Science and Technology in the Roman Empire/Republic

• Hipparchus is another famous Greek scientist who was in the Roman Empire. He is famous for his work in trigonometry and also in his solar and lunar theory. He studied the stars and planets, and their courses.
• He also studied eclipses and correctly predicted when one would occur. However, Hipparchus like many of the people who came before him, assumed the position of geocentric cosmology.

Ptolemy (AD90-AD168) - A roman citizen of Egypt who worked at ancient Alexandria during the reigns of emperor Claudius and emperor Nero. Wrote a variety of books on subjects such as astronomy, optics and geography which heavily influenced medieval European and Middle Eastern science-Mariamilani.com

ROMAN NUMERALS

One of the most well-known inventions of the Romans was simple enough: they created the Roman Numerals used still today in math, and science nomenclature. Roman numerals are used today in Star Wars Episode Numbers, they are used in clocks, in chemical nomenclature (the oxidation states), royalty, code, and in math.

The Ancient Romans didn’t know much to start with, but it is because of them that we know a lot to begin with. Their legacy lives on today because much of what we have is what they began on. Imagine back then, nobody could even think about what heights we would be building up today. Maybe we should look at ourselves, someday our ancestors will innovate on our ideas and build what cannot be imagined by the most creative, imaginative minds today.

The Sky's the Limit!

Or is it really?

Science and Technology in the Roman Empire/Republic

• Although this may seem like it is a feat of architecture, the first Roman aqueducts were a big scientific breakthrough. They were large arches built to carry water from point a to point b. The aqueducts were designed to carry water from rivers and lakes to towns.
• The aqueducts were sloped downhill so that the water could flow in that direction. The aqueducts were present mainly underground.
• Out of 240 miles of the aqueduct system altogether, only 30 miles are the giant structures that we see here. The aqueduct system was beautifully engineered, carrying disease and pests away from the city. When these giant aqueducts reached Rome, they filled a large tank of water-a reservoir with it.
• This was Rome’s supply of water and what is amazing is that for a fee, somebody could be connected to this reservoir of water and get water from for their baths or private villas. This was done using vast networks of pipes that were made out of lead.
• About 11 aqueducts supplied Rome with their water. What is remarkable to note, is that in a population of over 1,000,000 people, these aqueducts were capable in providing each and every single person with about one cubic square meters of water per day!

What is amazing is that Hipparchus determined about the length of one year. He made extensive observations of the sun, the equinoxes and the solstices. He ended up determining the days in the year that was only 6 days off. Hipparchus calculated the position and displacement of the sun from any equinox using his formulas and he was these equations could also tell where the sun was relative to its elliptical cycle.

He did similar things with the moons orbit and so when the dates coincides, Hipparchus was able to tell that a lunar eclipse was about to happen.

The winch was another very famous invention for the Ancient Romans was the winch. A winch or a capstan is a circular object that the rope ties around like a spool of thread. Once the wheel is turned the rope can be reeled in or released. Basically, it is the way fishing rods are build. It could be horizontally placed or it could be vertical. Both used the mechanical advantage of a rotating drum that took up most of the load.

• The Ancient Romans had the first concept of what home heating would be like.
• After mass excavations, rooms were discovered under the homes of Ancient Roman houses. They were furnaces that were filled with coals and then burned by the slaves.
• The resulting fire and heat rose up to the surface like the Romans knew it would.
• ground on the upper floors were therefore heated, thus creating the first very primitive source of heated floors.
• rather ingenious because they were built in a way that the heat circulated around the entire house

Between the floor of the upper story and the basement, there was a space. That space was present between walls and in the hollow parts of the house. When filled with the hot air, the entire house became heated and warm. This was the first heating system. This was called a hypocaust.

Science and Technology

Therefore, an axle of 5 centimeters (2 inches) with handspikes 30 centimetres (1 ft) long has a mechanical advantage of 6 to 1. A man operating the winch can thus lift 6 times more than he would when just pulling a rope. However, to wind up 1 metre of rope the handspikes would need to be turned 6 metres. (Low tech magazine)

The Aqueducts

Hero of Alexandria, a Roman who invented the steam engine, and is credited with making the earliest wind wheels on land. He was also gifted at math and trigonometry and the Herons formula is his. He did live in Egypt but he was a Roman, and therefore falls into the Roman Empire.

A crane with five pulleys allows you to lift five times more than you are otherwise able to - but the rope has to be pulled over five times the distance – Low tech magazine.

Tools

Roman architecture is undoubtedly a spectacular collection of amazing buildings of the Romans. They are famous for their Coliseum and Plazas. But how exactly did they make these monuments, some of which still stand today. The Romans had extensive tools to hold extremely heavy objects. Out of this need, ropes were invented, but not the ropes that you and I know today. These ropes were special in the fact that some of them were made up of a lot of rubber and some were made up of little rubber. They elasticized different ropes differently because under pressure, some ropes could be extended and pulled because they were elastic and flexible. For other jobs, a sturdier rope was needed. The Romans also had (but didn’t invent) the pulley. It could be used to easy the load that the worker (or slave) had to do.

• Roman buildings have extremely heavy structures that were placed in their using multiple lifting mechanisms.
• The Romans shipped extremely heavy obelisks from Egypt and re-erected them in Rome. They weighed over 500 tonnes. Some animals, such as horses or oxen were often use because of their brute strength.
• An extremely efficient crane of the Romans was the Polyspastos and when men worked at both sides of the winch, it was capable of lifting 3000 kg!
• Its mechanical advantage was huge and it maxed out at 6000 kg! It is said to 60 times more efficient than what the Egyptians used.
• The Roman engineers, when faced with objects that weighed 100 tonnes, used a tower, and several capstans pulled by many animals.

Since Greece is a part of the Ancient Roman Empire, many Greeks fall into the category of being in the Roman Empire. Such Greeks are Archimedes, who made a large contribution to math and the sciences. He invented the water pump, and he was the one who went in the streets shouting “Eureka” when he discovered the Archimedes Principle. The Archimedes principal is the physical law of buoyancy which states that any object completely submerged in fluid is acted upon with the same amount of force as it has displaced being in the water. If the weight of whatever is placed in the water is less than the amount displaced it will rise. An example is the balloon. The balloon takes up more space. It doesn’t weight a lot though. Therefore, it displaced much more water.

Other Scientists.

• Scientists include Lucretius, Varro and Pliny,

• Lucretius did his work on the study of matter, the atom, the indestructability of matter, and even preliminary evolutionary theory

• Pliny the elder: famous philosopher, lawyer and scientists, he was studying Mt. Vesuvius when he died

• Vitruvius, the father of ancient engineering created water mill used to crush grain…Cement was made (liquid cement lighter and tougher than rock)

Therefore, an axle of 5 centimetres (2 inches) with handspikes 30 centimetres (1 ft) long has a mechanical advantage of 6 to 1. A man operating the winch can thus lift 6 times more than he would when just pulling a rope. However, to wind up 1 metre of rope the handspikes would need to be turned 6 metres. (Low tech magazine)

The Romans were very proficient is their medical studies. They found great interest in it. In the Roman Empire, Galen was the one the best doctors and his textbook became the standard for European doctors for several centuries.

The Science of Stone

The Romans, just like the Greeks (they are both apart of the empire) believed in the four humors of the human body. The four humors are the metabolic agents of the human body; they are what take energy from the digested food (or so the Romans thought). Most ailments were related to these four humors. Their balance and purity is what the health of the human body is based around. The Four humors are shown here.

• Blood, or the Sanguine humor, is the red, hemoglobin-rich portion.

• Phlegm, or the Phlegmatic humor, is present as the clear plasma portion.

• Yellow Bile, or the Choleric humor, is present as a slight residue or bilirubin, imparting a slight yellowish tint.

• Black Bile, or the Melancholic humor, is present as a brownish grey sediment with platelets and clotting factors. -GreekMedicine

They represent the four elements that Aristotle theorized made the universe. That is: fire, water, earth and air.

Roman Medicine

An extremely useful discovery of the Romans was concrete. The Romans are famous for their road building and how their roads used to stretch on for miles. Therefore, in order for them to make such a vast network of roadways, they need cement. The Romans invented fast drying cement and this was very useful because it was needed right away. The Romans realized that adding Pozzolanic earth from volcanic regions to mortar resulted in an extremely durable, hard and waterproof cement. Adding on this innovation, they added concrete reinforced with metal. They were fused together, the metal supported the concrete from within.

The Romans were very used to using fire to help them invent new things. They found metals that had a low melting point and then upon melting them, they melted another one and fused them together. When they hardened, an alloy was made. An alloy was a strong combination of two metals, an example is brass.

All this may sound extremely primitive and despite the limited resources available to them, the Romans succeeded in discovering the most ancient form of nanotechnology. The way that they did this was that they melted glass and smelted metals. Then they put them together. This resulted in glass with small atoms of metals scattered around it. This glass shone a different colour when one wavelength of light was passed through it and shone another colour when another wavelength passed through it.

The Romans also invented hydraulic mining. Hydraulic mining is the manipulation of rivers in order to lead them into a mine. The water eroded the rock and the limestone just like the earth did over a course of millions of years to rock and therefore, gold was found underneath.

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