Quotes from book
The Method of Mechanical Theorems

Archimedes

The Method of Mechanical Theorems , also referred to as The Method, is considered one of the major surviving works of the ancient Greek polymath Archimedes. The Method takes the form of a letter from Archimedes to Eratosthenes, the chief librarian at the Library of Alexandria, and contains the first attested explicit use of indivisibles . The work was originally thought to be lost, but in 1906 was rediscovered in the celebrated Archimedes Palimpsest. The palimpsest includes Archimedes' account of the "mechanical method", so-called because it relies on the law of the lever, which was first demonstrated by Archimedes, and of the center of mass , which he had found for many special shapes.

“The centre of gravity of any cone is [the point which divides its axis so that] the portion [adjacent to the vertex is] triple”

Archimedes book The Method of Mechanical Theorems

of the portion adjacent to the base
Proposition presumed from previous work.
The Method of Mechanical Theorems

“I am persuaded that it [The Method of Mechanical Theorems] will be of no little service to mathematics; for I apprehend that some, either of my contemporaries or of my successors, will, by means of the method when once established, be able to discover other theorems in addition, which have not yet occurred to me.”

Archimedes book The Method of Mechanical Theorems

The Method of Mechanical Theorems

“The centre of gravity of any hemisphere [is on the straight line which] is its axis, and divides the said straight line in such a way that the portion of it adjacent to the surface of the hemisphere has to the remaining portion the ratio which 5 has to 3.”

Archimedes book The Method of Mechanical Theorems

Proposition 6.
The Method of Mechanical Theorems

“Any segment of a right-angled conoid (i. e., a paraboloid of revolution) cut off by a plane at right angles to the axis is 1½ times the cone which has the same base and the same axis as the segment”

Archimedes book The Method of Mechanical Theorems

Proprosition 4.
The Method of Mechanical Theorems

“I thought fit to… explain in detail in the same book the peculiarity of a certain method, by which it will be possible… to investigate some of the problems in mathematics by means of mechanics. This procedure is… no less useful even for the proof of the theorems themselves; for certain things first became clear to me by a mechanical method, although they had to be demonstrated by geometry afterwards… But it is of course easier, when we have previously acquired, by the method, some knowledge of the questions, to supply the proof than it is to find it without any previous knowledge.”

Archimedes book The Method of Mechanical Theorems

The Method of Mechanical Theorems

“First then I will set out the very first theorem which became known to me by means of mechanics, namely that
Any segment of a section of a right angled cone (i. e., a parabola) is four-thirds of the triangle which has the same base and equal height,
and after this I will give each of the other theorems investigated by the same method. Then at the end of the book I will give the geometrical [proofs of the propositions]…”

Archimedes book The Method of Mechanical Theorems

The Method of Mechanical Theorems

“The centre of gravity of any cylinder is the point of bisection of the axis.”

Archimedes book The Method of Mechanical Theorems

Proposition presumed from previous work.
The Method of Mechanical Theorems

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