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It is common knowledge that the pressure of the atmosphere (about 105 newtons per square metre) is due to the weight of air above the Earth’s surface, that this pressure falls as one climbs upward, and, correspondingly, that pressure increases as one dives deeper into a lake (or comparable body of water). Mathematically, the rate at which the pressure in a stationary fluid varies...
The basis of naval architecture is found in Archimedes’ principle, which states that the weight of a statically floating body must equal the weight of the volume of water that it displaces. This law of buoyancy determines not only the draft at which a vessel will float but also the angles that it will assume when in equilibrium with the water.
On Floating Bodies (in two books) survives only partly in Greek, the rest in medieval Latin translation from the Greek. It is the first known work on hydrostatics, of which Archimedes is recognized as the founder. Its purpose is to determine the positions that various solids will assume when floating in a fluid, according to their form and the variation in their specific gravities. In...
...left the university without having obtained a degree, and for several years he gave private lessons in the mathematical subjects in Florence and Siena. During this period he designed a new form of hydrostatic balance for weighing small quantities and wrote a short treatise, La bilancetta (“The Little Balance”), that circulated in manuscript form. He also began his studies on...
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