Tag Archives: sphere

Archimedes – the Man who invented the Death Ray

Archimedes lived over 2,000 years ago in Syracuse on the island of Sicily.

He was a mathematician, astronomer, physicist, engineer and inventor.

Many of his great inventions came about while defending Syracuse when it came under attack from the Romans.

Click here for signed copies with free poster.

The leader of the Roman army was Marcus Claudius Marcellus. Eventually Marcellus won the war. Archimedes died in the Siege of Syracuse, even though Marcellus had given strict orders that Archimedes should be captured alive. Marcellus admired the genius and knew that he had more invention to offer the world. Who knows how history may have changed if Archimedes had lived to live the rest of his life in peaceful study and contemplation?

In this book, Marcus Claudius Marcellus looks back on his life and explains to his young son exactly why Archimedes was possibly the cleverest person that ever lived.

Here are a few videos that show you how to draw Archimedes and how to get to grips with drawing circles and spheres, the subjects that fascinated Archimedes so much, a fascination that led him to his greatest invention Pi – the number that lets us work out the circumference of circles and the area of the surface of a sphere.

 

Leave a Reply

Drawing Spheres – Part 1


A sphere is made from millions of circles that all share the same diameter or central axis line. This is how the world spins on it’s axis and how we separate the world into lines of longitude and latitude.
Imagine the Earth, spinning in space, and draw an imaginary line all the way around from the North Pole to the South Pole and back to North Pole again on the other side. Now draw another, imaginary, line at 90 degrees to the first, from the North Pole to the South Pole and back to North Pole again on the other side.

Finally draw an imaginary line around the equator. This line will be at 90 degrees to the first two lines. There will be 6 points where the lines cross each other. Just as a circle fits perfectly inside a square, a sphere fits perfectly inside a cube.

The six points – where the lines we drew crossed each other – touch the outsides of the cube at the centre of each of it’s faces.

We can find the centres of each face, by drawing lines from corner to corner on a wireframe drawing of a cube. Then we use those six points as guides to let us draw three ellipses each at right angles to each other, creating the wireframe drawing of a sphere inside a box.

Now – can you see how everything we have done so far has led us to this point? If so, your task is to take a deep breath and have a rest – but only for a minute! There’s work to be done in the next lesson! The index for this course is at http://www.shooraynerdrawing.com/..