top of page

Towering Passions

Writer's picture: Mishkat BhattacharyaMishkat Bhattacharya

Background


Towers have an interesting connection to physics. Of course, physics is crucial to their construction (prominently in Gothic cathedrals; but see also these interesting towers of tennis balls and human beings; and test your practical tower-building skills with a game of djenga).


Some towers have historical connections to physics as well - Galileo is said to have conducted his experiments on mechanics from the leaning tower of Pisa; Pound and Rebka performed their test of Einstein's principle of equivalence in a tower at Harvard university.


Motivations


In spite of suffering from acrophobia (fear of heights - when my family moved from a second story to a fourth story apartment it took me a month to come out on the balcony) as well as claustrophobia (fear of enclosed spaces - the stairways leading up the towers are usually cramped; I get breathless in the back seat of an SUV), I find myself climbing towers wherever I visit for physics conferences and talks.


Maybe it is the view that is tempting - I have always been a big picture person and love taking in panoramic eyefuls of the lay of the land. In any case, here are some interesting experiences I have had with towers (for those interested in more, there is a World Federation of Great Towers):


Tower stack


i) The Hallgrimskirkja: Shaped like a space shuttle about to take off, this is the most prominent architectural landmark in Reykjavik. I particularly enjoyed the lovely view of the city and the bordering ocean.


ii) Taipei 101: The first tower I saw with earthquake and typhoon-proofing in the form of a huge concrete ball suspended down the center to counteract tipping over (the Wikipedia article has a photo of the ball, or for the technical folks, the mass damper).


iii) Sydney Tower Eye: Really tall (apparently the second tallest in the Southern Hemisphere). Gives amazing views of the Harbor and the Bridge. The skywalk - to get on it you have to be rope-chained to the rail - has a transparent floor letting you look all the way down to street level: I didn't go on it, it was a bit too much for me.


iv) Eiffel Tower: No list would be complete without this one. The view is great, of course, but to a technical person it might also be interesting to read off the names of prominent French scientists inscribed on the sides: Fourier, Cauchy, Lagrange, Laplace, Lavoisier, Fresnel, Ampere, Legendre, Fizeau, Coriolis, Foucault, Carnot...- 72 of them. If you take the picture on your phone, like me, you will have to expand to full size for the inscriptions to be legible.


v) St. Vitus: The south tower on this cathedral in the royal castle lets you geographically decipher all of Prague from the maps posted at the top. The clapper on the huge (15 tons) and famous bell Zikmund is said to crack (so the bell falls silent) whenever a disaster is about to strike. The clock escapement mechanism is visible and I was hypnotized by it.


vi) La Sagrada Familia: I went up the Passion (and not the Nativity) tower on this landmark cathedral designed by the famous Catalan architect Antoni Gaudi. Great views of Barcelona city and the Mediterranean. The elevator takes you up and you get to climb down a rather narrow and unlighted stairwell.


vii) Acropolis: This is not formally a tower, but I included it in the list as it shared several features in common with a tower: I had to climb a lot, stunning architecture was involved, and the view of the city (Athens) was magnificent. The word itself - acropolis - roughly means 'high point'.


In a similar category is Sravanabelagola in India, which is capped by an enormous statue of Bahubali. (I did not have the guts to do the climb in a litter carried by four men; the steps seemed to be a safer bet).


Bucket list


Some towers I would like to see (or see again):


i) Burj Khalifa: the tallest structure in the world, located in Dubai. The closest I came to it was when I visited Abu Dhabi. Not close enough.


ii) Leaning Tower of Pisa: For reasons obvious (physics-based) and perhaps not so obvious (as an example of how an imperfection can make something famous).


iii) CN Tower: It's just across the border, in Toronto, but I've never managed to make it there on any of my visits to the city.


iv) Qutub Minar: I am told I visited it as a child. I would like to go see it again, and climb its 399 steps, but the tower has been closed to the public since 1981 when 45 tourists died in a stampede after the stair lighting failed. If cell phones had existed back then those lives would probably have been saved.

Recent Posts

See All

Bình luận


Responsible comments are welcome at mb6154@gmail.com. All material is under copyright ©.

© 2023 by Stories from Science. Powered and secured by Wix

bottom of page