The real business of the treatise begins with Props. 19, 20; here it is
shown how, by drawing many plane sections equidistant from one another
and all parallel to the base of the segment of the solid, and describing
cylinders (in general oblique) through each plane section with
generators parallel to the axis of the segment and terminated by the
contiguous sections on either side, we can make figures circumscribed
and inscribed to the segment, made up of segments of cylinders with
parallel faces and presenting the appearance of the steps of a
staircase. Adding the elements of the inscribed and circumscribed
figures respectively and using the method of exhaustion, Archimedes
finds the volumes of the respective segments of the solids in the
approved manner (Props. 21, 22 for the paraboloid, Props. 25, 26 for the
hyperboloid, and Props. 27-30 for the spheroids). The results are stated
in this form: (1) Any segment of a paraboloid of revolution is half as
large again as the cone or segment of a cone which has the same base and
axis; (2) Any segment of a hyperboloid of revolution or of a spheroid is
to the cone or segment of a cone with the same base and axis in the
ratio of AD + 3CA to AD + 2CA in the case of the hyperboloid, and of 3CA
- AD to 2CA - AD in the case of the spheroid, where C is the centre, A
the vertex of the segment, and AD the axis of the segment (supposed in
the case of the spheroid to be not greater than half the spheroid).
_On Spirals._
The preface addressed to Dositheus is of some length and contains,
first, a tribute to the memory of Conon, and next a summary of the
theorems about the sphere and the conoids and spheroids included in the
above two treatises. Archimedes then passes to the spiral which, he
says, presents another sort of problem, having nothing in common with
the foregoing. After a definition of the spiral he enunciates the main
propositions about it which are to be proved in the treatise. The spiral
(now known as the Spiral of Archimedes) is defined as the locus of a
point starting from a given point (called the "origin") on a given
straight line and moving along the straight line at uniform speed, while
the line itself revolves at uniform speed about the origin as a fixed
point. Props. 1-11 are preliminary, the last two amounting to the
summation of certain series required for the final addition of an
indefinite number of element-areas, which again amounts to integration,
in order to find the area of the figure cut off between any portion of
the curve and the two radii vectores drawn to its extremities. Props.
13-20 are interesting and difficult propositions establishing the
properties of tangents to the spiral. Props. 21-23 show how to inscribe
and circumscribe to any portion of the spiral figures consisting of a
multitude of elements which are narrow sectors of circles with the
origin as centre; the area of the spiral is intermediate between the
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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