This man once said, “Give me a lever and a fulcrum, and I’ll turn the Earth over.” He wanted to turn the Earth over, and he did. Today, every ship, every elevator, every 3D model, and every machine works according to his principles. Archimedes is the man who stopped the Roman army and was 2,000 years ahead of his time. He single-handedly stopped the Roman army, their ships burned from his mirrors, his cunning machines turned over multi-ton galleys, and the whole world still lives by his laws.
He single-handedly stopped the entire Roman army
It’s hard to even imagine such a thing, except in Hollywood movies: 60 Roman warships, heavy galleys with bronze rams, and about two tens of thousands of soldiers. The death machine. The great Roman Empire conquered half the world, and the city of Syracuse in Sicily was supposed to fall one day. That would have been the case, but when the Roman military leaders were already mentally celebrating an easy victory and dividing the rich spoils, suddenly, strange, huge hooks appeared from behind the city walls, resembling the paws of some gigantic monster. They grab, break, and scatter warships like children’s toys. The soldiers are screaming in horror, but that’s not all — an even bigger nightmare awaits them all.
Suddenly, the sky lit up with bright flashes of light. These were huge bronze mirrors that, reflecting the rays of the sun, set fire to the sails of Roman ships. The imposing war galleys are burning like candles, the invincible army is fleeing in fear, and the warlords do not understand what is happening. Everyone is screaming in horror: “It’s a monster.”
Who arranged all this? Who was the author of the nightmare that fell on the heads of the Roman legionaries, who were already anticipating an easy and quick victory? The great scientist who dreamed of turning the Earth over and really turned it over was ahead of his time and forced the whole world to live according to his laws. Since childhood, Archimedes saw the world a little differently from the rest.
The boy who saw this world differently from other people
Archimedes was born in 287 BC in the wealthy Mediterranean city of Syracuse. It was a thriving trading port with a very important strategic position that too many wanted to possess.
Since childhood, the boy was not like everyone else. While the other children were throwing rocks into the sea and launching boats, Archimedes was more interested in why it all worked that way. It was a completely different way of looking at the world — not philosophical, but engineering. The family was poor, and the father could not pay for his son’s studies. Archimedes was lucky: their relative became the ruler of Syracuse and was able to send the boy to study at a prestigious educational institution. But even there, he stood out and was different from everyone else.
Archimedes was not interested in philosophy. He was constantly poring over calculations and setting himself mathematical problems. After graduation, Archimedes’ uncle, the king of Syracuse, called him to court and made him a court inventor. Visit. A F R I N I K . C O M . For the full article. Now the young man had everything he could ever dream of: an entire city as a laboratory
The law that changed the world
One day, my uncle ordered a gold crown from a jeweler. Later, he wondered if he had been tricked. The tsar summoned Archimedes and gave him a task: to determine whether the gold in the crown was real or not, but not to spoil the product. The scientist puzzled over this question for a long time. Then, as legend has it, he decided… Swim! While diving into a tub of water, Archimedes discovered that the water had splashed. His body displaced the water! Having lost all his aplomb, the researcher ran naked out of the bathroom shouting: “Eureka!”
Archimedes immersed the crown in a vessel with water. Then he weighed the water that she displaced. After that, the scientist took an ingot of gold, equal in weight to a crown, the purity of which was beyond doubt, and immersed it in water, too. After weighing, it turned out that the density of the gold ingot is higher than the density of the crown, which means that the jeweler cheated and there are impurities of less dense metals in its composition. This is how the law was discovered, which became the engine of all world progress. The whole world still lives by formulas invented by a certain man who decided to swim 2,300 years ago.
Archimedes’ inventions are not limited to this. It was he who discovered the number “pi”, familiar to every student today. It is used everywhere. Literally, the whole world revolves around him. In the 3rd century BC, ancient man laid the foundations of all modern science.
The Ancient Titanic
Archimedes invented an amazing ship, which, without a doubt, can be called an antique cruise liner. The vessel was more than fifty meters long. Some sources say that everything is one hundred percent. There were three decks. The first is for cargo, the second is for passengers, with cabins, bathrooms, dining rooms, and so on. On the third floor, there were luxurious gardens with live trees and even a temple of Aphrodite. This antique Titanic was built in the 3rd century BC. Everything was calculated perfectly. The ship was presented to the Egyptian Pharaoh.
The mathematician defeats the great Rome
Meanwhile, clouds were gathering around Archimedes’ hometown. At first, Syracuse remained neutral, but then the old king died and was replaced by a young man with too much young blood. His policy led Rome to go to war with Syracuse. There was no chance to stand up in this confrontation. The Roman army was invincible.
Archimedes did not sit idly by during all this troubled time. He invented various types of weapons. When the formidable army of great Rome began to attack his hometown, he used all his inventions against it and saved Syracuse. The best army in the world has suffered a crushing defeat from a 75-year-old mathematician. Genius versus brute force. And the genius won.
To this day, scientists are arguing about whether everything that the chronicles describe is true. Nobody has been able to recreate the amazing machines of Archimedes. However, Syracuse eventually fell. It was all betrayal. During the feast of the goddess Artemis, when the whole city was asleep after the feasts, the traitor opened the gates to the Romans. Archimedes was ordered to be taken alive. The Romans dreamed of getting a magician who could stop their army.
But the trouble is, a young soldier, not really knowing who was in front of him, killed an old mathematician when he refused to follow him. Thus ended the life of the greatest scientist who changed the world. Almost all of Archimedes’ works were burned down along with the city. It is difficult to imagine what our world would be like today if all its drawings and calculations had been preserved…
