Archimedes and Fluid Mechanics
Fluid mechanics studies the behaviour of liquids and gases at rest or in the motion. It can be divided into 3 different areas; fluid statics research on fluids at rest, fluid kinematics that investigates fluids in motion, and fluid dynamics that analyses the effect of forces on fluid motion. The second and especially the third areas are greatly used on both solved and partly solved problems. The study of fluid mechanics is significant to engineers; because the main interest of engineers is to solve industrial problems in the applications of fluid mechanics. [1][2]
The early works on fluid mechanics date back to ancient Greece where Archimedes conducted research on fluid statics and buoyancy. He formulated his famous law; the Archimedes' Principle, which was published at ‘On Floating Bodies’. The work is considered to be the first major work on fluid mechanics. Later on, rapid advancement on the subject carried on with various works; Leonardo da Vinci’s method of observations and experiments, Evangelista Torricelli’s invention of the barometer, Isaac Newton’s examination of viscosity, Blaise Pascal’s researches on hydrostatics, formulation of Pascal's law, and Daniel Bernoulli’s the introduction of mathematical fluid dynamics in Hydrodynamica (1738).[2]
Archimedes is considered to be the father of fluid statics due to be the first one who made research on the field. He was born at 287 BC in Syracuse- coast of Sicily, where he spent most of his life. He was the son of an astronomer (Pheidias) who calculated ratio of diameters of the Moon and the Sun. Heracleides (his friend) wrote the life of Archimedes which has been lost, black the details of his life out. For example, it is unknown whether if he eve...
... middle of paper ...
...ere are nothing left except a number of stories, which, although not literally accurate, but help us to conception of the personality of one of the greatest mathematician of antiquity which we would not willingly have changed. The inventions and formulas built the frame of fluid mechanics and even today these are the basis of contemporary science. We can surely say that Archimedes is one of the greatest scientists of all times.
References
[1]The Works of Archimedes , T. L. Heath (Cambridge, 1897)
[2] Fluid Mechanics, 4th Ed., Pijush K. Kindu,Ira M. Kohen(Academic Press, 2010)
[3]Archimedes,ht Center of Gravity,and the First Law of Mechanics, 2nd Ed., Andre K.T. Assis (Canada, 2010)
[4]http://web.archive.org/web/20090224221137/http://math.nyu.edu/~crorres/Archimedes/Crown/bilancetta.html
[5] http://www.math.nyu.edu/~crorres/Archimedes/Claw/illustrations.html
They just forgot to mention the other effects of fluids in nature. “The influence of the fluid on a body moving through it depends not only on the body’s velocity but also on the velocity of the fluid,” this is called relative velocity ( ). The relative velocity of a body in a fluid has an effect on the magnitude of the acting forces. For example, as a long distance runner is running into a head wind, the force of the fluid is very strong. If the runner is running with the help of a tail wind, the current’s force is reduced and may even be unnoticeable.
There he inspired many students and tutored them to become professionals in the medical field. Many of these students included Fabricius ab Aquapendente (gave the first clear description of the semi lunar valves of the veins, which later provided many people with a crucial point in his famous argument for circulation of the blood) and Volcher Coiter (described human embryology as well as the comparative osteology of animals and illustrated his own work.... ... middle of paper ...
Bragg, Melvyn, On Giants' Shoulders: Great Scientists and Their Discoveries from Archimedes to DNA. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1998.
Ross, Danice, Re-Ann Sabubu, and Era Manitas. "Applications - Bernoulli's Principle." Bernoulli's Principle. N.p., n.d. Web. 26 Jan. 2014.
One source of this interest in method was ancient mathematics. The thirteen books of Euclid's Elements was a model of knowledge and deductive method. But how had all this been achieved? Archimedes had made many remarkable discoveries. How had he come to make these discoveries? The method in which the results were pr...
Empirical thought was prevalent during both Greek and Roman dominance, where scientists were more commonly referred to as ‘natural philosophers’ as they were practitioners of skilled professions such as medicine, or followers of religious theory such as temple healers. A pre-Socratic philosopher named Thales (640-546BCE) has been dubbed the ‘father of science’ due to being the first to postulate that there was a natural answer to otherwise supernatural phenomena such as land floating on water and that earthquakes were caused by the agitation of that water by underwater movement or currents rather than the religious view that earthquakes were caused by the god, Poseidon (Arieti, 2005). Further advances of scientific thought and procedure were made over those years by Anaximander (610-546BCE), Pythagoras (570-500BCE), Xenophanes (570-478BCE) and Heraclitus (535-475BCE). While each man had a different interest in science, and the areas they studied include mathematics, astronomy, geometry, theology and metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, politics and cosmology; they all had an important impact on modern science. The advance of Aristotelian science was halted by the Byzantine Emperor Alexius I Comnenus who ruled from 1081 until his death in 1118 due to
Introduction to Aerodynamics Aerodynamics is the study of the motion of fluids in the gas state and bodies in motion relative to the fluid/air. In other words, the study of aerodynamics is the study of fluid dynamics specifically relating to air or the gas state of matter. When an object travels through fluid/air there are two types of flow characteristics that happen, laminar and turbulent. Laminar flow is a smooth, steady flow over a smooth surface and it has little disturbance. Intuition would lead to the belief that this type of air flow would be desirable.
One of the most well known contributors to math from Greece would be Archimedes. He
in 212 B.C. at the age of 75 in Syracuse. It is said that he was killed
It is a generally accepted fact that Aristotle's physics and astronomy were the weakest of his areas of study. He made discoveries and developed theories in biology, ethics, and drama that still hold a great deal of importance in those fields today. However, many of his theories and hypotheses were not disproved unitl the nineteenth century and his original concept of a uniform and consistant flow of time was accepted by Newton and still has its place in physics today. We really cannot discount the scientific contributions of a man whose ideas have survived for over 2000 years.
Many believe the two are interchangeable when speaking about morals and ethics, when the two in no way mean the same thing. Morals are subjective beliefs that belong to an individual, they are one’s own beliefs as to what is right and what is wrong. Ethics on the other hand are the rules that society creates and teaches regarding proper and improper, right and wrong, social behavior. Morals are internal, ethics are external, and they have been the unwritten rules of society as old as mankind, which govern proper social conduct based on the greater good of the popular belief. Philosophers have tussled over the nature of the concepts of morality and virtue, where they stem from as well as their true meanings.
On a more scientific note I am interested in mechanics of fluids. This interest was enforced last year when I had the opportunity to attend a lecture on fluid mechanics at P&G. At the conference I greatly expanded my knowledge regarding the physical aspect of fluids and their properties. In last year's AS course we have met a topic in this field. I will be applying ideas and knowledge gathered from last year for this investigation.
The Bernoulli family had eight significant and important mathematicians, starting with Jacob Bernoulli, born in 1654. Though there was a great deal of hatred and jealousy between the Bernuollis, they made many remarkable contributions in mathematics and science and helped progress mathematics to become what it is today. For example, Daniel discovered a way to measure blood pressure that was used for 170 years, which advanced the medical field. Daniel’s way of measuring pressure is still used today to measure the air speed of a plane. Without the Bernoulli family’s contributions and advancements to calculus, probability, and other areas of mathematics and science, mathematics would not be where it is now.
Archimedes was known for the creation of the Antikythera mechanism, which was the first known computer model.
The 17th Century saw Napier, Briggs and others greatly extend the power of mathematics as a calculator science with his discovery of logarithms. Cavalieri made progress towards the calculus with his infinitesimal methods and Descartes added the power of algebraic methods to geometry. Euclid, who lived around 300 BC in Alexandria, first stated his five postulates in his book The Elements that forms the base for all of his later Abu Abd-Allah ibn Musa al’Khwarizmi, was born abo...