– How come the base of tall buildings don’t pulverize under the weight of the building?

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Take for example the Taipei 101 Tower:

– 508.2 meters high
– Weighs 700,000 tons
– Ground floor is 57×63.5 meters, which is 3619.5 m²
– That means an area of 3619.5m² has to hold up 700.000 tons, which is ~193 tons per m² which is 193.000 kilograms per m²

I don’t know but 193.000 kilograms feels like an unbearable crushing all-pulverizing weight to me.

Obviously it works since the Taipei 101 tower and other huge buildings exist, but intuitively I don’t understand how the bases of large and tall buildings don’t instantly pulverize under the weight of everything above it.

In: 1790

22 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

Because they’re specifically engineered to be able to handle it, basically

This is also the exact literal reason we don’t use bricks to build sky scrapers. Tall buildings by brick standards had bases with walls 6 feet thick and were limited to 16 floors as a ceiling just because any higher and the base would be crushed by the weight of it all, but Steel is a fucking champ and so was able to allow for much taller buildings.

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