By: Justin and Edward

Table of Contents About Archimedes Story Procedure Prepping for the Test You were… The Test What else Archimedes did The End

About Archimedes Archimedes was born about 287 BC, in Syracuse, Sicily in what is now known as Italy. He was a Greek scientist. He was an inventor, an astronomer, and a mathematician. He was very famous during his life and he may be one of the most clever people who have ever lived. His father was Phidias, an astronomer, and he may have been in the family of a king of Syracuse. Syracuse was a rich Greek city, on the sea shore in Sicily. When Archimedes was about ten years old, he left Syracuse to study in Alexandria, in Egypt in the school of Euclid, who was a famous mathematician. Not much is known about the personal life of Archimedes, for example, whether he was married or if he had children. A friend of Archimedes called Heracleides wrote a biography of him but sadly, this work is lost. Archimedes died trying to defend Syracuse from the Roman`s.

Story  In the first century BC the Roman architect Vitruvius related a story of how Archimedes uncovered a fraud in the manufacture of a golden crown commissioned by Hiero II, the king of Syracuse. Suspecting that the goldsmith might have replaced some of the gold given to him by an equal weight ofHiero II silver, Hiero asked Archimedes to determine whether the wreath was pure gold. And because the wreath was a holy object dedicated to the gods, he could not disturb the wreath in any way.

Procedure  You are Archimedes. Help the king figure out if his crown is fake or not, using the materials the king has provided. Once you have the materials you need conduct your experiment to find out if the crown is fraud. You may use these materials:  Water, same amount of gold that the king gave to the blacksmith, String, Stick, Beaker, Silver, Spring Scale, bucket, king Hiero’s Crown.

On the Next Slide You will Start the Game. You Have one Minute

You Were! Wrong

You Were! Correct

Answer  The solution which occurred when he stepped into his bath and caused it to overflow was to put a weight of gold equal to the crown, and known to be pure, into a bowl which was filled with water to the brim. Then the gold would be removed and the king’s crown put in, in its place. An alloy of lighter silver would increase the bulk of the crown and cause the bowl to overflow.  Because gold has a density of 19.3 grams/cubic-centimeter, 1000 grams of gold would have a volume of 1000/19.3 = 51.8 cubic-centimeters. Such a quantity of gold would raise the level of the water at the opening of the container by 51.8/314 = centimeters.

What else did Archimedes do?  Discovered the method to determine the area and volumes of circles, spheres and cones.  Discovered the actual value of PI.  Archimedes invented the water screw, a machine for raising water to bring it to fields.  His work with levers and pulleys led to the inventions of compound pulley systems and cranes..

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