An Essay About Archimedes

Who is the genius that created things like the pulley systems and fulcrums? His name is Archimedes. Archimedes was a Greek mathematician, as well as a physicist, engineer, inventor and astronomer. There is not a whole lot that is known about Archimedes, but he is regarded as a leading scientist in classical age. Archimedes designed and created very innovated machine and tools that are still used to this day. Archimedes was also considered one of the greatest mathematicians of the ancient world and also plainly one of the greatest all time. The life of Archimedes, the machines he created, books he wrote, and the intricate tools he created were and still are beneficial and meaningful to us now.

The life of Archimedes was one of intense and interesting significance. He was born in 287 BC in a seaport city of Syracuse called Sicily. Sicily was a self-governing colony in Magna Graecia, which was in Southern Italy. Plutarch wrote about Archimedes in his book Parallel Lives, which he said Archimedes was related to King Hiero ll, the ruler of Syracuse. There was said to be a biography of Archimedes written by his friend Heracleides, but it has been lost and thus making Archimedes life a bit unknown and obscure. Archimedes was brought up in what has now come to be known as the Hellenistic period. The word “Hellenistic” comes from the word Hellenes, which is greek word for “Greek.” This period of time started when Alexander the Great died in 323 BC, and it ended with Rome’s occupation of the last major Hellenistic kingdom in approximately 30 BC. During the Hellenistic period, the Greek influence of ideas and culture spread, and the language was used often for trading and commerce purpose. During this time period, life was very flourishing...

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...to the Second Punic War with the defense of Syracuse. He even made amazing engineering tools and machines that benefitted the community, like the Archimedes screw, which helped irrigation among other things. The Archimedes’ principle, which is said to of helped King Hiero ll, showed the different densities between objects using the buoyancy of the water. The findings in mathematics from Archimedes like The Quadrature of the Parabola and the Measurement of a Circle have greatly benefitted mathematics and are still helping now. Archimedes wrote a lot of different works, including his most famous Archimedes Palimpsest, which contained many more important writing like On Floating Bodies. With his amazing inventions, intricate ideas on science, intelligent theorems and principles in mathematics, and his life in general, Archimedes has greatly affected society in many ways