The Greece Goddesses
Archimedes was a great mathematician who lived from around 287 to 212 B.C. He went to a famous school of learning in Alexandria, Egypt. Archimedes was able to tell fool's gold from real gold. He also found that gold is equal to silver in weight. Archimedes invented a leverage system to pump water out of ships.
Archimedes probably spent some time in Egypt early in his career, but he resided for most of his life in Syracuse, the principal Greek city-state in Sicily, where he was on intimate terms with its king, Hieron II. Archimedes published his works in the form of correspondence with the principal mathematicians of his time, including the Alexandrian scholarsAlthough Archimedes was a mathematician, he is known for his strategic role in ancient war and the development of military techniques. First the Carthaginians, then the Romans besieged Syracuse where Archimedes was born. While in the end Rome won and killed him, Archimedes put up a good defense. First he invented an engine that threw stones at the enemy, then he used glass to set the Roman ships on fire.
Archimedes probably studied mathematics in Alexandria with the successors of Euclid. The name Archimedes is connected to a pumping device now known as a Archimedes Screw, which he may have seen in operation in Egypt.
Archimedes of Syracuse, when he was in Egypt, invented a machine for pumping bilge water out of the holds of ships.A curious model of such an instrument, probably of the late Ptolemaic period, has been found in Lower Egypt. It consists of a terra-cotta cylinder with a screw inside it, 10 inches long and 4-1/2 inches in diameter.
Screw
A screw is a shaft with a helical groove formed on its surface. Its main uses are as a threaded fastener used to hold objects together, and as a simple machine used to translate torque into linear force screw used as a threaded fastener consists of a shaft which may be cylindrical or conical and a head. The shaft has a helical ridge or thread formed on it. The thread mates with a complementary helix in the material. The material may be manufactured with the mating helix or the screw may create it when first driven in. The head is specially shaped to allow a screwdriver to grip the screw when driving it in. It also stops the screw from passing right through the material being fastened and provides compression. Screws can normally be removed and re-inserted without reducing their effectiveness. This may make them preferable in some applications to nails, which are frequently unusable after being removed.A screw that is tightened by turning it clockwise is said to have a right-hand thread. Screws with left-hand threads are used in exceptional cases, when the screw is subject to anticlockwise forces that might undo a right-hand thread.
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