Posted on 06/22/2008 10:44:14 AM PDT by LibWhacker
The enormous steel ball you see in the photos (and the incredible video below) is the world’s largest ‘tuned mass damper’ and sits near the top of the world’s largest completed skyscraper on earth, taipei 101 in taiwan. the idea behind a tuned mass damper is quite simple: as a building sways (resulting from high winds, earthquakes etc), its tuned mass damper, essentially a finely tuned and ridiculously heavy pendulum, will move in opposition to the structure’s oscillations and minimise any movement. if that makes no sense, watch the crude gif below.
due to both the immense size of taipei 101 and the fact that it sits just over 600ft from a major fault line, engineers had no choice but to install one of this size at a cost of $4m. too heavy to be lifted by crane, the damper was assembled on site and hangs through 4 floors of the skyscraper. it can reduce the building’s movement by up to 40%.
image sources: 1, 2, 3 
image source: wikipedia
now for an incredible video. on may 12th, as the horrendous earthquake occurred in china’s sichuan province, tremors were felt for miles, including in taipei 101. youtube user phuaalvin was in the building at the time and said that as the building started to shake, dozens of people ran to the damper to watch it in action. here’s the video he took… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYSgd1XSZXc"/
Next, The World’s Largest Matza Ball...
“Acmhed, all we need to do is blow the supports and ball will come tumbling down!”
Whip it!
It’s why we don’t have earthquakes in Kansas. I hear we have the world’s largest ball of twine.
bttt
Sure looks like the spot to aim an airliner for.
melt the cables, drop the 728 ton ball into the basement
followed by flaming jet fuel.....
Pretty cool, but why make it as a sphere and not a cylinder?
A 728-ton ball falling (at least) 87 stories...
sounds like a nice kinetic-energy weapon for Jihadis.
A sphere gives the largest unit mass per unit volume
I could have sworn that was in Minnesota. At least that’s what Weird Al sang about.
“Ball of Twine”
So, we can’t say people from Kansas have no balls
LOL! That's the first thing I thought of too. I'm betting not too many people get that connection.
This interesting little book explains the physics involved for the layman:
Is that correct? I’m not a physicist, but it seems to me that an ounce of lead will take up the same volume regardless of its shape. Wasn’t that what Archimedes did his streaking routine about?
Yes but the sphere has the smallest surface area for the volume
You are correct a cc of lead is a cc of lead.
Amazing.
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