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次の文を読み、下線部を日本語にしなさい。
¶1 One man, it might be said, once fought an army. Ancient historians tell us that the man was old, over seventy. The army was that of the strongest power in the world --- Rome itself.
¶2 But the old man, a Greek, fought the Roman army to a standstill for nearly three years --- and almost won. The old man was Archimedes of Syracuse, the greatest scientist of the ancient world.
¶3 The Roman army knew his reputation well, and he lived up to it fully. Legend says that when curved mirrors were set up on the walls of Syracuse, a Greek city in Sicily, the besieging Roman ships caught fire. It wasn't sorcery; it was Archimedes. When huge claws were extended outward on beams, ships were caught, raised, and overturned. It wasn't a magic; it was Archimedes.
¶4 It is said that when the besieging Romans caught a glimpse of rope or wood being raised above the walls of Syracuse, they hoisted sail and ran.
¶5 For Archimedes was different from the Greek scientists and mathematicians who had preceded him, great as they were. Archimedes went beyond them in imagination.
¶6 For instance, to work out the areas enclosed by certain curves, he adapted existing methods of computation and came up with a system that resembled integral calculus. This was nearly two thousand years before Isaac Newton devised the modern calculus. Suppose Archimedes had had Arabic numerals to work with instead of the clumsy Greek numbers. He might have beaten Newton to the punch by 2,000 years.
¶7 Archimedes went beyond his predecessors in daring. He denied that the sands of the sea were too many to be counted. So he devised a method to count them. Not only them, but the grains of sand it would take to cover the earth. Not only that, but the grains of sand it would take to fill the universe. In doing this, he invented a new way of expressing large numbers. Our modern methods are similar in some ways to the one he devised.
¶8 Most important, Archimedes did what no man before him had done: he applied science to the problems of practical, everyday life. The greatest Greek mathematicians before Archimedes --- Thales, Pythagoras, Eudoxus, Euclid --- all considered mathematics to be abstract. It was a way of studying the majestic order of the universe --- nothing more. It had no practical applications. They were intellectual snobs who despised practical applications. They considered such things fit only for merchants and slaves. Archimedes shared this snobbery to a great extent, but he was willing to apply his knowledge of mathematics to practical problems.
¶9 Archimedes was born at Syracuse, Sicily. The exact year of his birth is in doubt, but it is believed to have been 287 B.C. At that time, Sicily was a Greek land. Archimedes was the son of an astronomer and related to Hiero II, King of Syracuse from 270 to 216 B.C. He studied at Alexandria, Egypt, the intellectual center of the Mediterranean world, then returned to Syracuse.
¶10 He had been taught at Alexandria that a scientist was above practical affairs and everyday problems. At the same time, these everyday problems fascinated Archimedes. He could not keep his mind off them. He was ashamed of this interest and refused to keep any record of his mechanical devices. But he kept on making the devices. Today his fame rests upon them.
¶11 Long before the Roman ships sailed into the harbor at Syracuse and the Roman army set up its siege, Archimedes had become renowned.
¶12 One of Archimedes' early achievements was setting up the abstract theory that explains the basic mechanics of the lever. Imagine a shaft balanced on a pivot with the length of the shaft on one side of the pivot ten times the length on the other. Pushing down the shaft at the long end moved the short end up only one-tenth the distance. However, the force pushing the long end down was multiplied ten times in the push of the short end up. In a way, distance was being exchanged for force.
¶13 Using this theory, Archimedes saw no limit to this exchange. A man had only a limited amount of force at his disposal, but distance was unlimited. Therefore, make the lever long enough, push the long end down far enough, and any weight could be lifted at the short end. “Give me a place to stand on," he cried, “and I can move the world."
¶14 King Hiero called what he thought was a bluff. He demanded that Archimedes move something heavy. Not the world, perhaps, but something heavy. So Archimedes chose a ship at the dock and had it loaded with freight and passengers. Even empty, it could not have been dragged out of the dock and into the sea without many men pulling at many ropes.
¶15 But Archimedes tied the ropes together and arranged a pulley device (a kind of lever, using ropes to take the place of the shafts). He then pulled at the rope. Single-handed, he drew the ship slowly into the sea.
¶16 Hiero was now quite content to believe that his great kinsman could move the earth if he wanted to. He had enough faith in him to set him seemingly impossible problems.
¶17 A goldsmith had made a gold crown for Hiero. The king wondered whether the smith had been honest. He might have kept some of the gold given him and substituted silver or copper. So Hiero ordered Archimedes to determine whether the crown was pure gold --- without damaging the crown.
¶18 Archimedes was puzzled. Copper and silver were lighter than gold. If they had been added to the crown they would take up more space than would an equal weight of gold. If he knew the space taken up by the crown (that is, its volume) he could give Hiero the answer. But how was he to determine the volume of the crown without beating it into a solid mass.
¶19 Archimedes took his problem to the public baths. Probably he sighed wearily as he lowered himself into a dull tub and watched the water overflow. And then he sat up, thunderstruck. For it suddenly occurred to him that his body was pushing water out of the tub. The volume of water pushed out must be equal to the volume of his body pushing in. To find the volume of anything, you merely measured the volume of the water it displaced.
¶20 He had discovered the principle of displacement in one flash of intuition! From this he deduced the laws of buoyancy and specific gravity.
¶21 Archimedes could not wait. He sprang out of the bath and ran home through the street, naked and dripping wet. As he ran, he cried over and over again, “I have it. I have it." He cried it in Greek, of course, “Eureka! Eureka!" and the word is still used today to announce a glad discovery.
¶22 He filled a vessel with water, placed the crown in, and measured the volume of the water displaced. Then he did the same thing with an equal weight of pure gold. The volume of water displaced was smaller. The gold in the crown had been mixed with a lighter metal, giving it greater bulk (volume), and causing more water to overflow. The king ordered the smith executed.
¶23 Even in his old age, Archimedes could not resist the challenge of a problem. In 218 B.C., Carthage (in North Africa) and Rome went to war with each other, and the Carthaginian general, Hannibal, invaded Italy. He seemed on the verge of destroying Rome. While King Hiero lived, he kept Syracuse neutral, though in a dangerous position between two fighting giants.
¶24 After King Hiero's death, however, a group that favored Carthage came into power. In 213 B.C., Rome laid siege to the city.
¶25 For three years, the aged Archimedes held off the Roman army. But one man could do only so much. At last, in 211 B.C., the city fell. But even defeat could not affect the restless brain of Archimedes. As the soldiers swarmed into the city, he was working out a problem from a diagram. A soldier ordered him to surrender, but Archimedes paid no attention. The problem was more important to him than a little thing like the sack of a city. “Don't disturb my circles," said Archimedes. So the soldier killed him.
¶26 The achievements of Archimedes have become part of mankind's heritage. He showed that it was possible to apply a scientific mind to the problems of everyday life. He showed that an abstract theory in pure science --- the principle that explains the lever --- could save the straining muscles of man.
¶27 He showed the reverse, too. By beginning with a practical problem --- that of the possible adulteration of gold --- he discovered a scientific principle.
¶28 Today we believe that the great duty of science is not only to understand the universe, but also to better the lot of mankind in every corner of the earth.
Notes:
standstill 身動きできない(状態)
besieging < besiege 包囲する
sorcery 魔法
claw(s) ひっかけるもの
overturn(ed) ひっくり返す
hoist(ed) 上げる
computation 計算
integral calculus 積分法
calculus 計算法
numeral(s) 数字
clumsy 不恰好な
predecessor(s) (彼)以前の人たち
daring 大胆さ
Thales タレス:ギリシャの哲学者
Pythagoras ピタゴラス:ギリシャの哲学者･数学者
Eudoxus ユードクソス:ギリシャの天文学者･数学者
Euclid ユークリッド:ギリシャの幾何学者
snob(s) 学者ぶる人
snobbery 学者気取り
siege 包囲(網)
renowned 有名な
mechanics 力学
lever てこ
shaft 長い棒
pivot 支点
bluff はったり
pulley 滑車
kinsman 親類
seemingly 一見したところ
goldsmith 金細工 職人
smith=goldsmith
overflow あふれる
thunderstruck 雷にうたれたように
displacement 排水量
intuition 直感
deduce(d) 導きだす
buoyancy 浮力
specific gravity 比重
Carthage かるたご
Carthaginian かるたごの
on the verge of いまにも……しようと
sack 掠奪
heritage 遺産
adulteration 混ぜ物をすること
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- 04/3/23(火) -
