Ancient Greek MathArtist: Archimedes
Image Left: Greek philosopher Archimedes in his bath doing the famous displacement discovery wherein he yelled, "Eureka" and streaked nude through the streets over the excitement of his discovery - 16th Century carving.
Ostomachion - A Game
Image Left: Ostomachion, also known as loculus Archimedius (Archimedes' box in Latin) and also as syntomachion, is a mathematical treatise attributed to Archimedes.
"The game is a 14-piece dissection puzzle forming a square. One form of play to which classical texts attest is the creation of different objects, animals, plants etc. by rearranging the pieces: an elephant, a tree, a barking dog, a ship, a sword, a tower etc. Another suggestion is that it exercised and developed memory skills in the young. James Gow, in his Short History of Greek Mathematics (1884), footnotes that the purpose was to put the pieces back in their box"....Wikipedia
"The game is a 14-piece dissection puzzle forming a square. One form of play to which classical texts attest is the creation of different objects, animals, plants etc. by rearranging the pieces: an elephant, a tree, a barking dog, a ship, a sword, a tower etc. Another suggestion is that it exercised and developed memory skills in the young. James Gow, in his Short History of Greek Mathematics (1884), footnotes that the purpose was to put the pieces back in their box"....Wikipedia
Web Resources
Archimedes in the 21st Century
The Archimedia Palimpsest
PBS - Inside the Archimedes Palimpsest
Archimedes in the 21st Century
The Archimedia Palimpsest
PBS - Inside the Archimedes Palimpsest