Archimedes was one of the pioneers in the field of mathematics, mechanics, astronomy, physics. He is called the founder of mathematical physics, who discovered many of the basic laws of physics and mathematics, and they still use Archimedean methods for finding the areas, surfaces and volumes of various figures and bodies.
The scientist introduced the concept of the center of gravity, discovered the laws of the lever and developed the basics of hydrostatics. In addition, he was the greatest engineer, machine designer and inventor of mechanical devices of his time. All his developments are still in use. And only the existence of "incendiary mirrors" that destroyed the Roman fleet still raises doubts.
Archimedes found practical application for almost all his theoretical studies. Machines constructed on the basis of the action of the lever (or “mehane” in Greek) helped man to “outwit” nature. It is also interesting that many of the discoveries of the genius Syracuse received a modern formulation and proof only in the 19th century.
Who does not know the legend about the discovery of the law stating that a body immersed in a liquid is acted upon by a force equal to the weight of the liquid displaced by it? It says that an epiphany descended on Archimedes in the bath, when he suddenly noticed that when he lifted his foot out of the bathroom, the water level in it became lower. The scientist, overshadowed by the idea, jumped out of the bathhouse naked and shouted "Eureka!" rushed along the crowded street. One way or another, but this discovery became the first law of hydrostatics. A similar law - the determination of the specific gravity of metals - Archimedes deduced when solving the problem posed to him by the ruler Hieron: to determine how much gold is contained in his crown and whether there is an impurity in it.
The brilliant scientist was not an introverted person. He strove to make his achievements publicly known and useful to society. And thanks to his love for spectacular demonstrations, people considered his work necessary, the rulers provided him with the means for experiments, and he himself always had interested and intelligent assistants. To those of his fellow citizens who were suspicious of his inventions, Archimedes provided decisive evidence to the contrary. So, one day, having cleverly adjusted a lever, a screw and a winch, to the surprise of onlookers, "by the power of one man" launched a heavy galley, run aground, with all its crew and cargo.
Cicero, the great orator of antiquity, said of Archimedes: "This Sicilian possessed a genius that, it would seem, human nature cannot achieve." The great scientist, passionate about mechanics, created and tested the theory of five mechanisms, known in his time and called "simple". These are the lever, wedge, block, endless screw (now used in the grinder) and winch. On the basis of an endless screw, Archimedes invented a machine for irrigating fields, the so-called "snail", a machine for pumping water from holds and shafts, and finally came to the invention of a bolt, constructing it from a screw and a nut.
Many ancient historians, scientists and writers tell about yet another amazing "discovery" of Archimedes, which made him joyfully exclaim: "Give me a place where I could stand and I will raise the Earth!" Plutarch has a similar text: "Give me a fulcrum and I will move the Earth." This "discovery" is not named in any of the stories, but at present it is seen not as an ordinary lever, but as a mechanism close to the winch, consisting of a drum for winding a rope, several gears and a worm gear. The principle of building a multistage transmission was new here.
Archimedes was obsessed with science and invention. The devices and machines designed by him were perceived by his contemporaries as miracles of technology. The impression was that he did not sleep or eat, but devoted all his time only to creative search. Even Plutarch, who extolled his wisdom and spirit, remarked that “he lived as if bewitched by some kind of domestic siren, his constant companion, making him forget food, drink, and any worries about his body. Sometimes, when brought to the bathhouse, he drew geometric figures on the ash of the hearth with his finger, or drew lines on his oiled body. Such was Archimedes, who, thanks to his deep knowledge of mechanics, was able, as far as it depended on him, to save himself and his city from defeat."
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It was with the protection of the relatives of Syracuse during the 2nd Punic War that the glory of the Arch-honey-engineer increased, which was already overwhelming and left a mark on the consciousness of the entire Hellenistic world, crossing the borders of countries and centuries. Archimedes was then already over seventy, but it was to him that the city entrusted its defense. It was the greatest triumph that scientists have ever seen. Here his talent was manifested not only as an inventor, but also as an outstanding builder.
In the "World History", written about fifty years after the siege, Polybius said that the attackers "did not take into account the art of Archimedes, did not take into account that sometimes one gifted person is able to do more than many hands … Archimedes prepared such means inside the city … defense that the defenders did not need to bother themselves with unforeseen work in case of unexpected methods of attack; they had everything ready in advance to repel the enemy … "He for the first time created embrasures and loopholes in the fortress walls, intended for the so-called" lower and middle battle ". Add to this dozens of military vehicles invented by him - all kinds of catapults, machines for throwing darts and spears, which allowed the townspeople to repel the attacks of a superior enemy for almost three years.
It was also impossible to approach the city from the sea.
As Plutarch wrote: “… suddenly, from the height of the walls, the logs fell, due to their weight and the given speed, onto ships and drowned them. Either iron claws and beaks captured the ships, lifted them into the air with their nose up, stern down, and then submerged them in the water. And then the ships were brought into rotation and, whirling, fell on pitfalls and cliffs at the foot of the walls. Most of those on board died under the blow. Every minute they saw a ship raised in the air over the sea. A terrible sight!.."
Iron "paws" are constantly featured in the descriptions of military vehicles; "Beaks" and "claws", in which scientists see the predecessors of self-tightening pliers, modern manipulators and cranes. Moreover, the machines were mobile, had an arrow that rotated around a vertical axis, and each was controlled by a single driver. No one used such unique military vehicles either before or after Archimedes.
But the biggest mystery of all the inventions of Archimedes remains "incendiary mirrors". The great Syracuse was, among other things, engaged in optics and astronomy. There is evidence that Archimedes wrote a large work on optics that has not come down to us called "Catoptrika", often quoted by ancient authors. However, from the work itself, and even then in a later retelling, only one theorem survived, in which it is proved that when light is reflected from a mirror, the angle of incidence of the moon is equal to the angle of reflection. But even on the basis of these quotes, it can be concluded that Archimedes was well aware of the incendiary effect of various mirrors.
Consequently, theoretically, the ancient Greek scientist could use concave mirrors in the fight against the Roman fleet, setting ships on fire with focused solar rays. But at the same time, in the three surviving descriptions of the assault - Polybius (2nd century BC), Titus Livy (1st century BC) and Plutarch (1st century BC) - there is no mention of only about the burning of ships with mirrors, but in general about the use of fire. And some theorists find an explanation for this. It turns out that Polybius could have kept quiet about this fact, since he was a very distrustful person, and his authority and popularity were so significant that subsequent historians did not dare to confirm or deny the existence of mirrors. Thus, this cannot be considered a strong enough reason to completely deny the real basis of the legend.
But if the mirrors of Archimedes did not exist in nature, why in the literature of the 2nd century A. D. e. traces of this beautiful legend are re-discovered? They are mentioned by the Greek satirist Lucian and the Roman medical scientist Galen. Four centuries later, the issue of incendiary mirrors is analyzed by the Byzantine scientist Anthimius of Thrall in his essay On Miraculous Mechanisms, where he seeks to reconstruct mirrors based on a radius of action equal to the range of an arrow. And he comes to the conclusion that the solution lies in the use of a system of flat mirrors:
“With the help of many flat mirrors, it is possible to reflect enough sunlight into one point that its combined action will cause a fire. This experience can be done with the help of a large number of people, each of whom will hold the mirror in the desired position. But to avoid confusion and confusion, it is more convenient to use a frame in which it is necessary to fix 24 separate mirrors using plates or, even better, on hinges. Substituting this mechanism to the sun's rays, it is necessary to correctly set the central mirror, and then the rest, quickly and deftly tilting them … so that the sun's rays reflected by these different mirrors are directed to the same point ….
In conclusion, Anfimy, in confirmation of the correctness of his reconstruction, adds: "It should be noted that all other authors who spoke about the mirrors of the divine Archimedes mentioned not one mirror, but many." In fact, we are talking about an apparatus in modern solar energy, called a solar concentrator.
The Byzantine Eustachius of Thessalonica echoes Anthimia. In his Commentaries on the Iliad, he writes: "Archimedes, using the rules of catoptrics, burned the Roman fleet at an arrow's distance."
A more detailed account is contained in the History, compiled by the Byzantine chronicler Ceci, who, as a source, refers to Diodorus of Siculus. Tseci points out that Archimedes acted as “a hexagonal mirror made up of small rectangular mirrors that could be moved with hinges and metal slats. He set this mirror so that it intersected in the middle with solar lines, and therefore the sun's rays received by this mirror, reflected, created a heat that turned the Roman ships to ash, although they were at an arrow's flight distance."
And another 12th century Byzantine historian Zonara wrote in the Annals: “This geometer, having collected the rays of the sun on a mirror, with the help of these rays, collected and then reflected by the thickness and smoothness of the mirror, ignited the air and kindled a large flame, which he then sent to ships within its scope. The ships were all reduced to ashes. " No one else from the ancients testified in favor of the existence of the "solar laser" of Archimedes.
Ancient sources have long been considered true, but in the 17th century, as a result of the development of optics, Johannes Kepler and Rene Descartes, who worked in this field, expressed theoretically justified doubts about the possibility of creating such fantastic mirrors. The famous French philosopher and mathematician Rene Descartes in his "Diopter" convincingly showed that it is impossible to bring the sun's rays to a point, as well as to create a parallel beam of burning rays, and stories about them have become a legend for science.
But, as it turned out, not for long. In 1674, forty years after Descartes' convincing proofs, the German mathematician and philologist A. Kircher in his book "The Great Art of Light and Shadow" also claims that he was convinced by numerous experiments that by combining the reflection of the sun from five flat mirrors one can obtain a significant heating, although ^ not sufficient to ignite the wood. But it happened in 1747 by the French naturalist and inventor Georges Louis Buffon.
In his sixth memoir, The Invention of Mirrors for Igniting Objects at Long Distances, he reported all of his experiments. True, he failed to "build" a calculated mirror with a diameter of 71 m (!), But he did not retreat and continued to experiment. Putting aside doubts, Buffon built a composite mirror 13 times smaller than the calculated one, which set fire to a tree at a distance of 50 m. Here is how he describes one of the experiments: using 128 mirrors; the ignition occurred quite suddenly, and over the entire area of the illuminated spot. On April 11, since the focus was 20 feet from the mirror, only 12 mirrors were needed to ignite the small combustible objects.
21 mirrors lit a beech board, 15 mirrors melted a large tin vessel weighing about 6 pounds, and 117 mirrors melted thin sheets of silver. And the naturalist also noticed that “metals, and especially silver, smoke before melting. The smoke was so strong that a smoke screen formed over the ground. After Buffon's successful experiments, which he conducted publicly in the King's Garden on a horizontal platform, the opinion about the reality of incendiary mirrors revived and everyone again agreed that in the era of Archimedes they could exist and be a formidable weapon of battle. Consequently, the ingenious Syracuse man managed to create a powerful solar concentrator.
MV Lomonosov also worked on this problem. The topic of his dissertation, compiled in 1741, was entitled "Discourse on the Catoptric-Dioptric Incendiary Instrument." The "instrument" consisted of a series of mirrors that directed the sun's rays onto lenses, bringing them to one point. But, as it should be in such cases, there was another "but". At the time of Archimedes, there were no mirrors of such quality with which demonstrative experiments were carried out.
Antique mirrors found during excavations are so imperfect that it is difficult to believe in their ability to convey any exact reflection. But it would be a shame if such a beautiful legend was refuted. That is why Italian scientists tried to prove that Archimedes' "battle mirrors" existed, but were not intended for arson, but for aiming at the target.
So, perhaps, the brilliant Archimedes invented not the "solar laser", but the first "ray weapon". And now scientists have to decide whether to prove or disprove two riddles of the genius Syracuse.
“Interesting newspaper. Secrets of history №7 2014