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The Sand Reckoner (Greek: Ψαμμίτης, Psammites) is a work by Archimedes, an Ancient Greek mathematician of the 3rd century BC, in which he set out to determine an upper bound for the number of grains of sand that fit into the universe. In order to do this, Archimedes had to estimate the size of the universe according to the contemporary ...
[21] [22] In the Sand-Reckoner, Archimedes gives his father's name as Phidias, an astronomer about whom nothing else is known. [22] [23] A biography of Archimedes was written by his friend Heracleides, but this work has been lost, leaving the details of his life obscure.
One of the earliest examples of this is The Sand Reckoner, in which Archimedes gave a system for naming large numbers. To do this, he called the numbers up to a myriad myriad (10 8) "first numbers" and called 10 8 itself the "unit of the second numbers".
In his text The Sand Reckoner, the natural philosopher Archimedes gives an upper bound of the number of grains of sand required to fill the entire universe, using a contemporary estimation of its size. This would defy the then-held notion that it is impossible to name a number greater than that of the sand on a beach or on the entire world.
Gillian Bradshaw, The Sand-Reckoner (2000) about Archimedes; Bryher, Gate to the Sea (1958) Margaret Doody, Aristotle and Stephanos series Aristotle Detective (1978) Aristotle and the Fatal Javelin (1980) Aristotle and Poetic Justice (2000) Aristotle and the Secrets of Life (2002) Anello di bronzo ("Ring of Bronze") (2003) Poison in Athens (2004)
In his book The Sand Reckoner, Archimedes used the myriad as the base of a number system designed to count the grains of sand in the universe. As was noted in 2000: [ 5 ] In antiquity Archimedes gave a recipe for reducing multiplication to addition by making use of geometric progression of numbers and relating them to an arithmetic progression .
The polymath Archimedes (ca. 287–212 BC) invented a decimal positional system based on 10 8 in his Sand Reckoner; [2] 19th century German mathematician Carl Gauss lamented how science might have progressed had Archimedes only made the leap to something akin to the modern decimal system. [3]
"The fixed stars and the Sun remain unmoved, while the Earth revolves about the Sun." — Archimedes' description of the heliocentric model in his work The Sand Reckoner, based on the work by Aristarchus of Samos. Τὰ πάντα ῥεῖ καὶ οὐδὲν μένει. Tà pánta rheî kaì oudèn ménei. "Everything flows, nothing stands ...