Archimedes was born in and lived his whole life in a town called Syracuse. He is thought to have been related to Hieron the second, the king of Syracuse at the time of Archi's birth. Archi was a brilliant guy, but it is those brilliant people who we often find make the simple things harder. When a roman Solder tried to capture him to take Archi back to Rome, he told the solder not to disturb him because he was working on figures. That made the Solder so mad he killed Archi right then and there! If Archimedes had just said “ok let me grab my stuff”, he probably would have lived a lot longer! There is a bust said to be of Archimedes, but we have recently discovered is that of Archidamos III a king of Sparta. There is even a stamp that features that bust honoring Archi!
Syracuse is right in between the places the Punic War was against, North Africa and Rome. So this little Greek seaport colony was constantly trying to stay out of the mess of war. The Punic Wars were mainly about power greedy rulers. Archimedes father was an astronomer whose name was Phidias. And not much else is know about his relatives. He probably got his love of learning from his father, on his tombstone is a cylinder with a sphere inside of it. He spent time figuring out how much more mass was in the cylinder and how much more surface area there was.
Two of my favorite of Archimedes inventions are the burning mirror and Archimedes claw. The Burning Mirror was an invention to ward off enemies from the shores of Syracuse. It was basically a series of giant octagonal mirrors arranged so that when positioned toward the ocean, reflected the sun. Like burning an ant with a magnifying glass the mirror started burning enemy boats. The other invention that I liked was the Archimedes Claw. This was like a colossal fishing pole. The pole part reached over the city wall and the fishing part had a hook at the end that hooked on to enemy boats . There were oxes pulling the end of the pole. Making the hook pull the boat up then the oxes would release the pole causing the hook to drop the boat. This caused the enemies to go into turmoil.
Some amazing inventions that Archi made that we still use today are the Archimedes Screw, which is like a hand drill and pi which isn't and invention but something Archi discovered. Many people think that if Archi's notebook hadn't been almost completely destroyed then we would have been able to be so technologically advanced we might be able to live in space by now. Almost all people think that Archimedes had a miraculous mind, but if so why didn't he discover that we came from monkeys?
http://www.cs.drexel.edu/~crorres/Archimedes/contents.htmlSyracuse is right in between the places the Punic War was against, North Africa and Rome. So this little Greek seaport colony was constantly trying to stay out of the mess of war. The Punic Wars were mainly about power greedy rulers. Archimedes father was an astronomer whose name was Phidias. And not much else is know about his relatives. He probably got his love of learning from his father, on his tombstone is a cylinder with a sphere inside of it. He spent time figuring out how much more mass was in the cylinder and how much more surface area there was.
Two of my favorite of Archimedes inventions are the burning mirror and Archimedes claw. The Burning Mirror was an invention to ward off enemies from the shores of Syracuse. It was basically a series of giant octagonal mirrors arranged so that when positioned toward the ocean, reflected the sun. Like burning an ant with a magnifying glass the mirror started burning enemy boats. The other invention that I liked was the Archimedes Claw. This was like a colossal fishing pole. The pole part reached over the city wall and the fishing part had a hook at the end that hooked on to enemy boats . There were oxes pulling the end of the pole. Making the hook pull the boat up then the oxes would release the pole causing the hook to drop the boat. This caused the enemies to go into turmoil.
Some amazing inventions that Archi made that we still use today are the Archimedes Screw, which is like a hand drill and pi which isn't and invention but something Archi discovered. Many people think that if Archi's notebook hadn't been almost completely destroyed then we would have been able to be so technologically advanced we might be able to live in space by now. Almost all people think that Archimedes had a miraculous mind, but if so why didn't he discover that we came from monkeys?
http://scidiv.bellevuecollege.edu/Math/ArchimedesTombstone.html
