![]() Also known as "the ship shaker," the claw consisted of a crane-like arm from which a large metal grappling hook was suspended. The Claw of Archimedes is a weapon that he is said to have designed in order to defend the city of Syracuse. The world's first seagoing steamship with a screw propeller was the SS Archimedes, which was launched in 1839 and named in honor of Archimedes and his work on the screw. The Archimedes' screw described in Roman times by Vitruvius may have been an improvement on a screw pump that was used to irrigate the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. The Archimedes' screw is still in use today for pumping liquids and granulated solids such as coal and grain. It was turned by hand, and could also be used to transfer water from a low-lying body of water into irrigation canals. Archimedes' machine was a device with a revolving screw-shaped blade inside a cylinder. Since a ship of this size would leak a considerable amount of water through the hull, the Archimedes' screw was purportedly developed in order to remove the bilge water. According to Athenaeus, it was capable of carrying 600 people and included garden decorations, a gymnasium and a temple dedicated to the goddess Aphrodite among its facilities. The Syracusia is said to have been the largest ship built in classical antiquity. The Greek writer Athenaeus of Naucratis described how King Hiero II commissioned Archimedes to design a huge ship, the Syracusia, which could be used for luxury travel, carrying supplies, and as a naval warship. The Archimedes' screw can raise water efficiently.Ī large part of Archimedes' work in engineering arose from fulfilling the needs of his home city of Syracuse. The Latin poem Carmen de ponderibus et mensuris of the 4th or 5th century describes the use of a hydrostatic balance to solve the problem of the crown, and attributes the method to Archimedes. Galileo considered it "probable that this method is the same that Archimedes followed, since, besides being very accurate, it is based on demonstrations found by Archimedes himself." In a 12th-century text titled Mappae clavicula there are instructions on how to perform the weighings in the water in order to calculate the percentage of silver used, and thus solve the problem. The difference in density between the two samples would cause the scale to tip accordingly. ![]() Using this principle, it would have been possible to compare the density of the golden crown to that of solid gold by balancing the crown on a scale with a gold reference sample, then immersing the apparatus in water. This principle states that a body immersed in a fluid experiences a buoyant force equal to the weight of the fluid it displaces. ![]() Archimedes may have instead sought a solution that applied the principle known in hydrostatics as Archimedes' principle, which he describes in his treatise On Floating Bodies. Moreover, the practicality of the method it describes has been called into question, due to the extreme accuracy with which one would have to measure the water displacement. The story of the golden crown does not appear in the known works of Archimedes. The test was conducted successfully, proving that silver had indeed been mixed in. Archimedes then took to the streets naked, so excited by his discovery that he had forgotten to dress, crying " Eureka !" ( Greek : "εὕρηκα !," meaning "I have found it!"). This density would be lower than that of gold if cheaper and less dense metals had been added. By dividing the mass of the crown by the volume of water displaced, the density of the crown could be obtained. For practical purposes water is incompressible, so the submerged crown would displace an amount of water equal to its own volume. While taking a bath, he noticed that the level of the water in the tub rose as he got in, and realized that this effect could be used to determine the volume of the crown. Archimedes had to solve the problem without damaging the crown, so he could not melt it down into a regularly shaped body in order to calculate its density. According to Vitruvius, a votive crown for a temple had been made for King Hiero II, who had supplied the pure gold to be used, and Archimedes was asked to determine whether some silver had been substituted by the dishonest goldsmith. The most widely known anecdote about Archimedes tells of how he invented a method for determining the volume of an object with an irregular shape. Discoveries and inventions Archimedes' principleĪrchimedes may have used his principle of buoyancy to determine whether the golden crown was less dense than solid gold.
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