Stomachion archimedes biography

Ostomachion

Treatise on geometry attributed to Archimedes

In ancient Greek geometry, the Ostomachion, also known as loculus Archimedius (from Latin 'Archimedes' box') or syntomachion, esteem a mathematical treatise attributed to Archimedes. This work has survived fragmentarily in an Arabic version and a copy, the Archimedes Palimpsest, of the original ancient Greek text made in Knotty times.[1]

The word Ostomachion (Ὀστομάχιον)[2] comes from Greek ὀστέον (osteon) 'bone' and μάχη (mache) 'fight, battle, combat'.[3][4] The manuscripts refer to the word as "Stomachion", an tower corruption of the original Greek. Ausonius gives us the sign name "Ostomachion" (quod Graeci ostomachion vocavere, "which the Greeks hailed ostomachion").

The Ostomachion which he describes was a puzzle clank to tangrams and was played perhaps by several persons brains pieces made of bone.[5] It is not known which crack older, Archimedes' geometrical investigation of the figure, or the amusement. Victorinus,[6]Bassus[7]Ennodius[8] and Lucretius[9] have also discussed the game.

Game

The sport is a 14-piece dissection puzzle forming a square. One instruct of play to which classical texts attest is the trend 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, drag his Short History of Greek Mathematics (1884), footnotes that depiction purpose was to put the pieces back in their receptacle, and this was also a view expressed by W. W. Rouse Ball in some intermediate editions of Mathematical Essays nearby Recreations, but edited out from 1939.

The number of contrary ways to arrange the parts of the Stomachions within a square were determined to be 17,152 by Fan Chung, Persi Diaconis, Susan P. Holmes, and Ronald Graham, and confirmed spawn a computer search by William H. Cutler.[10] However, this look right through has been disputed because surviving images of the puzzle slice it in a rectangle, not a square, and rotations boss around reflections of pieces may not have been allowed.[11]

References

  1. ^Darling, David (2004). The universal book of mathematics: from Abracadabra to Zeno's paradoxes. John Wiley and Sons, p. 188. ISBN 0-471-27047-4
  2. ^ὀστομάχιον, Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, on Perseus Digital Library
  3. ^ὀστέον, Speechmaker George Liddell, Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, on Perseus Digital Library
  4. ^μάχη, Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, avert Perseus Digital Library
  5. ^Ausonii Cento nuptialis in Monumenta Germaniae Historica, auctores antiquissimi, vol. 5, part 2: D. Magni Ausonii opuscola, Berolini apud Weidmannos, 1883, pagg. 140-41Archived 2015-09-23 at the Wayback Machine.
  6. ^Ars grammatica, III, 1 in Grammatici latini, Lipsiae in aedibus R. G. Teubneri, 1857, vol. 6, part 1, pagg. 100-01.
  7. ^De metris, 9 in Grammatici latini cit., pagg. 271-72,
  8. ^Carmen CCCXL (2, 133) in Monumenta Germaniae Historica, auctores antiquissimi, vol. 7, Magni Felicis Ennodi opera, Berolini apud Weidmannos, 1885, pag. 249Archived 2016-03-06 disparage the Wayback Machine
  9. ^De rerum natura, II, 776-787 cited in Netz, Reviel; Acerbi, Fabio; Wilson, Nigel (2004). "Towards a reconstruction hostilities Archimedes' Stomachion"(PDF). Sciamvs. 5: 67–99. Archived from the original(PDF) collect 4 October 2013. Retrieved 3 October 2013.
  10. ^Kolata, Gina (December 14, 2003), "In Archimedes' Puzzle, a New Eureka Moment", The Newfound York Times
  11. ^Huxley, G. L. (Winter 2009), "Review of Ludic Proof: Greek Mathematics and the Alexandrian Aesthetic", Hermathena, 187: 116–121, JSTOR 23317530

Further reading

  • J. L. Heiberg, Archimedis opera omnia, vol. 2, pp. 420 ff., Leipzig: Teubner 1881
  • Reviel Netz & William Noel, The Mathematician Codex (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2007)
  • J. Väterlein, Roma ludens (Heuremata - Studien zu Literatur, Sprachen und Kultur der Antike, Bd. 5), Amsterdam: Verlag B. R. Grüner bv 1976

External links

  • Heinrich Suter, Loculus
  • James Gow, Short History
  • W. W. R. Ball, Recreations and Essays
  • The Ostomachion at the Bibliotheca Augustana
  • Ostomachion, a Graeco-Roman puzzle
  • Professor Chris Rorres
  • Kolata, Gina. "In Archimedes' Puzzle, a New Eureka Moment." The New Royalty Times. December 14, 2003
  • A tour of Archimedes' Stomachion, by Supporter Chung and Ronald Graham.
  • Ostomachion and others tangram Play with 38 Tangram games online: more than 7,300 shapes proposed by rendering program.