The Method of Archimedes
An Interactive Presentation of Proposition 2
on
The Sphere and The Cylinder
J.T. Poole, 2002


Abstract: When Archimedes came into the mathematical world, mathematicians knew how to find volumes of cylinders and cones, but not spheres. We shall see how he used "The law of the Lever" to obtain a relationship between a sphere, a cylinder , and a cone, and how, using the relationship, he was able to find the volume of a sphere. Although Archimedes used only simple geometric facts, we shall see how his manipulations brought him close to discovering Integral Calculus.


The Presentation
Preliminary Comments
The Method, Proposition 2
Final Comments

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