Archimedes, My Favorite Mathematician

I have liked math and science growing up because the two are the most real-life applicable subjects. We use them everyday, in our cooking, bathing, eating, spending, budgeting and in daily math situations like our daily expenditures. Math was invented to solve problems ironically students consider math the problem these days😅

A lot of people have made great contributions in mathematics and choosing a favorite among them is a really difficult task. However if I really had to choose who my favorite mathematician is, it would be Archimedes.

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Archimedes was one of the best mathematicians of his time. His two biggest contributions for which I adore him is discovery of the law of floatation, relation of volume of spheres and advancements in mechanics. He also calculated pi to the closest and most precise and invented the Archimedes’ screw

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He proposed that the volume of a sphere is two-third the volume of a cylinder. He was so proud of this discovery he requested that on his tomb, a cylinder circumscribing a
sphere be inscribed in his honor after his death.

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He also proposed the Archimedes principle which states that, “that the buoyant force on an object submerged in a fluid is equal to the weight of the fluid that is displaced by that object”. He came up with this discovery when he was asked to prove that the crown made for the king of Syracuse was not pure gold(equal to the weight of gold he was given to make it) like the crown-maker asserted. He noticed when he was about to take a bath that water spilled when he got into the bathtub. Not realizing he was not dressed, he run through the town streets shouting Eureka! to the king’s palace.

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When a cup is filled with water to the brim and say a spoon is put inside the cup, some water overflows or spills and if the spilled water is weighed, it would equal the buoyant force of the spoon. The volume of water displaced by gold and whatever metal the crown-maker used instead were different even though their weights of the crown and gold given to him by the king were Identical. This was because the two metals had varying densities.
The Archimedes principle explains how ships float, hot air baloons fly and submarines dive. It is also explains how some bugs are able to walk on water and used in determining bone and teeth density.

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He was so passionate about math he sometimes had to be forced into the bathroom by his servants to take a bath and even there, he would still be doing geometry and drawing lines on his naked body.

As if that wasn’t enough it would give you goosebumps and thrill to know that he was killed in the roman war when he was so focused on his subject he didn’t notice their city was getting taken over by romans. When a roman soldier was asked to bring him in, he declined to adhere to the soldier’s command to stop work and got ran through by the soldier. How interesting is that?

I chose him not just because of his contributions but because of how passionate he was about what fascinated him(math)

Thank you for reading