When he was little and was asked what he wanted to do when he grew up, Marco had no doubts and replied decisively: “The scientist inventor!”.
This always made us laugh a lot at home, but it was nice to see in those childish words the desire to discover something new and, if that something didn’t yet exist, to invent it. In fact Marco spent hours stacking the buildings in a strange way, a draw machines which seemed absurd on the paper, but in his head they were perfectly clear and functional and, from when he was around 10 or 12 years old, even to shoot mini videos which in a certain sense ironically mimicked the science communicators who every day enliven the television networks and which he enjoyed sharing with us and with friends who often travel with my family.
It is thinking about my son’s passion that I felt truly involved in a beautiful one visitable exhibition, until next June 16th, at the Exma in Cagliari (Via San Lucifero, 71, Opening hours: Tuesday to Friday from 9am to 1pm and from 4pm to 8pm / Saturday and Sunday non-stop from 10am to 8pm). Is titled Archimedes: the inventions that changed the world and is dedicated to one of the most brilliant minds that have ever inhabited planet earth, but who despite having a very well-known name (let’s face it, also by virtue of the Disney comics character inspired by him) perhaps does not have an equally wide notoriety for what he concerns his works.
Everyone, or at least a good part of us, imagines or has imagined him immersed in the bathtub to understand how a body immersed in a liquid received a push from the bottom upwards equal to the volume of the liquid displaced or, perhaps, to wander the streets of his Syracuse shouting from the rooftops: “Eureka!”. How many, however, would be able to name one of his inventions or machines? Well, if you too manage to go to the Exma exhibition, you will fill this gap.
In the exhibition, organized by Orientare srl with the patronage of the Municipality of Cagliari, in collaboration with the University of Cagliari, INFN (National Institute of Nuclear Physics – Cagliari branch), Cul.tur.ale ETS, Niccolai Florence and Museo Leonardo of Vinci in Florence, you will be able to get around soon about thirty cars designed by Archimedes and reconstructed faithfully to the original in Tuscan workshops specialized in the reproduction of historical scientific instruments. Those machines were created to discover theories and principles that generated Archimedes’ inventions and which is the case today rediscover giving them the right weight.
As he would say… Eureka!
