Archimedes’ Lever

Imagine this.  After a while, you and Dustin go into his house for a snack.  You watch carefully as he opens the pantry and rustles around for something to eat.  You quickly look away when he turns around, not wanting to betray any sense that you might believe he has a magic pantry.

“You were watching me, weren’t you?” Dustin asks.  “You think I might be telling the truth.”

“You know,” you say, “even if you did travel through time, that isn’t even the most surprising thing you have told me today.  I can’t believe you were reading a book.”

“I was,” Dustin insists.  “At least for a bit.  It had some pictures of a battle, and I wanted to see what it was all about.”

“Prove it,” you say.

So Dustin runs off to his room, and, sure enough, comes back with a book.  He opens to a page with a picture of a battle.  “It says that Hiero hired Archimedes to invent weapons to defend the city.  Archimedes wasn’t interested in building weapons (or luxury ships, for that matter), but Hiero insisted, and he finally agreed.  It was a good thing he did, too.  Because the Romans attacked, and Archimedes needed those weapons to defend the city.”  

You look down at the page and study the picture.  Then you begin to read:

Soon a fleet of Roman warships was entering the harbor of Syracuse, ready to conquer the city.  The fleet was impressive, and the people of Syracuse watched in terror as it approached.  It looked invincible.  The Romans were one of the most efficient and effective military powers in history, and they had conquered countless cities.  But Syracuse had something no other city did: Archimedes.

As the Roman warships confidently neared the walls of the city, suddenly huge beams swung out from the walls with large iron claws on the end.  It was a curious site to the Roman sailors—a curious site that soon became terrifying.  One beam was lowered down until its claw hooked on the side of a ship.  Then the beam shot up, pulling the ship into the air, and dumping the men and weapons into the sea.  The ship was then thrown against rocks and shattered.  Then the beam turned to hook another ship.  Several such beams were operating, and the Roman ships, one by one were being seized and thrown by these strange weapons which came to be called Archimedes’ Claws.  Eventually, the sight of even a simple rope or piece of wood appearing over the wall was enough to send the Roman fleet into a blind panic, with the soldiers shouting “Archimedes is about to get us!”  The Roman general himself said in frustration, “How can we succeed against this man who simply uses our ships to ladle the ocean water?!”

Despite all of this, the Roman navy wasn’t quite ready to give up.  They should have been, for Archimedes next set loose with his catapults.  Sharp spears and huge rocks began to shoot out over the walls and rain down upon the soldiers.  The speed and the sound terrified the Romans.  Some of Archimedes’ catapults were monsters, launching 500-pound stones that crushed ships and created huge waves upon impact.  The Romans hurriedly tried to paddle their ships in close to the walls, expecting they would be out of range of the massive catapults.  But Archimedes had anticipated this, and his short-range weapons—his ‘scorpions’—began firing on the hapless men.  Archimedes had even designed giant lenses that focused the sunlight and shot a hot beam of light onto the sails of the Roman ships, catching them on fire.  The Romans had never seen anything like it.  In despair, they cried out that Archimedes was more dangerous than the mythical hundred-handed monster, Briareus!  It seemed that Archimedes had made Syracuse impossible to conquer.

You look up from the page.  “Did Syracuse and Archimedes win the war?” you ask.

“No, I don’t think so,” Dustin replies.  “I think Archimedes actually gets killed in the battle.”

“What? How could that be?  He seemed so invincible.”

“I think that is on the next page,” Dustin offers.

You turn the page and begin reading.

One night, the people of Syracuse were celebrating a festival, and amid their over-confident partying, they left the city’s defenses.  A small band of Roman soldiers managed to sneak into the city.  Reinforcements followed, and the city started to fall under their control.  Archimedes himself was neither partying nor fighting when the Romans broke into the city.  He was so absorbed in a math problem that he wasn’t even aware the Romans had come inside the city walls.  He was seated on the ground, drawing circles and lines in the sand, and studying them carefully when a Roman soldier suddenly appeared and ordered him to stand.  Archimedes, still thinking about his work, replied, “Do not disturb my circles.”  The soldier, angry and impatient, struck him down where he sat.  And so the great scientist of Syracuse died not in battle, but while quietly thinking about circles.