Use Of Archimedes Principle example essay topic

Archimedes was one of the greatest mathematicians and inventors of his time. He was born in Syracuse, Sicily around the year 287 BC. Archimedes was educated in Alexandria, Egypt, but spent most of his life in Sicily. When in Sicily, he stayed in or near Syracuse and did nothing but experiment and research.

Archimedes made many contributions to mathematics. One of the more important discoveries Archimedes made was he found a way to measure the areas and volumes of objects that are irregularly shaped. Archimedes used a way of discovery, based on weighing infinitely thin slices of objects, to find the volumes and areas figures emerging from conic sections. He formulated ways to measure the area of a curved surface and he found a way to determine the area and volume of objects like cylinders and paraboloids that are solid and bounded by curved surfaces.

He also proved that the volume of a sphere is two-thirds the volume of a circumscribed cylinder. Archimedes took so much pride in this discovery that he requested that a representation of this formula be inscribed on his tomb. He is also known for his approximation of pi (p). His method for finding the approximation was by circumscribing and inscribing a circle with regular polygons having ninety-six sides. Archimedes stated that the value of p was between 31/7 and 310/71. Some of his other theorems concern the centers of gravity of solids and plane figures.

Remarkably, some of Archimedes methods anticipated many discoveries of modern science, such as integral calculus. This is unusual because integral calculus wasnt invented until two thousand years after Archimedes lived. Among all the contributions Archimedes has made, he is most recognized for what is now called Archimedes Principle. Archimedes Principle is his theory on the weight of an object immersed in a liquid.

This theory states that any object floating upon or submerged in a fluid is buoyed upward by a force equal to the weight of the displaced fluid. If the object is heavier than the surrounding fluid, it will sink. The opposite would happen if the object were lighter. The buoyant force is brought about by the fluids weight.

An immersed object that is lighter than the liquid will tend to float because there is more pressure on the bottom of the object because as the fluid gets deeper, the pressure increases. If the object and liquid weigh the same, then the object will stay motionless because it will be in equilibrium. Another use of Archimedes Principle is to find out the density and volume of an object with an extremely irregular shape. First, the object would be weighed in the air, then in water. The volume of the water displaced is found by getting the difference of the weights. Since the volume of displaced water is equal to the volume of the object, the density can be found.

To find the density, divide the weight by the volume. Archimedes wasnt only a mathematician, but also an inventor. One of his most notable inventions is the screw pump. Archimedes invented this machine during his stay in Egypt.

The Archimedes screw, as it is sometimes called, is designed to lift water from a stream and pump it to fields in a higher area. The Archimedes screw was also used by the Romans to build expansive aqueduct systems, some of which are still being used. The screw pump is a cylinder containing a wide thread screw and to use it, you would put it on an incline with one end in the stream. As you turned the screw, the water was raised higher. During the Roman conquest of Sicily, he helped prepare a defense against the Romans. Archimedes made several inventions at this time.

They included the catapult, the compound pulley, and a mirror system to focus the suns light onto enemy ships to ignite them. Archimedes theories led to the later inventions of the hydrometer and the lever. Despite his extraordinary efforts, Syracuse was taken over by the Romans and Archimedes was killed. He died in the year 212 BC. and was believed to have been killed by a soldier who interrupted Archimedes while calculating something in the sand. It is said that he offended the soldier by remarking, Do not disturb my diagrams... Archimedes wrote several works on mathematics.

The surviving ones are Sphere and Cylinder, Measurement of the Circle, Spirals, The Sand Reckoner, Quadrature of the Parabola, Plane, Equilibrium's, Conoids and Spheroids, and Floating Bodies.