Archimedes and the Door of Science
by Jeanne Bendick
Reviewed by Martha Robinson
Purchase details: Archimedes and the Door of Science by Jeanne Bendick. Paperback, 142 pages, $13.95. Published by Bethlehem Books. Please support HomeschoolChristian.com by buying this program from our Christian Book Distributors link or Amazon affiliate link.
Jeanne Bendick combines a biography of Archimedes with simple science experiments in Archimedes and the Door of Science. Beginning with an overview of Archimedes importance and what life was like during his time, two centuries before the birth of Christ, Mrs. Bendick tells the story of Archimedes' life through his studies and discoveries.
After a chapter on Archimedes' scholarly work in Alexandria, Egypt, and the invention of the Archimedean screw, each chapter of the book relates information about a specific area of theoretical proofs and inventions, providing insight into his relationship with the other great thinkers of his time and with the king of Syracuse, Sicily, who enjoyed asking Archimedes to solve problems. The author frequently offers a simple experiment that can be done by an elementary student to help illustrate Archimedes' discoveries. Early chapters on the lever and pulley, laws of specific gravity and buoyancy, and astronomy offer more material than the later chapters on mathematics, geometry, and solid figures. A description of the continuing war with Rome and Carthage and its effect on Sicily, and thus Archimedes, leads into an overview of the war machines designed by Archimedes and his death at the hands of a Roman soldier in 212 B.C. The final chapter of the book recaps Archimedes' discoveries, and the appendix lists his writings and the known lost works.
Recommendation: Archimedes and the Door of Science offers an interesting introduction to the extraordinary accomplishments of Archimedes. While written with language and sentence structure suitable for elementary students, the science and geometry concepts may be a stretch for that age; however, older students, who would have more application for the concepts, might find the writing style to be choppy. The chapters become shorter and seem to lose a bit of momentum later in the book. Despite these issues, Archimedes and the Door of Science will truly enlighten students about Archimedes amazing discoveries that are still important more than 2,200 years after his death.
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