Talk:Archimedes
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[edit] Correcting the statement of Gauss
The present intro claims: "He is considered by some historians of mathematics to be one of the greatest, if not the greatest, mathematicians in antiquity; Carl Friedrich Gauss considered him one of the two greatest ever (the other being Isaac Newton)." This is mostly nonsense, of course. What Carl Friedrich Gauss really said was: "There have been only three epoch-making mathematicians: Archimedes, Isaac Newton, and Ferdinand Eisenstein". Since Gauss himself frequently has been called the greatest mathematician ever, this could be qualified as a rather modest statement. I am going to correct this. Physicists 17:28, 11 October 2006 (UTC)
[edit] And the Greatest Scientist of All Time was?
Archimedes? Einstein? Newton? Galileo? Gauss? Someone else? The intros of the articles on Einstein and Newton mention that some consider them to be the "greatest". Others say Archimedes was the one, e. g, this Archimedes site [1] of Jürgen Schmidhuber. For symmetry reasons one could add a statement along these lines. Physicists 18:54, 11 October 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Comments
Draft. Some of the obvious things here include:
- The "Euureka" thing
- Archimedes' screw
- The principle of the lever
- The buoyancy principle
- Machines invented for the defense of Syracuse
- Books written
- Some info on π.
- Some books that he had written before his death
What's the earliest source telling the story that Archimedes discovered Archimedes' principle in a bath house and shouted "Eureka"? Was it Vitruvi? Perhalps we should repeat this story (as alledged, not as fact) a bit more in detail, both here and in the Eureka article. -- Adhemar
Someone wrote the following about the statement that the area of a parabola is equal to 4/3 the area of the triangle with the same base and height":
- (This proposition must be understood as follows. The "base" may be taken to be a secant line of the parabola, not necessarily orthogonal to the axis of the parabola, but one must construe the word "base" in the formula to mean the component of its length in a direction orthogonal to the axis of the parabola, ignoring the component parallel to the axis; the "height" is the length of a segment parallel to the axis of the parabola, running from the midpoint of the base to the curve.)
Now, the way I remember this, Archimedes himself defined base as the length of the secant line, summit as the point of tangency of a line parallel to the base, and height as the distance from the base to the summit. This also seems simpler and more cogent that the explanation given in the page. While I gather a copy of the original text to double-check, I have moved the questionable content here.Miguel
The "dubious" material that you moved to the talk page is indeed correct. It would be strange for Archimedes to define the base as the length of anything, rather than as the line segment itself. I will put the dubious material back, but phrased more simply and with an illustration. 131.183.73.153 01:35 8 Jul 2003 (UTC)
The reason I just reverted newly inserted references to "the Roman king" is that there was no Roman king in the time of Archimedes. Michael Hardy 21:31, 17 Sep 2004 (UTC)
... and besides, Archimedes was killed in the invasion, so no one could have been friendly with him. Michael Hardy 21:32, 17 Sep 2004 (UTC)
[edit] Categorisation
I deleted categ:Mathematicians since the existing categ:Ancient mathematicians was/is already a subcategory of Mathematicians. No around the houses - a straight subcategory. Now we have categ:Mathematicians reinstated and so we have both categ:Mathematicians and categ:Ancient mathematicians - redundancy. Is there a general problem in recognising that an Ancient mathematician is automatically a Mathematician??
- None at all. If individual mathematicians generally are to be listed in a category, then it would be absurd to exclude Archimedes.
Similar constructs occur in other science categories, without the general need for redundant categorisations. Ian Cairns 01:45, 18 Dec 2004 (UTC)
- Can I chip in and say that the nationality categorisation of mathematicians is problematic, in some cases, and should not really be pushed to the limits. I have left a note at Emil Artin, for example. For Besicovitch, there is a Category:Russian Jewish mathematicians that applies, and I think one could also say he was British. Multiple categories and redundancy is actually preferable to trying too hard to pigeonhole people. There is in fact little actual harm in having Category:Mathematicians applied to Pythagoras, for example, as well as Category:Ancient mathematicians. Some people using WP will not know Pythagoras was ancient (strange but true). Charles Matthews 09:52, 18 Dec 2004 (UTC)
-
- Footnote to that - it seems there is ongoing debate about the correct way to use categories for Russian or Soviet Jews. We should probably wait for consensus on that. Charles Matthews
Archimedes should also be categorized as a (theoretical) physicist. He founded statics and hydraulics and wrote on cosmology. — Miguel 12:25, 2004 Dec 18 (UTC)
[edit] Burning the Roman fleet.
In the article it is stated that during an episode of mythbusters, the theory of Archimedes using mirrors to burn roman ships is disproved. What is not mentioned however are the experiments of the Archimedes enthusiast Sakas. In the year of 1973 he organised 60 men to aim oblong shaped mirrors towards a replica of the roman ships of that period. http://www.editorialbitacora.com/armagedon/arquimedes/arquimedes.jpg Reports say the ship burst into flames within three minutes. I would definitely give this experiment more faith than the one performed on mythbusters. Perhaps if this experiment is sufficient proof for wikipedia then the possibility of the burning of the roman ships given in the article could be changed from highly unlikely to fairly possible? Many ancient historians reported on this event. It therefore seems likely that there must be some truth to the story. Real World 10:57, 2 October 2005 (UTC)
Students at MIT had recently published a paper. They conducted their own experiment detailed at [2]. They had success in causing a fire. They had difficulty in getting the fire going until the sky cleared up and it was difficult to get the mirrors aimed correctly. Fire almost started immediately once the conditions were correct and the team worked in unison. They also found the waxes used did not affect the ignition. I would add this to the article, but i don't have the time right now to write article-quality text. --Klhuillier 02:06, 7 October 2005 (UTC)
The flaw in the Mythbusters experiment was to conclude that Archimedes would have had to construct a large parabolic array, and as such they declared the myth busted because it would have been impractical to build and aim such a device properly. Strangely, they never considered the simpler explanation, which would have required dozens or hundreds of people holding flat, reflective shields, which seems to be the way it was described in the texts anyway. The heating effect of hundreds of mirrors pointed at a ship seems obviously effective, its simply a question of numbers. The more shields that were used, the more heat would be produced. Declaring this myth busted is simply ridiculous. It simply couldn't fail if enough mirrors were used. --Landroo 00:14, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Personal History
This article needs some info added on his life, not just his work. Especially since the link from the Sophie Germain article refers to his "fate", yet there is no mention here of personal trials or mode of death.
Walt 20:29, 4 April 2006 (UTC)
a lot of stuff is supposedly what the public said to popularize him and sort of exaggerations according to other articles. that might need to be checked. like the naked and eureka part...
What is reliably known about his personal life (any marriage, children, political involvement, interests other than the physical sciences, etc)? A-giau 17:55, 2 August 2006 (UTC)
changed some info saying he was born in syracuse N.Y., he was born in the Kingdom of Syracuse, under the Monarchy of King Heron, whom may or may not have been his uncle. Plato has been quoted as saying they are "of close relation".
Archimedes actual relationship (as in, familial relationship) to the King or royal family is by no means certain. The current version of this article presents this as fact. According to the Palimpsest site, few details are known about his early life and family. I'd assume they have serious Archimedes scholars connected with their work, so it seems like a trustworthy source. -- Myrrhlin 02:50, 4 October 2006 (UTC)
According to Alexandre Dumas, in the Count of Monte Cristo, he was killed by a soldier of Marcellus whilst in deep concentration of some geometrical problem. Any ideas about this? --144.82.106.62 16:13, 23 October 2006 (UTC)
Syracuse is modern day Sicily
Where does the name "Saracussia" come from? It's Syracusae in Latin and Συρακουσαι in Greek.
[edit] Image removed
I removed Image:Archimedes.jpg from the article because it is a lousy reproduction of a portrait dreamed up by 19th century painter Niccolò Barabino. If there is some consensus that a fictitious is better than none, I suggest to pick one from Pictures of Archimedes or Death of Archimedes Illustrations. Rl 15:19, 29 May 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Death of Archimedes
I removed the claim that General Marcellus had the soldier who killed Archimedes executed. None of the classical accounts at [3] say this, although Plutarch writes that Marcellus regarded the soldier as a murderer. It is a feature of modern accounts that they sometimes say that the soldier was executed, but it is not an accurate reflection of the classical accounts of Archimedes' death.
Diodorus Siculus says that Marcellus probably ordered the soldier's death. (20:39, 7 November 2006 139.140.174.93)
Most of the accounts of Archimedes' death were written many years later, in some cases hundreds of years after the event. The exact circumstances will probably never be known, although many historians say that General Marcellus was angry when he learnt that a soldier had killed Archimedes.--Ianmacm 21:06, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
Also, fix the quotation in Greek of his last words. Me can't be used with the imperative, so the verb either has to be in the subjunctive or the negative has to be ou. ( 9 November 2006 139.140.194.70).
I'm not expert enough on Greek to comment on this, but the phrase Μη μου τους κύκλους τάραττε (mi mou tous kiklous taratte) is spelt exactly as it is given at [4]. Any more comments on this would be welcome.--Ianmacm 07:45, 9 November 2006 (UTC)
I can't find that quote in Polybius, Diodorus Siculus, or Plutarch. He says something entirely different according to Diodorus Siculus: "Αποστηθι, ω ανθρωπε, του διαγραμματος μου."
I'm not knowledgeable enough about classical literature to debate on this, but found similar information about the quote at [5]--Ianmacm 18:09, 12 November 2006 (UTC)
I don't know Modern Greek, but that looks like it might be a modern Greek approximation, considering the lack of accent marks on the monosyllabic words and the transliteration is definitely modern Greek based and not Ancient Greek based. Someone transliterating Ancient Greek would spell it "me mou tous kyklous taratte." Also, someone looking at the transliteration may have just assumed the last "e" in tratte to be an epsilon as opposed to an eta with iota-subscript. Regardless, I still can't find that quote attributed to him in anything.
[edit] "X-rays reveal Archimedes' hidden writings"
Quoting MSN.com: "X-rays reveal Archimedes' hidden writings".
The page: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14226275/?GT1=8404
[edit] Plato being a source for mythical ship
The page includes this claim:
Faced with war when unable to present the promised amount, Hiero II commissioned Archimedes to develop a large luxury/supply/war barge in order to serve his changing requirments of his navy. It is rumored that the Archimedes Screw was actually an invention of happenstance, as he needed a tool to remove bilge water. The ship, coined Saracussia, after its nation, may be mythical. There is no record on foundry art, nor any other period pieces depicting its creation. It is soley substaintiated by a description from Plato, who said "it was the grandest equation ever to sail."
Note that Plato died (347 BCE) before the birth of Archimedes which makes the statement above impossible.
[edit] Cultural depictions of Archimedes
I've started an approach that may apply to Wikipedia's Core Biography articles: creating a branching list page based on in popular culture information. I started that last year while I raised Joan of Arc to featured article when I created Cultural depictions of Joan of Arc, which has become a featured list. Recently I also created Cultural depictions of Alexander the Great out of material that had been deleted from the biography article. Since cultural references sometimes get deleted without discussion, I'd like to suggest this approach as a model for the editors here. Regards, Durova 15:56, 18 October 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Details of his death
Archimedes' death is notable and should be documented in the article. You can find reliable sources for it here [6]. Best. --Deodar 05:10, 28 October 2006 (UTC)
- A biography section would be a good addition, I believe. At present there is a mass of material on his contributions, but next to nothing about his actual life. — RJH (talk) 18:40, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Semi-protection?
Archimedes would be pleased to know that he is so famous that some people want to vandalize his Wikipedia article repeatedly, but it is getting a bit boring. At this rate, semi-protection may be considered as an option.--Ianmacm 16:02, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
The article is currently semi-protected which is a pity, but it was becoming too time consuming to remove silly comments from anonymous IP edits.--Ianmacm 09:13, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Arquimedes tomb
I have found that he made his frieds carve the sphere and cylinder drawing into his tomb, and that this allowed Cicero to find the tomb 40 years later. Anybody can check this out and add it to the article?
This has now been added.--Ianmacm 17:23, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Where was he educated?
Where was he educated?
According to some historical accounts, he spent part of his youth in Alexandria, Egypt, and was educated there. Like most of the details of Archimedes' life, this is hard to verify. However, it may be included in the article in an up and coming rewrite.--Ianmacm 18:52, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
[edit] What about the myth?
This article is good but it failed to say to tell the reader about the Legend of Archimedes and the Crown. It does tell you he ran out into the streets naked in his exicitement but it does not say why he was exicited. I would appreciate it if that information could be added. Thank You. Miss Amber —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 75.15.246.92 (talk) 23:26, 18 January 2007 (UTC).
Quite right, the page now gives the story about the crown. The link at [7] is a children's version of the story, but it is fun and detailed enough to show how Archimedes solved the problem.--Ianmacm 21:56, 19 January 2007 (UTC)
The story tells how Archimedes realized that the volume of the displaced water was equal to that of the crown. By weighing the crown and measuring the volume of displaced water, he was able to determine the crown's density. But then the article goes on to say: "This discovery is known in the field of hydrostatics as Archimedes' Principle, which states that a body immersed in a fluid experiences a buoyant force equal to the weight of the displaced fluid." This is incorrect: the discovery related in the story does not involve buoyancy. In the story, at least as related here, Archimedes did not weigh the submerged crown. Did Archimedes in fact ever formulate "Archimedes' Principle"? It would be interesting to see a reference. Nasorenga 19:17, 23 March 2007 (UTC)
This is an interesting point. The story told by Vitruvius in which Archimedes jumped out of the bath and cried "Eureka!" is usually regarded as a statement of Archimedes Principle, which has its own article on Wikipedia under the title Buoyancy. The problem set by the king is slightly different from the classical statement of Archimedes Principle, but even a sunken object is relatively lighter when it is under water (see the equation in Buoyancy). Archimedes describes the principle of buoyancy in his treatise On Floating Bodies, and the "Eureka!" story may well be apocryphal. At [8] Chris Rorres repeats the criticism that the story told by Vitruvius is not strictly a statement of the principle of buoyancy. My personal feeling is that the current wording of the section is not substantially wrong, but any more suggestions would be welcome. Incidentally, the diagram on the 1983 postage stamp at the bottom of Archimedes shows how the principle of buoyancy works.--Ianmacm 20:01, 23 March 2007 (UTC)
I have reworded the section about the crown story slightly to take this point into account.--Ianmacm 20:22, 23 March 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for the reference to Chris Rorres' page - very interesting! Also, good to know that the principle really is described in Archimedes' writings (Phew!) :-) Nasorenga 23:19, 23 March 2007 (UTC)
[edit] The Archimedes Bridge?
Would this actually have anything to do with Archimedes? Apparently it's a tunnel suspended in water, or something - and it's a stub that needs expanding or moving to somewhere relevant. There is a Wikipedia article at Archimedes bridge. Lottie 14:05, 11 February 2007 (UTC)
This article is a stub, and some more detail is needed before it is mentioned in the main article. Despite its name, and Archimedes bridge does not seem to involve anything directly linked to the work of Archimedes.--Ianmacm 16:14, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Article cleanup
The article has had a cleanup, which consisted mainly of restructuring the information under a clearer set of headings. Most of the famous anecdotes about Archimedes date from Roman times, for example the story about him jumping out of the bath and crying "Eureka!" comes from an account by Vitruvius. Although these anecdotes may well be apocryphal, no biography of Archimedes would be complete without them.
Another point worth mentioning is that there is a tendency to assume that Archimedes must have invented all of the things that he wrote about. Some scholars believe that he did not invent the Archimedes Screw but merely improved on an earlier design. Likewise, although he is often credited with inventing integral calculus, the principle of the method of exhaustion was known in ancient times, and it is Archimedes' elegant use of the technique to solve a range of problems that is remarkable.
Archimedes is one of the most important biographical subjects in any encyclopedia, and it should be a long term goal to achieve Featured Article status for his entry.--Ianmacm 20:22, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
- Nice job. :) Lottie 15:27, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Spelling of Greek quote
The spelling of "Do not disturb my circles" in Greek appears in the article as "μή μου τούς κύκλους τάραττε". During one edit, The letter υ in the second word was replaced with a letter that does not appear to be supported in Wikipedia, so it was coming out as a square. As seen above on the talk page, there is some debate about how to spell this quote in Greek lettering, but the one chosen is found in several places on the internet.--Ianmacm 09:22, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
[edit] New image of Archimedes
There is a new picture of Archimedes in the infobox which was taken from Wikimedia Commons. It was painted by Domenico Fetti in 1620 and replaces the old engraving by Niccolo Barabino that was rather dull. The Fetti portrait is the most widely used image of Archimedes in the foreign language Wikipedia versions of his biography, so this brings the English language version into line. The purists may point out that the Fetti portrait contains two modern looking books and a globe, but it is a good picture nonetheless. On the internet as a whole, the most common image of Archimedes is this one [9], which is a sculpture of him that can be found in the National Museum in Naples.--Ianmacm 17:51, 24 February 2007 (UTC)
It's a personal choice of course, but I still prefer the Fetti portrait and think that the sculpture photo is a bit bland. No-one knows what Archimedes looked like anyway, and the Fetti portrait looks good in the infobox.--Ianmacm 21:36, 25 February 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Eureka and the motto of California
I removed the information that "Eureka!" is the state motto of California since I felt that it was not relevant enough for the section about Archimedes' discoveries and inventions. "Eureka!" has its own article on Wikipedia, which goes into more depth and also mentions its use as a state motto.--Ianmacm 18:35, 21 March 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Burning mirrors
According the legend Archimedes used "burning mirrors", not "burning glasses"! Conone 17:48, 24 March 2007 (UTC)
A reference would be useful here. However, anything said by Archimedes about burning ships is subject to the limits of historical accuracy. In recent times one of the most interesting parallels is the microwave weapon developed by the US Army as an "Active Denial System", (see [10] for details). This shows that the concept in the "Archimedes death ray" may not have been completely fictional.--Ianmacm 18:18, 24 March 2007 (UTC) On the subject of Archimedes' burning mirrors our main sources are Galen (De temperamentis, 3.2), Cassius Dio (Roman History, XV) and Joannes Zonara. Conone 00:21, 25 March 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Education in Alexandria?
I don't think it is known that Archimedes was educated in Alexandria. He certainly communicated with Eratosthenes, and probably traveled to Alexandria, but I believe that's as far as we can go. AxelBoldt 03:10, 26 March 2007 (UTC)
This is a fair point since our biographical details of Archimedes are slim. Quite a few of his biographies, including ones in "respectable" print encyclopedias, say that he was educated in Alexandria. Although this may be true, it lacks the degree of verifiablity required by Wikipedia standards. I have tried to avoid phrases like "It is said that" or "It is believed that" in every sentence, although this would be an apt description of Archimedes' education in Alexandria. The wording may be looked at again.--Ianmacm 07:11, 26 March 2007 (UTC)
I have reworded the sentence about his education slightly.--Ianmacm 07:25, 26 March 2007 (UTC)
- I like this cautious formulation a lot better. Cheers, AxelBoldt 20:42, 26 March 2007 (UTC)
[edit] On the Sphere and the Cylinder
This theorem apears on the back of the Fields Medal, in the back round. Add this please.--80.201.75.157 01:33, 4 April 2007 (UTC)
OK, this has been added. Thanks for mentioning this.--Ianmacm 07:50, 4 April 2007 (UTC)
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