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  • Essay / Tower crane: the machine that saved many homeless people...

    Hong Kong is well known for its development across the city. However, it is a very small city where buildings and houses have to be built taller and smaller, in a size where 7.155 million people have to fit. The construction process therefore requires a specialized machine. The tower crane is the machine that saved many homeless people. This machine is used all over the world. It helps to build anything big or heavy, the height reaches a hundred feet tall and could reach far. Not only is it a life-saving machine for building apartments, lifting steel and concrete, but it is also a machine that relies on physics. The tower crane is quite difficult to build. It has many features that make it so unique. First, “counterweight” is the primary physics-related function in terms of leverage. It weighs around 20 tonnes. The diagram above shows that there is a feature called "boom" which refers to the arm of the crane. The two are separated by the “mast”. These three functions are like a lever. If you look at things from a different perspective, the counterweight is the load of the lever, the deflection is the force of the lever, and the mast is the pivot point of the lever. When a force is applied to the boom, it would go down, but the counterweight balances it using the law of levers. The tower crane can extend up to 230 feet in the air, or 70 meters. It can carry anything that weighs less than 39,690 pounds. But if the load is applied right at the edge of the jib, the tower crane will not be able to balance the load. It could eventually break or collapse. There are two lint switches which ensure that the operator does not tip the tower crane. There are four huge anchor bolts that hold the base of the tower crane. It is attached in the middle of paper......ous to use tower crane for construction men, because if they do not exactly follow the safety rules when climbing the ladders towards the center of operation, it is likely that you might fall from the tower crane. Ultimately, for the people on hand, if an unfortunate storm hits the scene and the people were not prepared for this situation or were not informed about it, the tower crane could lose its balance. It could fall if the anchors are not stable enough to withstand the storm. Overall, I think the tower crane is beneficial. Mainly because it helped Hong Kong solve the problem of shrinking land areas and at the same time provide more housing for citizens. However, another problem is that they complain that the accommodation offered is too expensive and that the planned area for a detached house is too small. Despite this, it is a very intelligent invention which is based on the law of levers.