Tower Crane: The Machine that Saved Lots of Homeless People in Hong Kong

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Hong Kong is well known for its development throughout the city. However it’s a really small city where buildings and homes have to be built taller and smaller, in a size where 7.155 millions of people has to fit in. Therefore the construction process requires a specialist machine. Tower crane is the machine that saved lots of homeless people. This machine is used worldwide. It helps to construct anything that is tall or heavy, the height reaches hundred feet tall and could reach far. Not only it’s the life saving machine to build apartments, lift steels and concrete but it’s also a machine that has physics behind it.

Tower crane is constructed rather difficultly. It has lots of function that made it so unique. Firstly “counterweight” is the main function that relates to physics in terms of lever. It weights approximately 20 tons. The diagram above shows that there is a function called the “jib” which refers to crane’s arm. Both are separated by the “mast. These three function are like a lever. If you look at it in a different approach, the counterweight is the lever’s load, the jib is the lever’s force and the mast is the lever’s pivot point. When a force is applied onto the jib it would go downwards, however the counterweight balances it by using levers’ law. The tower crane can stretch up to 230 feet into the air, which is 70 meters. It can carry anything that weight less than 39,690 pounds. But if the load is applied right at the edge of the jib the tower crane won’t be able to balance the load. It could eventually break or fall apart. There are two lint switches that make sure the operator doesn’t make the tower crane tip over. There are four huge anchor bolts that is holding the base of the tower crane. It’s attached dee...

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...ous to use tower crane for construction mens because if they are not following exactly according to the safety rules when climbing up the ladders toward the operating centre, likely you could fall off the tower crane. Ultimately for people within reach, if unfortunate a storm come hits the place and people weren’t prepared from this situation or wasn’t informed then the tower crane may loose balance. It could fall if the anchor bold are not stable enough to handle the storm.

Overall I think that tower crane is beneficial. Mostly because it helped Hong Kong to solve the reducing of areas and at the same time to provide citizens more homes. However another problem is they are complaining that the homes provided are too expensive and the area provided for an individual house is too small. Despite that it is a very intelligent invention which based on levers’ law.

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