CHAPTER II 



PHYSICAL SCIENCE 



THE origin of mechanical science is to be sought in 

 the efforts to understand the tools and instruments 

 invented by man to supply his bodily needs, and the 

 phenomena of motion as seen in Nature. 



The lever, the inclined plane, and the wedge are 

 pictured in the carved stone records of Egypt and 

 Assyria, and their practical use was known before 

 the dawn of history. But the first who attempted 

 to obtain a scientific explanation of the principles 

 which underlie their application was the Greek- 

 Sicilian philosopher, Archimedes of Syracuse, who 

 lived from the year 287 to the year 212 before 

 Christ. 



Archimedes was educated at Alexandria, where 

 Euclid had taught fifty years earlier. And he threw 

 his investigations into the form which Euclid had used 

 with so much success in geometry. 



He begins by laying down axioms, or what are 

 considered as self-evident propositions, and deduces 

 from them, in the Euclidean manner, the law of the 

 lever a law that may be stated as' follows. If a 



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