Experimental Archaeology:Investigating the Evolution of Hydrostatic Balances throughout History (An Experimental Approach)

Document Type : Research Article

Authors

1 Faculty of Engineering - Energy Institute for Higher Education (EIHE),Saveh, Iran.

2 Department of Mechanical Engineering, Tafresh University, Tafresh, Iran.

Abstract

More than two thousand years ago the first hydrostatic balance with a rudimentary structure was invented by the Greek sage “Archimedes.” Iranian scholars would later develop balances that were used not only for weighing but also for determining the density and titration of alloys.To appraise the path of evolution of these balances as well as their potentials, an experimental research program was undertaken by the Iranian Research Organisation for Science and Technology (IROST). Therefore, five different balances were selected, ranging from the oldest known in the history of science, the Archimedes balance, to the most sophisticated one, the balance of wisdom by Al-Khazini, which are separated by a lapse of time of about fourteen hundred years. Balances designed by Abu Rayhan Al-Biruni, Zakariya Al-Razi, and Omar Khayyam were the other three. In the course of the research, replicas of the selected balances were designed and fabricated according to the remaining design details in the related literature. The article covers the detailed design of each balance, their construction and functional test details as well as a comparison of their functions and their precision in densitometry and titration.

Keywords

References

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Iranian Journal of Archaeological Studies
Volume 13, Issue 2
2023
Pages 133-148

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