Book:Archimedes/The Sand-Reckoner

Archimedes: The Sand-Reckoner

Published $\text {c. 250 BCE}$

Subject Matter

• Number Theory

Archimedes describes a system of notation for designating very large numbers, up to $N^{N^N}$, where $N = 10^8$.

Contents

• Upper Bound for Number of Grains of Sand to fill Universe

A table of contents is missing for this source work. You can help $\mathsf{Pr} \infty \mathsf{fWiki}$ by adding the table of contents. To discuss this page in more detail, feel free to use the talk page. When this work has been completed, you may remove this instance of {{ContentsWanted}} from the code.

Also known as

Some sources render this without the hyphen: Sandreckoner.

Historical Note

The Sand-Reckoner by Archimedes was addressed to King Gelon of Syracuse (who appears to have lived some $250$ years earlier).

It is in this book that we learn that Aristarchus of Samos had first proposed a heliocentric universe, nearly $2000$ years before Nicolaus Copernicus.

Sources

• 1986: David Wells: Curious and Interesting Numbers ... (previous) ... (next): $-1$ and $i$
• 1986: David Wells: Curious and Interesting Numbers ... (previous) ... (next): $10^{51}$
• 1992: George F. Simmons: Calculus Gems ... (previous) ... (next): Chapter $\text {A}.5$: Archimedes (ca. $\text {287}$ – $\text {212}$ B.C.)
• 1992: David Wells: Curious and Interesting Puzzles ... (previous) ... (next): Archimedes' Cattle Problem
• 1997: David Wells: Curious and Interesting Numbers (2nd ed.) ... (previous) ... (next): $-1$ and $i$
• 1997: David Wells: Curious and Interesting Numbers (2nd ed.) ... (previous) ... (next): $10^{51}$