it is because you read the section heading? Well at least I made it number 1 and not number 5 again so props to me. Of course though number 1 is Archimedes principle. One of Arch’s great findings where he figured out you could determine an object's volume by placing it in water and calculating the displacement of the water after the object was placed in it. Big whoop, now you can figure out the volume of an elephant if you put in an overly large, known volume of water. Who picked this for #1? The claw was way way cooler. Big claw for number 1.
Okay everyone that was this week's math Monday. Glad we could spend some time appreciating one of the greats like good old Archimedes (the Greek, not the owl from the sword in the stone [a movie I’ll admit that I rewatched alone via Disney plus while in my mid 20s {rough time during my life}]). We’ll do more of these, they’re fun, queuesome dot com.