Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology? With
Speaker 1: tech Stuff from how stuff works dot com. Hello again, everyone,
Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff. My name is Chris Poulette and
Speaker 1: I'm an editor at how stuff works dot com. Sitting
Speaker 1: across from me as usual, ready to move the Earth
Speaker 1: is senior writer Jonathan Strickland. One is a genius, the
Speaker 1: others insane. To prove their mousey worth, they'll overthrow the earth.
Speaker 1: That was a particularly nice one. Thank you. I thought
Speaker 1: you were gonna say one is the loneliest number, and
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna say, what does that have to do
Speaker 1: with our podcast? Now? We're going to talk about a genius.
Speaker 1: Today we are going to concentrate on a genius, mathematical
Speaker 1: genius and inventor, one of the one of the greats. Really, yeah,
Speaker 1: we are. And in the past we have talked about
Speaker 1: many fascinating people in tech, uh, most of whom lived
Speaker 1: in the twenty one centuries. Today we're going back a
Speaker 1: bit farther, Yeah, to the point of of two seven
Speaker 1: b C would be the the year that this fellow
Speaker 1: was born. And we are talking about Archimedes. Yes, the
Speaker 1: developer of the T R S A D. I'm kidding,
Speaker 1: he's definitely a precursor to that. Um. Yes, we're not
Speaker 1: talking Texas instruments, we're talking Greek ones. So Archimedes was
Speaker 1: a mathematician, he was an astronomer, he was an engineer
Speaker 1: and inventor. Very clever fellow, I guess that would probably
Speaker 1: an understatement. Oh, yes, one of the fathers of calculus.
Speaker 1: Not not the calculus that we used today, but precursor again. Uh, well,
Speaker 1: we've talked about it a lot in in the past
Speaker 1: two We've talked about the principle of simultaneous discovery, where
Speaker 1: people more than one person comes up with the same idea.
Speaker 1: We've also talked about how people to have discoveries build
Speaker 1: on other people's work. And Archimedes was definitely a founder
Speaker 1: of many, many of our technologies. Yeah, you would call
Speaker 1: him the father of integral calculus. Not not the same
Speaker 1: thing as Newtonian calculus um, which is of course much
Speaker 1: later on. So and and Chris has already made mention
Speaker 1: of one of the famous quotes attributed to Archimedes, which is,
Speaker 1: give me a place to stand, and I will move
Speaker 1: the earth and it sounds like something that a megalomaniacal
Speaker 1: supervillain would say. But in this case, Archimedes is talking
Speaker 1: about the discoveries he made and what we would call
Speaker 1: basic mechanical structures now, things like pulleys and levers. In
Speaker 1: that case, we're talking specifically about leavers. But our Coimedes
Speaker 1: really was interested in the relationship of pulleys leavers and
Speaker 1: how they could be used to do work, and um,
Speaker 1: he spent quite a bit of time perfecting that, so
Speaker 1: much so that there are certain inventions that are are
Speaker 1: associated with him that are related in some form to
Speaker 1: simple machines, although not all of those inventions are necessarily
Speaker 1: straight from uh, from archimedes brain. But we're gonna talk
Speaker 1: a little bit about some of the things that he
Speaker 1: did do, and then some of the things that are
Speaker 1: attributed to him that perhaps he did not do or
Speaker 1: perhaps just didn't work. There's one in particular that's pretty
Speaker 1: famous due to a MythBusters episode that we'll get to.
Speaker 1: It's one of my favorites, actually, Now, Archimedes. Archimedes his
Speaker 1: dad was an astronomer, so he was growing up, he
Speaker 1: was exposed to the sciences. Um, he was probably taught
Speaker 1: by followers of Euclid, and uh he was. You know,
Speaker 1: what we know of him is mostly from stuff that
Speaker 1: was written well after his death, and because of that
Speaker 1: we can't be completely certain about the details of his life.
Speaker 1: In fact, there's still some confusion about exactly when he died.
Speaker 1: It was sometime around two hundred twelve or two hundred
Speaker 1: eleven b C. He was born in two eight seven
Speaker 1: b C. Remember we count backwards right, probably confuse the
Speaker 1: heck out of them at the time. What are we
Speaker 1: coming down to? So, yeah, so and so he died
Speaker 1: around two twelve to eleven b C. And you might ask, well,
Speaker 1: how did Archimedes die? How did Archimedes die violently? Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: it was during a sacking of Syracuse, which is that
Speaker 1: was archimedes home. He lived in Syracuse, in Sicily and
Speaker 1: at the time it was an independent Greek city state.
Speaker 1: Before it it was, you know, physically uprooted and moved
Speaker 1: to New York. Yes, no, yes, not how exactly what happened? No, no, no,
Speaker 1: the original original Syracuse. So so in the Romans were
Speaker 1: in a war with It was a Roman Carthin Carthaginian war,
Speaker 1: says Carthage, and Rome are in a war with each
Speaker 1: other in Syracuse got pulled into the middle of that,
Speaker 1: despite attempts to kind of sort of not do that,
Speaker 1: but various rulers of Syracuse ended up siding with either
Speaker 1: Home or Carthage during the the the whole conflict, and
Speaker 1: at one point in the war, Rome besieged Syracuse and
Speaker 1: during the attack a Roman soldier came upon Archimedes, and
Speaker 1: although there were specific orders to spare the life of Archimedes,
Speaker 1: the Roman soldier killed him, apparently not knowing the identity
Speaker 1: of the man he put to the sword. So Archimedes
Speaker 1: was He was valued by both sides. He was recognized
Speaker 1: as a genius, and neither side wanted this genius to
Speaker 1: be destroyed. But as an unfortunate side effective war, sometimes
Speaker 1: accidents happened. Now why was why did people consider him
Speaker 1: a genius? Well, one was that he was making incredible
Speaker 1: contributions to mathematics. He had found really interesting relationships between
Speaker 1: things like the volume of the sphere and the surface
Speaker 1: area of cylinders, and found out interesting ways to to
Speaker 1: kind of explain those relationships, including a very close approximation
Speaker 1: of pie um. Bye, we've lost him, haven't had breakfast? Yet. Um.
Speaker 1: So he was definitely valued for his intelligence, but beyond that,
Speaker 1: he also was this great inventor. In fact, during the war,
Speaker 1: during the siege on Syracuse, he came up with an
Speaker 1: invention known as the iron hand that played a big
Speaker 1: part in the defense of the city. Did you come
Speaker 1: across the iron hand? Actually I did not come across
Speaker 1: the iron hand. This is different from the iron fist. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess the one is used for defense. The other
Speaker 1: one you rule with that. It was also sometimes called
Speaker 1: Archimedes claw. Um, it's a it's a brilliant, brilliant defense
Speaker 1: mechanism for that time. It would not work today. But
Speaker 1: here's what here's what it was. So Syracuse was um,
Speaker 1: right up against the ocean. Like essentially there was you know,
Speaker 1: a slight cliff and then you had a city wall
Speaker 1: that that was I think twenty seven kilometers long back
Speaker 1: when it stood. It doesn't stand anymore, um, but it
Speaker 1: you know, then you it was essentially right up against
Speaker 1: the ocean. So one of the possible avenues of attack
Speaker 1: was an attack by sea, which is what one of
Speaker 1: the venues that Rome was interested in. So, uh, the
Speaker 1: leader of Syracuse came to our communes and said, I
Speaker 1: need a way to protect us while from these attacks
Speaker 1: from the from the ocean. So what our communes came
Speaker 1: up with was an enormous lever that you would mount
Speaker 1: on the sides of the city walls. Are actually on
Speaker 1: the top of the city walls. So you have this
Speaker 1: huge lever that that extends out over the ocean. Okay,
Speaker 1: from the end of the lever, you have a rope
Speaker 1: that drops down, and on the end of the rope
Speaker 1: is a grappling hook. Now on the other end, the
Speaker 1: short end of the lever, you put huge lead weights
Speaker 1: and you first put them near the pivot point so
Speaker 1: that the weight of the long part of the lever
Speaker 1: keeps it level. All right, What you try to do
Speaker 1: is you try and catch the bow of a ship,
Speaker 1: a Roman ship with that grappling hook. Once you do,
Speaker 1: you slide those weights back from the the fulcrum there
Speaker 1: to the very end of the short arm of the lever.
Speaker 1: Now that weight is enough to push that end of
Speaker 1: the lever down, meaning the long arm of the lever
Speaker 1: goes up. That's the arm that, by the way, is
Speaker 1: attached to the rope and the grappling hook. So you
Speaker 1: literally pull the end of the Roman ship out of
Speaker 1: the water. You then use the lever to shake the
Speaker 1: Roman ship and eventually the grappling hook breaks off of it,
Speaker 1: making the Roman ship fall again, either smashing against the
Speaker 1: water or the rocks on the base of the cliffs.
Speaker 1: That's brilliant, but extremely complicated. It seems like trying to
Speaker 1: to build the lever. Yeah, however, was incredibly effective. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so effective that Rome abandoned their sea based attacks. They
Speaker 1: instead of instead of attacking Syracuse by see, what they
Speaker 1: did was they set up a blockade further out in
Speaker 1: the ocean where they're not going to get hit by
Speaker 1: a grappling hook from the shore, and then they ended
Speaker 1: up attacking by land and eventually sacked Syracuse. So while
Speaker 1: the victory was a a a good one, I mean
Speaker 1: it was, it was definitely a lauded victory, but it
Speaker 1: was short lived because all they did was they changed
Speaker 1: tactics and unfortunately the the iron hand was not as
Speaker 1: good at defending against land based attacks good at all. Now,
Speaker 1: there were other theoretical weapons that some people say actually
Speaker 1: were built and used against the Romans during this very
Speaker 1: same siege, and uh, one of the one I was
Speaker 1: talking about with MythBusters was the the Archimedes death ray.
Speaker 1: Oh right, you know what I'm talking about here, right right,
Speaker 1: How he theoretically was able to uh set fire to
Speaker 1: the sales, Yeah, to the same or actual ships from
Speaker 1: a distance. The idea being that he designed a device
Speaker 1: that would reflect and concentrate light from the sun and
Speaker 1: direct it at ships, and it would be so intense
Speaker 1: that it would be hot enough to to set fire
Speaker 1: to at least the sales of the ship, if not
Speaker 1: the actual ships themselves. Uh and and and at least
Speaker 1: some of the reports it was uh said that he
Speaker 1: used shields and he just polished the surface of the
Speaker 1: metal shields and arrayed them in a in a shape
Speaker 1: that would direct the light kind of very concentrated way.
Speaker 1: So you have all these different shields that are tilted
Speaker 1: just so so that the light that they reflect all
Speaker 1: hits the same spot, sort of like the devices that
Speaker 1: you used to cook a hot dog or something like
Speaker 1: that that you used to use a camp. You know,
Speaker 1: you have your your mirror and you stick your food there,
Speaker 1: and you know, the sunlight reflects off the inside of
Speaker 1: the mirror, and except much much larger and stuff I
Speaker 1: use to fire, Yeah, anyway now that that actually isn't
Speaker 1: so far fetched in a way. I mean, he really
Speaker 1: was interested in catoptrics, which I didn't know was a word,
Speaker 1: so I'm trying to use it and build it into
Speaker 1: my vocabulary that I don't know what it is, so
Speaker 1: please tell me, yes, Well, I actually got that word
Speaker 1: from H. Britannica's profile on archimedes Um. It is the
Speaker 1: the part of optics that works with the reflection of
Speaker 1: light from mirrors from different types. They could be flat
Speaker 1: or curved mirrors, but catoptrics is is that, uh study,
Speaker 1: and he was particularly interested in it, so it wasn't
Speaker 1: like it was out of character for him to be
Speaker 1: interested in something like that. But apparently it doesn't so
Speaker 1: much work well. On the MythBusters episode that they made um,
Speaker 1: the MythBusters used they they actually tried to build one
Speaker 1: themselves and it didn't really work so well. And then
Speaker 1: they set out a challenge to various groups to try
Speaker 1: and build old Um a working ur commedees death ray,
Speaker 1: and they found some success, something where it was warm
Speaker 1: enough where it could in theory set fire to maybe
Speaker 1: the sales, but it would it took time, and you know,
Speaker 1: you had to worry about it being the right time
Speaker 1: of day for you to be able to do this,
Speaker 1: And it would really depend on the ship being very
Speaker 1: uh well complicit in the burning process, in the sense
Speaker 1: of if the ship's moving around a lot, then you
Speaker 1: have to be able to move the ray so that
Speaker 1: it stays on the same general area in order to
Speaker 1: keep increasing that temperature until it reaches the burning point.
Speaker 1: And if the ship's moving, then you may not be
Speaker 1: able to train the ray on that on that uh
Speaker 1: moving target fast enough to be able to um to
Speaker 1: actually get the temperature hot enough to for stuff to burn.
Speaker 1: So it's even if it were an actual weapon, it
Speaker 1: was not necessarily an effective one, not like the not
Speaker 1: like the the the lever that he had designed, which
Speaker 1: was to monsterly effective, effective enough to make the Romans
Speaker 1: change their tactics. Now, there are also other interesting inventions
Speaker 1: that we attribute to our commedies, one of which is
Speaker 1: uh that that he probably did make were planetariums. Oh yes,
Speaker 1: they were also called spheres at the time. The Archimedes spears,
Speaker 1: and it was if you don't know what a planetarium is,
Speaker 1: a planetarium is essentially a geocentric model of what the
Speaker 1: h the stars and position of planets in the Sun
Speaker 1: and the moon, what what it looks like from the
Speaker 1: perspective of Earth. You know, it's a it's an earth
Speaker 1: based view of the the galaxies around us, the universe essentially.
Speaker 1: And so Archimedes had apparently built one of these possibly
Speaker 1: that used interesting little gears to mimic the motion of
Speaker 1: the planets and stars and constellations to keep everything aligned
Speaker 1: properly and making the move the way they actually do
Speaker 1: through the sky. And uh, he built a couple of
Speaker 1: these apparently, although both of them have been lost. There
Speaker 1: were other devices that have been recovered since then from
Speaker 1: shipwrecks and things like that that may either be an
Speaker 1: actual example of the spheres of Archimedes himself built or
Speaker 1: maybe built on the same principles that Archimedes used when
Speaker 1: building his But that's that's one of those things where
Speaker 1: we have we've heard the record of him building these things,
Speaker 1: and he certainly had the intelligence necessary to be able
Speaker 1: to design such a thing, we just don't have the
Speaker 1: physical proof of it. Um. Yeah, there was a treatise
Speaker 1: that he apparently wrote called the sand Reckoner that had
Speaker 1: to do with um astronomy and his astronomical thought. He
Speaker 1: actually had had been able to sort of using his
Speaker 1: tools of his time, he was able to get an
Speaker 1: eye a reasonable idea of the diameter of the sun, um,
Speaker 1: you know, through his uh using instruments to observe this.
Speaker 1: And this is of course long before people that we
Speaker 1: sort of associate with um astronomy, you know, modern astronomy,
Speaker 1: people like Galileo UM. You know. There he was really
Speaker 1: sort of in a groundbreaking category in this regard. But
Speaker 1: all there were others who who worked with these principles
Speaker 1: to um. You know, his work went into uh, several
Speaker 1: others as well, but UM, I think it's sort of
Speaker 1: disappeared for a while. UM. And they were the kinds
Speaker 1: of things too that stood out. People like Plutarch, the
Speaker 1: uh um you know, who wrote quite a bit about
Speaker 1: the famous people of his time, categorized archimedes work. UM
Speaker 1: and he's you know, these things were well enough documented
Speaker 1: that he was able to to pull this out. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I'd like to talk about another real quick legendary Archimedes
Speaker 1: moment um. This would be another great quote. Yes it does.
Speaker 1: It has to do with the bathtub. So this is
Speaker 1: again a possibly apocryphal story. So in other words, this
Speaker 1: this may not be true. In fact, I think a
Speaker 1: lot of historians put this in the realm of legend
Speaker 1: for for many reasons, one of which is that the
Speaker 1: solution Archimedes came up with was actually not as not
Speaker 1: as difficult to to get to as you would imagine. So,
Speaker 1: in other words, it seems like it's too easy an
Speaker 1: answer for Archimedes is almost the argument here. But the
Speaker 1: the situation was that you had the King of Syracuse
Speaker 1: who had commissioned a a golden crown, and this golden
Speaker 1: crown was made, but the king was suspicious of the
Speaker 1: golden crown. He thought that perhaps the person who made
Speaker 1: it actually used silver to make the crown and then
Speaker 1: coated it with gold in order to UH to cheat
Speaker 1: the king out of money, essentially because silver was less
Speaker 1: precious than gold, and therefore by using gold silver in
Speaker 1: the crown, he could make it for for less money
Speaker 1: than it would cost him uh to to gather all
Speaker 1: the materials, and thus have a higher profit. So how
Speaker 1: do you figure out if it weighs the right amount
Speaker 1: for a crown of that general size? Um, how do
Speaker 1: you figure out whether or not silver was used? Well,
Speaker 1: silver doesn't weigh as much as gold does. So in
Speaker 1: other in other words, in order to make a silver
Speaker 1: crown that would weigh the same amount as a gold crown,
Speaker 1: you would have to add more silver. Right, So, if
Speaker 1: you had a cube of silver and a cube of
Speaker 1: gold that were the exact same size, the gold would
Speaker 1: weigh more. So in order to make the cube's weigh
Speaker 1: the same, you would have to have a bigger cube
Speaker 1: of silver. Right, So that was that was what Archimedes
Speaker 1: came up with. He came up with this adea of well,
Speaker 1: if I use the amount of gold that it takes
Speaker 1: to create the weight of this crown, let's say this
Speaker 1: crown weighs let's just say ten pounds. Okay, okay, So
Speaker 1: for the argument's sake, this crown weighed ten pounds. So
Speaker 1: what our community said, Well, what if I get ten
Speaker 1: pounds of gold, and then I use some way to
Speaker 1: determine the mass of that gold, and then I use
Speaker 1: that same measurement for the crown. If the measurements the same,
Speaker 1: then we can come to the conclusion that the gold
Speaker 1: that is gold in the crown, if the if it's different,
Speaker 1: then we can say that maybe there's a different material
Speaker 1: in here. So what he did was he took a bath. Yes,
Speaker 1: so this all has to do with the displacement of
Speaker 1: water by putting the the and again we're just using
Speaker 1: this this measurement out of for for simplicity's sake. Putting
Speaker 1: ten pounds of gold in the bath, he sees how
Speaker 1: much water is displaced, how far that water is displaced
Speaker 1: in the bath, and then putting the crown in there,
Speaker 1: he can see how much water is displaced from there,
Speaker 1: and the the amount is different than he knows that
Speaker 1: the two materials are not the same. And supposedly he
Speaker 1: became so excited by this discovery that he ran out
Speaker 1: of his home. Starkers, I'm that's not a joke. That's
Speaker 1: part of the legend. Know that that part is not
Speaker 1: what's cracking up Starkers. He was naked as a blue
Speaker 1: jay running down the road, turning into my kinfolk here.
Speaker 1: Um so anyway, yeah, completely nude, running down the street
Speaker 1: and screams out Eureka, which means I have found it
Speaker 1: also is a quirky, uh dramatic comedy on the sci
Speaker 1: Fi network. Yes, that is anyway, So Eureka, that's that's
Speaker 1: where we get that when when you have someone who
Speaker 1: makes a discovering screams out eureka, they are essentially paying
Speaker 1: homage to Archimedes, which, again, since this is a potentially
Speaker 1: apocryphal story, we might just be paying homage to a legend. Well,
Speaker 1: apparently the bathtub part is what's probably apocryphal, but the
Speaker 1: crown part apparently is true. Um, they do. They do
Speaker 1: seem to feel, or at least Britannic Adust seems to
Speaker 1: feel that that that he was asked to determine whether
Speaker 1: or not the crown was actually gold apparently really did happen. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and and then you know, you would want somebody like
Speaker 1: Archimedes to do this because he was thinking scientifically in
Speaker 1: this case. And the reason you might say, well, why
Speaker 1: don't they just scratched the crown and see if they're
Speaker 1: silver and they bite it like your coin, right, Well,
Speaker 1: the problem here was that the crown was considered to
Speaker 1: be almost a holy relic. It was because you're the
Speaker 1: kings of the Greeks were they would trace their lineage
Speaker 1: back to God's and so you couldn't destroy the crown
Speaker 1: in any way because that was an front to the gods.
Speaker 1: So he had to find a non destructive way to
Speaker 1: test this without you know, without actually causing any sort
Speaker 1: of damage to the crown, which makes it way more difficult. Um.
Speaker 1: And then we have another object that is attributed to Archimedes,
Speaker 1: although it's very possible that it actually predates his lifetime
Speaker 1: and it's just that he observed it and then was
Speaker 1: able to apply it elsewhere, which is the Archimedes screw. Yes,
Speaker 1: you know, well, how could it not be Archimedes invention?
Speaker 1: It has his name right there in the name. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: McDonald's isn't named for somebody named McDonald, so you know
Speaker 1: there's a name. A name is is a tricky thing sometimes,
Speaker 1: but yes, he did. He did observe the principle that uh,
Speaker 1: you know, the hydrostatic principle using using the screw to
Speaker 1: raise water, which sounds counterintuitive at first until you realize
Speaker 1: how this is implemented. It's actually a screw that is,
Speaker 1: in general, the screw is encased in a tube and
Speaker 1: then you lay it in a at an angle whereof
Speaker 1: you know, one end is raised at the top and
Speaker 1: the other end goes into the water. So you've got
Speaker 1: one end that that descends into the water, and you
Speaker 1: have one end that's above the water level. You start
Speaker 1: turning that screw and what it does is it scoops
Speaker 1: the water and the water travels up the screw just
Speaker 1: because of the principle of the screw as you turn
Speaker 1: it within this tube. Now there's you know, you might
Speaker 1: have some leakage issues where some of the water leaks
Speaker 1: back down to the next level down. But as as
Speaker 1: soon as you start turning that screw in a nice clip,
Speaker 1: eventually the water starts coming to the surface, and the
Speaker 1: the speed that you turn the screw will counteract the
Speaker 1: leaking problem. And since it's just leaking to the next
Speaker 1: level down, it essentially becomes a non issue once you
Speaker 1: get to a certain speed and you can actually lift
Speaker 1: water out of out of a body of water that way,
Speaker 1: and this was often used in our commedes time two
Speaker 1: pull water from say a lake and put it into
Speaker 1: an irrigation system. The Greeks and Romans were both very
Speaker 1: big on irrigation. Yes indeed, um, yeah, Actually that reminds
Speaker 1: me of there's an infant toy that has three or
Speaker 1: four little plastic balls and there's a screw inside and
Speaker 1: if you push down and it's encased as you said,
Speaker 1: in it and not in a tube. It's actually sort
Speaker 1: of a it's not conical, but it does get narrower
Speaker 1: at the top than it is at the bottom. And
Speaker 1: when you press down on the plunger in the center,
Speaker 1: it makes the screw turn. And the faster you push it,
Speaker 1: the higher the balls climb up the screw until you stop,
Speaker 1: and then they know spin back down. I mean there's
Speaker 1: you know, not hydro static, there's no water, and but yeah,
Speaker 1: it's the same kind of thing, and you can sort
Speaker 1: of if you've seen that, that's you can sort of
Speaker 1: imagine that because it's you don't often see an archimedes
Speaker 1: screw in practice, although you you you can see them
Speaker 1: in practice if you were to go to certain hydro
Speaker 1: electric plants, they would be used in practice in reverse
Speaker 1: because then what you do is you turn the If
Speaker 1: you happen to pour water on the top of the screw,
Speaker 1: it will make the screw turn. So you know, turning
Speaker 1: the screw will bring water to the top. But if
Speaker 1: you pour water on the top of the screw, it
Speaker 1: makes the screw turn, so it's the reverse action. Well,
Speaker 1: that means that if you are able to position the
Speaker 1: screw so that a flow of water is constant on
Speaker 1: the top of it, then the screw will keep turning.
Speaker 1: You can make that screw to work. You can have
Speaker 1: that screw uh use you can use it to drive
Speaker 1: a generator, an electric generator, and thus you can create
Speaker 1: electricity from water. That's just one way. I mean, there
Speaker 1: are turbines as well. I mean, it's not the only
Speaker 1: method of of using water to drive an electric generator,
Speaker 1: but it is one way. Yeah. I was actually thinking
Speaker 1: of the Tesla turbine when you mentioned that, um, which
Speaker 1: is also a fascinating thing. We have an article on
Speaker 1: the website about that as a matter of fact. Not
Speaker 1: it's not using the same exact principle, but it's also
Speaker 1: a way of using water to to uh to turn
Speaker 1: a turbine. That's not, you know, something what I would
Speaker 1: think of a typical But anyway, I digress, and we
Speaker 1: again we should point out, I mean, we've mentioned it
Speaker 1: a couple of times, but it bears repeating that they
Speaker 1: the actual Archimedes screw. There are at least some indications
Speaker 1: that this was being used in Egypt, uh well before
Speaker 1: Archimedes ever had his name attached to it. Yeah, completely
Speaker 1: by chance. Um A few months ago, I was reading
Speaker 1: the uh the Biography of Cleopatra by Stacy Schiff. It's
Speaker 1: very popular there for a while, UM, and I hadn't
Speaker 1: really read a lot about ancient Egypt. But he Archimedes
Speaker 1: was actually in contact with, uh, some of the scientists
Speaker 1: in Alexandria, which at that time, Alexandria and Egypt was
Speaker 1: probably the world center of learning, or at least one
Speaker 1: of the top uh centers of scholarship, you know. And um,
Speaker 1: he apparently was was in contact with them and had
Speaker 1: spent some time in Egypt before he went to Syracuse. Uh.
Speaker 1: So it is not at all unlikely, um that he
Speaker 1: wouldn't have you know that that he would have had
Speaker 1: contact with those uh, those scientists over there and gotten
Speaker 1: some some cool ideas, you know. And he also was
Speaker 1: attributed with the creation of a game. Really yeah, did
Speaker 1: you hear about stonemacheon or stomachion. I have heard of it,
Speaker 1: but I didn't realize this was this was related to
Speaker 1: our comedies. It's attributed to him. It's a it's a
Speaker 1: game that you play with these different shapes. It's almost
Speaker 1: like having a puzzle in a way, like these shapes.
Speaker 1: If you if you put them all together in one way,
Speaker 1: it will create essentially a square. But the idea is
Speaker 1: to use those shapes to create other recognizable shapes. And
Speaker 1: it's really an exercise and creativity like seeing seeing the
Speaker 1: potential of geometry to build um shapes that are more organic,
Speaker 1: so things like you use them to build a tree
Speaker 1: or the example I saw was an elephant. Um, which
Speaker 1: is kind of it's just kind of interesting. Is the
Speaker 1: idea that you have to use all the shapes in
Speaker 1: the group to create a recognizable object, an interesting object.
Speaker 1: And uh so that's also attributed to Archimedes. But again
Speaker 1: this is another one of those attributions that we can't
Speaker 1: be completely certain is accurate. It's just one of those
Speaker 1: another another interesting thing of something that Archimedes may have
Speaker 1: had a hand in. Um. So shapes actually yeah, um
Speaker 1: looking for something. Darn it all right, hang on, well,
Speaker 1: well you look and then we will pick up alright,
Speaker 1: speaking of shapes. Um, you know, he was he was
Speaker 1: involved with many He published a lot of his work,
Speaker 1: and there there is an indication that he may have
Speaker 1: had other work that he either didn't publish or that
Speaker 1: was later lost. Um. Again, there's been a lot of
Speaker 1: time that has passed now since he is he has
Speaker 1: left us. But um, one of the things we do
Speaker 1: know that he was fascinated with shapes. Um. He was
Speaker 1: able to, uh to figure out the surface area of
Speaker 1: a spear sphere of radius r. Remember this back from
Speaker 1: your mathematics classes. I have a vague memory of it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: yeph s equals for pie r squared. Yeah, and the
Speaker 1: volume is two thirds of the cylinder in which it
Speaker 1: is inscribed. H v equals four thirds pie r cubed.
Speaker 1: I have not had to know those those formula and
Speaker 1: so long, but they came back to me as soon
Speaker 1: as I saw that. And apparently, uh, he was so
Speaker 1: excited about this that this is actually, uh what his
Speaker 1: tomb was arked with. Marcus Tullius Cicero found his tomb,
Speaker 1: which had been overgrown with uh greenery, let's say, and um,
Speaker 1: probably about a hundred and fifty years or so after
Speaker 1: he died, and found that his uh, his tomb had
Speaker 1: been inscribed with a a sphere or had been marked
Speaker 1: with a sphere inscribed in a cylinder. And that's uh,
Speaker 1: I just think that's fascinating. I mean, going back to
Speaker 1: what I learned about geometry and um uh calculus. I
Speaker 1: think of people who came much later than that. But
Speaker 1: you know, in general, but Archimedes really had a huge
Speaker 1: influence on many many other people. Of course, his writings
Speaker 1: were known to uh, to the Arabic world. A lot
Speaker 1: of a lot of scientists and mathematicians from that era
Speaker 1: in in later centuries were able to take his work
Speaker 1: and build upon it. Um, and it's just uh, it's
Speaker 1: just cool stuff. He also did lot with with mathematics
Speaker 1: as it was, you know, working on place value systems
Speaker 1: UM and lots and lots of different things. He wasn't
Speaker 1: he wasn't. Uh he was, I would say, polly mathic. Yes,
Speaker 1: you know, somebody who is is um well, has has
Speaker 1: knowledge in multiple areas, very knowledgeable about a variety of
Speaker 1: mathematical and science topics. And we'll probably talk about other
Speaker 1: individuals who fall into that category as well. Um for example,
Speaker 1: I eventually we're gonna have to do a full profile
Speaker 1: on Leonardo da Vinci. Yeah, because but that's another famous
Speaker 1: polymath from from history that that you know, really was
Speaker 1: instrumental in the whole idea of of invention, you know,
Speaker 1: really embracing that part of genius and uh, I would
Speaker 1: say Archimedes was a great you know, uh forefather of
Speaker 1: that of invention as well. Now granted, he's also a
Speaker 1: very good example of the the raise uh necessity is
Speaker 1: the mother of invention. When you've got romans attacking you,
Speaker 1: you find it really necessary to find a way to
Speaker 1: make them stop. And then he wrote that song you know,
Speaker 1: fifty Ways to Love your lever. Alright, So that wraps
Speaker 1: up this discussion on Archimedes. If all of you folks
Speaker 1: out there have in a particular people you would like
Speaker 1: us to come straight on, either in the deep past
Speaker 1: or even modern day, whichever, let us know. You can
Speaker 1: send us a message on Facebook or Twitter. Are handle
Speaker 1: there is tech Stuff h s W or you can
Speaker 1: email us. That address is tech stuff at how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com. Chris and I will talk to you
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