America's "Revolutionary" Tower Is Already Sinking — Engineers Warned Everyone
Eleanor Engineered
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Engineers predicted San Francisco's Millennium Tower would settle four to six inches over its entire life. Seven years after opening, it had sunk sixteen, and the top was leaning over the street. From a Chicago opera house that got a heavier building than its foundation was designed for, to a satellite study showing New York sinking under 1.68 trillion pounds of buildings, to a $100 million fix that made the tower sink faster before it held, here's what clay and groundwater do under the things we build, and why the warnings keep coming true. Subscribe for more stories buried in the details.
#Engineering #SanFrancisco #Skyscraper #Explained #Infrastructure
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Origin and Quote
• Original source: The phrase comes from the 1785 Scots poem "To a Mouse" by Robert Burns.
• Actual lines: The original lines are "The best laid schemes o' mice an' men / Gang aft a-gley". In modern English, "gang aft a-gley" means often go awry or go astray.
• Fuller verse: The poem continues, "...an' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain, For promis'd joy!"
Popular Culture
• John Steinbeck: The famous author used part of this phrase for the title of his 1937 novel, Of Mice and Men. The book follows two migrant workers whose dreams of owning land are shattered.
• Other works: Many other books and movies also use this line or variations of it for their titles.
If you'd like, I can share:
• The full text of Robert Burns's poem "To a Mouse"
• A deeper look at how this theme appears in John Steinbeck's novel
Let me know how you would like to proceed.
Something that might be worth remembering is that when the pyramids were built, the Egyptians used wet clay for the lubricant when they hauled the stone.
America's "Revolutionary" Tower Is Already Sinking — Engineers Warned Everyone
Eleanor Engineered
40,463 views
Engineers predicted San Francisco's Millennium Tower would settle four to six inches over its entire life. Seven years after opening, it had sunk sixteen, and the top was leaning over the street. From a Chicago opera house that got a heavier building than its foundation was designed for, to a satellite study showing New York sinking under 1.68 trillion pounds of buildings, to a $100 million fix that made the tower sink faster before it held, here's what clay and groundwater do under the things we build, and why the warnings keep coming true. Subscribe for more stories buried in the details.
#Engineering #SanFrancisco #Skyscraper #Explained #Infrastructure