Lesson plan
Polybolos
, Germany; left: polybolos reconstruction by the German engineer Erwin Schramm (1856–1935) , Athens, Greece. The polybolos (the name means "multi-thrower" in Greek ) was an ancient Greek repeating ballista, reputedly invented by Dionysius of Alexandria (a 3rd-century BC Greek engineer at the Rhodes arsenal, ) and used in antiquity. The polybolos was not a crossbow since it used a torsion mechanism, drawing its power from twisted sinew-bundles. However the earlier and similar oxybeles employed a tension crossbow mechanism, before it was abandoned in favor of torsion. Philo of Byzantium ( 280 BC – 220 BC) encountered and described a weapon similar to the polybolos, a catapult that could fire again and again without a need for manual reloading. Philo left a detailed description of the gears that powered its chain drive (the oldest known application of such a mechanism ) and that placed bolt after bolt into its firing slot.
Article summary
, Germany; left: polybolos reconstruction by the German engineer Erwin Schramm (1856–1935) , Athens, Greece. The polybolos (the name means "multi-thrower" in Greek ) was an ancient Greek repeating ballista, reputedly invented by Dionysius of Alexandria (a 3rd-century BC Greek engineer at the Rhodes arsenal, ) and used in antiquity. The polybolos was not a crossbow since it used a torsion mechanism, drawing its power from twisted sinew-bundles. However the earlier and similar oxybeles employed a tension crossbow mechanism, before it was abandoned in favor of torsion. Philo of Byzantium ( 280 BC – 220 BC) encountered and described a weapon similar to the polybolos, a catapult that could fire again and again without a need for manual reloading. Philo left a detailed description of the gears that powered its chain drive (the oldest known application of such a mechanism ) and that placed bolt after bolt into its firing slot.
Key claims
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Discussion questions
- Summarise the article in your own words. Which single claim would you verify first, and why?
- Which claim in this article is most likely to be revised as the sources update? How would you check its current status?
- If two sources disagreed about one of these facts, what would you need in order to trust one over the other?
Bibliography
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Key claims and bibliography are generated from the same tracked claims and sources as the article page.