Tower Strength Lab
Design a tower with floors, a base width, and a material, then test it against wind. See real civil engineering checks: does it crush under its own weight, and does it stay upright in the wind?
Guided Experiment: Why Wide Bases Stay Up
If you make a tower narrower without changing anything else, what do you predict will happen to its ability to resist wind?
Write your hypothesis in the Lab Report panel, then click Next.
Tower Test
Engineering Checks
Data Table
(0 rows)| # | Trial | Floors | Mass/floor(kg) | Wind(km/h) | Base(m) | Material | Stress(MPa) | Stability ratio | Result |
|---|
Reference Guide
Compressive Stress
When a tower's weight pushes down on its base, every square meter of base shares the load. Stress is the load divided by that area.
If the stress climbs above the material's compressive strength, the base crushes. Real engineers use a safety factor so the design always stays well under the limit.
Wind Loads
Moving air pushes on the side of a tower. The faster the wind, the larger the force, and the force grows with the square of the wind speed.
Tall buildings catch more wind because their broad face is large. That is why skyscrapers are designed with aerodynamic shapes and tuned mass dampers.
Overturning vs Restoring Moment
Wind tries to tip the tower over by pushing on its side. Gravity pulls the tower's weight down at its center, which tries to rotate the tower back upright.
The tower stays standing when the restoring moment is at least 1.5 times the overturning moment. That is the standard stability check.
Materials and Strengths
Steel handles about 250 MPa of compressive stress, much more than wood (40 MPa), concrete (30 MPa), or brick (20 MPa).
That is why skyscrapers use steel skeletons even if their outsides look like concrete or glass. Engineers pick materials based on the loads the structure has to carry.
