DailyDirt: Dangerous Death-Ray Buildings

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

When architects design a new building or bridge, they really need to think through a lot of little details because these things usually last a long time (and take a long time to build). There are some famous design mistakes like the (original) Tacoma Narrows bridge which serves as a physics lesson for high school kids and a cautionary tale for any engineering/architecture students. Here are a few more potential physics lessons (in optics) involving buildings that demonstrate the real-word effect of "the angle of incidence equals the angle of reflection." If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.
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Filed Under: architecture, buildings, death ray, design, fryscaper, optics, rafael vinoly, vdara hotel


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  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 16 Sep 2013 @ 5:24pm

    melting cars?

    how hot does it have to be to melt a car?

    link to this | view in chronology ]

    • icon
      That One Guy (profile), 16 Sep 2013 @ 6:36pm

      Re: melting cars?

      Sadly it's not as awesome as melting whole cars, though it has been frying the crap out of non-metallic parts of several cars, including some poor sap's Jaguar XJ.

      From the article: "The Times newspaper said that temperatures near the tower exceeded 45 degrees Celsius (113 Fahrenheit) on Monday."

      link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      Tommy, 16 Sep 2013 @ 10:49pm

      Re: melting cars?

      It wasn't the whole car, but parts of the car had serious deformation/warping. The mirrors are the main things that melted, and I think they would be made of Polypropylene. The temperature for melting would probably be between 130-160 °C (266-330 °F)

      link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      Anonymous Coward, 17 Sep 2013 @ 4:15am

      Re: melting cars?

      Plastic melts at around 200 degrees Celsius, the melting point for steel is around 1400 degrees Celsius so you can guess how hot it got there.

      http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/melting-temperature-metals-d_860.html

      link to this | view in chronology ]

  • icon
    That One Guy (profile), 16 Sep 2013 @ 6:31pm

    'Accidentally' melting cars, trying to boil guests who go for a swim...

    Anyone else get the feeling we might have a budding super-villain in the making here?

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • icon
    Spaceman Spiff (profile), 16 Sep 2013 @ 7:16pm

    Rafael Vinoly

    So, you have your choice - melting cars, or bar-b-q'd guests. Sounds like he is batting 1000... :-)

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 16 Sep 2013 @ 7:42pm

    Architect Rafael Vinoly, huge buffoon or evil genius?

    Who will stop this menace?

    Seriously - doesn't anyone review these designs prior to funding the project? A fifth grader could point out this particular flaw without much thought at all, it is quite obvious. And with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, who thought the latest blunder was a good idea?

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • icon
    Ninja (profile), 17 Sep 2013 @ 4:39am

    Lord Vader approves such experiments!

    Maybe it's some cosmic prank to remind us how the ants suffered when we used magnifying glasses on them?

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • icon
    Leonardo Balliache (profile), 17 Sep 2013 @ 4:53am

    Design Mistakes

    Murphy's Law is always present.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • This comment has been flagged by the community. Click here to show it
    icon
    Felipente (profile), 17 Sep 2013 @ 12:13pm

    That is something completely new for me. I will research the topic some more and share my findings later on.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Jack Andrew, 8 Nov 2013 @ 2:59am

    This might be happen because of some chemical reaction took place with the mirror, as mirror has high melting points.

    link to this | view in chronology ]


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