The Challenge results

First off, great job you guys. It was a slow start as many of my usual participants were somewhat indisposed but this brought in some who hadn’t played for a while and some who had not played before. So, it was good thing.

First the answers:

1. Archimedes
2. Eureka! Greek for “I’ve have found it!”
3. A circle inscribed in a cylinder

Onto the victors:

1st place honors go to O Ceallaigh. Much as he did in one of my first Challenges, I let him know in the course of some other correspondence that the game was on and the going slow. He came back immediately with the answers. So, congratulations to O Ceallaigh for coming back around and kicking riddle booty.

2nd place goes to the inimitable Quilldancer, who I’m sure would have snatched the prize had she not been tied up with grading. However, she did quite well finding the answers by simply googling siege+move ships and started seeing the name Archimedes. She is the master of searches, I think. Way to pinpoint the key words right off.

3rd place is someone new to the challenge but not new to many of us: Logophile. Logo happens to be teach a classical Greece class (though in what cpapcity I have not yet learned, and it struck a bell. She also remembered a Mythbusters (I love those guys) episode where they tried another of Archimedes tricks during that siege where he is said to have concentrated the heat of the sun through reflective material and burned whole ships like a giant death ray. The Mythbusters failed by the way to burn a ship in this manner.

Honorable mention: Someone came in just before I was to submit this and as we had so few people getting these answers I thought it would be worthy of a bit of spotlight. This is also someone new to my blog, though I have visited theirs and found it quite entertaining and made it onto at least two people’s list of five funny blogs—Diesel started it. Ladies and gentleman announcing The Drive By Blogger—take a bow Drive By.

Archimedes. I have an art deadline for a client 11 time zones away (morning is rapidly upon them) and so I won’t be able to give a long description here, but here are some interesting facts about Archimedes:

First off, Greek mathematicians, in the ilk of Plato, Aristotle, Euclid, etc. felt that the field of applied mathematics, i.e., engineering was a vulgar field and soiling ones hands to make something that might use their ingenious theories for money was well beneath them and left to lesser men. It was similar to the way we think of “selling out” today in the arts. If you are a mathematician, then you are a philosopher and philosopher is somewhat of an ascetic I suppose. Hence, Archimedes only wrote about one or two mechanical achievements and volumes on mathematics. The amazing instruments of destruction described by the Romans (Plutarch being the primary source) are sadly lost to us.

However, after giving a physics demonstration to his King, Hieron, of Syracuse about how leverage and mechanical advantage could bring a large ship up into dry dock from the sea with the ease of one man pulling a rope through a series of pulleys, King Hieron, astonished at what he saw, endeavored to give Archimedes the task of creating a mechanical defense system for his fortified kingdom. The King never lived to see it in use, however, as fate would have it a 75 year old Archimedes would be present to pull the ropes of his mechanized war machines against one General Marcellus (similar in sound to Marsalis, the famous New Orleans jazz family) which laid Syracuse under siege. Though the siege that came from the sea was 60 ships strong, equipped with catapults and a large army they were, according to the Roman account, mere trifles for Archimedes machines. Large arms came up and over the walls of the fortress and with beaklike claws, grabbed the prows of the ships and pulled them into the air, dropping them back down to sea in terrible destruction. Rocks, missiles of all sizes hurled from the walls, great poles came from the walls and sunk more ships. The report that he burned ships with a glass came in a much later report and were isolated to a less reliable source. The armies that made advances were wiped out by automatic missile launchers. It got to the point, according to accounts given, that if the soldiers were nearing the fortification and they caught a glimpse of the old man grabbing a piece of rope or wood that they fled in a panic. Marcellus could not get his army to fight against this one, 75 year old geometer.

Finally, Marcellus spotted a weakness in the castle design itself and saw a way he could sneak in under cover of an annual celebration to Diana. During the festivities when all were drinking and eating, Marcellus and his men made their way into the city and before anyone could do anything, they were occupied by the Roman force.

Marcellus had given strict orders to his men not to rape and pillage and especially wanted to meet Archimedes alive. However, as legend has it, a Roman soldier who did not know him, or so it is thought, found him drawing geometrical diagrams in the sand, deep in thought. He ignored the command of the soldier, some have him saying, “do not disturb my circles,” but either way he was run through by a Roman soldier after Syracuse fell against the will of the Roman General. Thus pinpointing his death to the fall of Syracuse to the Romans in 212 B.C.E.

Archimedes had instructed his friends and family to have a circle inscribed in a sphere upon his tomb with the ratio he discovered to solve geometrical problems of volume of a shape inside another shape—what he considered his greatest discovery. His Eureka! Exclamation came when he was asked by his king if he could determine whether a gold article received as a gift was pure gold or cut with silver. While taking a bath and seeing how his body displaced the water he got the idea of how to determine the King’s request using buoyancy. It was then that he was said to have run through the streets naked yelling “Eureka!”