This is Taipei 101,
Taiwan's record breaking skyscraper.
Incredibly it's one third taller than the Empire state building.
And cost nearly one billion pounds to build.
But Taipei 101 not only stands in a typhoon hot spot, but right beside an active earthquake fault line.
It couldn't exist without the surprising engineering connections hidden deep within its design.
A racing yacht.
I can't believe the speed of this thing.
A birdcage.
That didn't last long at all.
A steam pump.
A seatbelt.
And, of course, a sports car.
So what's all that got to do with one of the world's tallest buildings?
We're about to find out!
I am on a journey to explore the inspirations behind Taiwan's extraordinary skyscraper.
In 2004,
Taipei 101 topped the world record for tallest building, reaching 509 metres.
Everything to do with Taipei 101 is big...
.. very, very big,
whichever way you look at it.
But what made modern skyscrapers like Taipei 101 possible?
Bizarrely inspiration is thought to have come from a birdcage.
Less than five generations ago, skyscrapers like these weren't possible.
Engineers feared really tall wood and masonry structures would collapse under their own weight.
So the question is...
who thought of making buildings with metal frames... and why?
Rewind to Chicago 1871.
The city is on fire.
The inferno rages for 36 hours, killing over 300 people
and destroying 17,500 buildings.
The ruins reveal the cause.
Three months of drought turned the timber buildings into tinderboxes.
As a result, the city bans wood construction.
But Chicago continues to grow fast and, with land at a premium,
architects search for new ways to build tall.
The result - an engineering epiphany for architect William Le Baron Jenney.
The story goes that his wife had been reading a book
and put it on top of the birdcage while she greeted him.
When William Le Baron Jenney walked in and saw the heavy book
resting on top of the cage, he had one of those life-changing moments.
He had the idea that buildings could be built around metal cages.
Today it may seem like any birdbrain could come up with the idea of building with metal frames,
but Jenney's innovation was inspired.
He realised that if he bolted beams to the upright columns,
and transferred the dead weight of the walls to the iron framework,
he would create not only a lighter structure
but one strong enough to support multiple stories, one on top of another.
I want to see for myself the kind of forces that a cage, braced with beams, can withstand.
So I need some cages that I can destroy - I mean test!
In order to find out just what a brainwave Le Baron Jenney's idea was
I've come to a workshop that has, amongst other things, a 25-ton crusher on hand.
Say these represent Le Baron Jenney's columns.
What I want to do is see how much vertical load they can take -
that's weight to you and me - first without and then with bracing.
Structural engineer Brenda Marsh has set up an experiment
to find out how much down force it'll take to crush my metal towers.
So, Brenda, I know this is all about bracing beams ,but how are we going to show it?
What we're gonna do is we're gonna take this sample here
that has some columns with no beams in it whatsoever
and we'll stick it in the press over there until it breaks.
What am I doing? You're gonna operate the machine.
That's a mistake. I'll do that. You better put that in the business end of it.
So I need to lift the ramp thing up.
Apparently it's this lever...
Yeah.
Now what I want you to do, Richard, is lower the plate down a little bit,
don't apply the pressure yet.
There you go. OK, stop. We need to put some safety goggles on.
Oh, OK, of course we do.
Make sure we are at a safe distance.
That will protect us. Right, so here comes your vertical loading. OK.
Applying it now.
The crusher can exert 25 tons of downward force...
the weight of a locomotive.
Oh, there we go. Oh, hang on, it's going.
You can see the column starting to buckle. The whole thing's starting to sway.
It's completely... It's fantastic. Look at that.
And that's gone.
That didn't last long at all.
Almost immediately the tower gives way.
And that's it. It's failed.
This is what worried the early engineers...
a structure, like a skyscraper, collapsing under its own weight.
That would be bad in a building.
That would be very bad. We design buildings so they don't do that.
OK, right, we're all set to do that again with structure number two, this is the new one.
This is the new one. I can see it's got more bits on it, but what are the key points that make it special?
What we've done on this one is we've taken what we had in the original structure.
So that's these four columns? These columns, yes, and we've added in some beams here.
That's these.
Yes. The original structure,
when it failed, columns tended to bend outward, so what we want to do
is hold these in place to stiffen up the columns.
That means that they're all four working together, rather than bending and bowing? Yes.
We've got extra bits. What are these?
We do. What we've done is...
In an original building you would have walls that keep everything in place.
So we are simulating that structure with the cross-bracing.
So, for the purposes of the experiment, this is the important bit, these beams here.
Can Jenney's tiny horizontal beams help the tower stand any greater downforce?
OK, here we go.
You watch the structure - I'll keep an eye on the gauge. All r ght.
Straightaway, that's what we were on before.
20 - that's twice what it took before.
I can hear creaking a little bit. OK.
But the columns are still holding.
Increasing it now.
The crusher piles on the pressure.
It's like adding multiple storeys to a tower
as you build taller and taller.
25...
that's going.
Oh, there we go, it's started to buckle.
I've broken your clever one, but it did a lot better.
It was two and a half times' stronger. That's exactly what we wanted to show.
You brace off the columns and it can take a whole lot more loads.
Can stay something? Instinct tells me...
tie it together, it will work.
Well, it's obvious now because we have seen it, it happens all the time
but before anyone ever thought of it, it's not the obvious solution.
Using his inspired idea, Le Baron Jenney builds the first modern skyscraper.
The Chicago Home Insurance building, completed in 1885, supports its entire 10 storeys on a metal frame.
So thanks to a birdcage and some smart thinking
the great great-grandfather of this monster tower was born.
That's how the structural engineers could build this and all its record-breaking 101 floors
but it is more remarkable than just scale.
This giant stands right beside an earthquake fault line
and in one of the world's most active typhoon zones...
not an ideal spot for a mega tower.
Around once every decade an earthquake hits this city of over two-and-a-half million people.
In September 1999, 2,192 were killed,
8,735 seriously injured
and 100,000 left homeless by a quake.
A twelve-storey hotel here in Taipei city is completely destroyed.
Building a 101-storey skyscraper on the same fault line should be a recipe for disaster.
The designers have to find a solution.
Tests in earthquake simulators reveal that a building must be strong and yet flexible
to avoid collapse in a quake.
This is the contradiction that Taipei 101's engineers must overcome.
When you build one of the tallest structures in the world in the middle of a notorious
earthquake hot-spot, how do you make it strong enough to stay standing
but flexible enough to withstand the potentially devastating effects of a seismic shock?
The award-winning Taiwanese architect of Taipei 101, CP Wang...
found inspiration for his solution in nature...
.. specifically his nation's long-standing connections with bamboo.
What can possibly be the connection between an immense structure like
Taipei 101 and bamboo? I mean, it's not made of bamboo, is it?
No, it not made of bamboo, of course, but in a lot of ways it's like bamboo.
How? I think bamboo is a plant that doesn't look very strong but it has this nature of elastic.
It may bend a bit but it doesn't break.
Bamboo is a giant fast-growing grass.
The secret of its strength and flexibility is its internal shape.
Bamboo grows in hollow jointed sections, like a series of solid-ended tubes.
These are separated by partitions that help reinforce the stem.
Inspired by nature's solution, Wang designs giant steel trusses
to connect across the columns at every 8th floor on Taipei 101.
This bamboo-inspired design must meet strict seismic targets.
The owners required Taipei 101 to withstand the most powerful
earthquake expected to hit the city within a 2,500-year cycle.
But nature tests CP Wang's design even before it's complete.
In 2002, an earthquake strikes.
Shockwaves tear across the island.
Taipei 101 shakes violently.
Anything not firmly attached crashes to the streets below.
Dislodged construction cranes tragically take five lives.
But Taipei 101 stands firm and construction resumes.
Two years later, the completed megatower is crowned "the world's tallest building".
Recognising bamboo's internal strength and flexibility,
CP Wang also designs the exterior of his tower to look like a stem.
Well, bamboo is a very important plant in our culture.
It represents a gentleman, a noble person.
It's a very noble plant.
So by modelling it on bamboo with these sections,
it gives you the strength, but also you then modelled it on something
culturally significant but also symbolic. Exactly.
You can see how bamboo was an inspiration for the builders of Taipei 101.
It's light, it's tough and it's flexible
and its cultural significance runs deep.
It's seen as symbolising a way to lead your life
because it's tough on the outside but humble within.
It's hollow. The tower has certainly proven itself tough...
it survived a 5.0 earthquake while it was still being built.
Humble...? I'll leave you to decide.
By designing a structure to withstand quakes, Wang creates a new challenge.
Tall buildings sway in high winds and even risk collapse in extreme storms.
Taipei 101 is no exception.
In fact, it's not just windy, it's smack bang in the middle of a typhoon hot spot.
Typhoons, Asian hurricanes, can batter Taiwan three or four times a year.
To keep Taipei 101 standing in a super storm, CP Wang turns
to an engineering solution developed 3,500 years ago.
To discover this ancient engineering secret, I'm meeting Ken Maschke
from the company that helped design Taipei 101.
Ken wants me to try sailing...
but not in any ordinary sailboat.
Hi, Ken. Hi, Richard. Come on board.
It's narrow, light and has no keel sticking down into the water for stability.
So how can it stay upright against the wind?
This extra hull - one of two -
is the engineering connection this craft shares with Taipei 101...
and why Ken's got me on a sailboat.
Now he's got me working.
These clever devices are called outriggers.
They keep a sailboat stable in high winds.
Look at that!
Before we hoist sail, Ken explains the basic principle of the outriggers.
If you stand with your feet together and I shove on you, you are likely to fall over.
If you spread you legs it's going to be a lot tougher.
The same thing in essence is what we have done here -
we spread out the distance between which the force acts.
The idea of outriggers goes back 3,500 years to the Polynesians.
Using them meant the early mariners could paddle or sail fast and stay stable.
I just hope these outriggers work as well for me.
It's looks a bit cold in there.
With sails up and stabilisers out,
it's time to see if we can push Ken's theory to the limit.
I can't believe the speed of this thing.
Today, using outriggers like these, yachts can sail across the Atlantic in just four days.
Can this go over? Yes. Would you mind awfully if it didn't?
When it works, it really works.
I can see how these outriggers work on a boat, but the same theory on a building - how?
The outriggers are part of the wind-resisting system which includes
a central core that's very stiff, but not stiff enough by itself.
So we add the outrigger trusses
to transfer force out to the exterior columns
like the pontoon you are standing on right now.
We can take the outrigger idea and apply it all the way up the building.
So actually, on Taipei 101, we have outriggers every eight floors.
On every eighth floor the outrigger columns connect
to the horizontal trusses, the ones inspired by bamboo.
So, when typhoons strike, Taipei 101 is braced to withstand the tipping force of the hurricane winds,
thanks to an idea developed by the ancient mariners.
And here is an outrigger doing its job up here on the 86th floor of Taipei 101.
It's helping the building resist the forces of the wind,
whilst freeing up plenty of rentable floor space around the central core,
so you're looking at money in the bank!
And that's the point of tall buildings -
maximum floor space for minimum footprint.
Even 100 years ago, at the start of the skyscraper boom,
they were described as "a machine that makes land pay. "
But building super high creates a heavyweight headache for the construction teams.
How do you get the materials to the top floors? It's well over a quarter of a mile...
straight up.
It's not made any easier when working with the construction world's favourite material -
The whole Taipei tower, all the way up to the 101st floor, is made of the stuff.
To pump heavy concrete that high requires a superpump that has its origins in the 17th century.
Rewind 300 years.
The Cornish tin mines are in trouble.
The deep mines are flooding
and the man- and horse-powered pumps available can't drain water fast enough. The mines are going under.
Inside this modest building sits the machine
that saved the day and kicked off the Industrial Revolution.
It's the brainchild of an inventive preacher and ironmonger from Devon...
Thomas Newcomen.
This is Newcomen's nodding donkey, the first piston-powered pump,
and the first really practical engine for pumping water.
Newcomen's idea was to harness the power of the pressure difference created by a vacuum.
He used it to move a piston.
It works on the vacuum created by the steam when it's condensed.
It works on the principle that steam occupies, say, this much space
but when you cool it and turn it back to water, it occupies a fraction of that space, so...
this under here is the water - the tank - and under that is the heat,
heating it up in the boiler
and steam up into that big cylinder, which is the piston,
and that pipe goes into the bottom of piston and sends the cold water in
and that condenses the steam
and suddenly that huge volume of steam is reduced to just a tiny volume of water.
Then atmospheric pressure outside on top of the piston is greater than the pressure inside
and it has no choice.
The piston has to come down, drawing the beam that way to do its work,
and then it's counterbalanced so it just pulls the piston back up to the top,
more steam in, condenses it again,
draws it back down.
They were very clever!
Throughout the rest of the 18th century
Newcomen's invention drains countless mines, helping fuel the Industrial Revolution.
24 years after his death, in 1753,
the first Newcomen-style pump crosses the Atlantic
to begin draining a copper mine in New Jersey.
These super-powerful piston pumps
use a vacuum and mega pressures to deliver concrete skyward...
and into the record books.
In August 2003, a world record was broken just up there.
This was the highest anyone had ever pumped concrete on a building.
It had to be raised 101 floors from down there.
A pipe filled with concrete this high weighs well over 13 tons
and pumping it takes technology Newcomen could only dream about.
Pumping concrete is big business and as buildings get higher
the technology to power it to the top gets more sophisticated.
This is the business end of a pipe network that extended over 440 metres that way!
A chain of interconnected pipes stretch to reach the high floors.
On Taipei 101, the pump sits near the base of the building
while the rooftop stands four-and-a-half football pitches above.
The concrete is kept flowing by a superpump.
Meet the 12-cylinder 562-horsepower Deutz diesel engine.
This is the heart of the operation literally.
It's the pump that keeps the construction alive.
The moving parts in here made it possible to pump the concrete even to the highest floors.
A column of concrete must be kept flowing or the mix will separate or, even worse, set.
To keep a constant flow, the pump operates two pistons - one sucks while the other blows.
A simple vacuum, like Newcomen's pulls the liquid concrete in,
then the huge diesel engine generates hydraulic pressure to push it out.
It's Newcomen's ideas - just hundreds of times' more pressure for a much weightier task!
I want to see what kind of pressures the Taipei 101 pumping world-record used.
So pump specialist Phil Serrie devises a pressure demo that will blast my weight in concrete.
It's difficult to get your head round the kind of power
and pressure that modern pumps can generate using those old techniques.
So rather than just talk numbers about it all
we have come up with a rather clever way of demonstrating what that power can do.
We are going to use pressure to move concrete, but we are going to do it in a rather different way.
Using a concrete missile as heavy as me Phil and his team
are going to demonstrate what 100 bar of pressure can do.
1 bar, named after the Greek word for weight,
is about one kilogram per square centimetre, or roughly the atmospheric pressure all around us.
I pump my car tyres to three times that, 3 bar, and that seems like a lot.
Is that the firing cable?
That's the cable... that's the trigger. Right.
You trip over it...
"Oh, sorry!"
This will give me an idea of what?
Of what a 100 bar of force is capable of doing.
In the Taipei tower, the pump that we used there was capable of 200-bar pumping pressure.
This is only capable of a 100 bar.
So your pumps can generate twice the pressure of this one. Exactly.
And you're just saying that because you're proud of your pump. Yes, I am.
This is a first for me.
I've never seen a chunk of concrete my weight fired from a cannon.
Phil is keen to see how far his concrete missile will go.
The safety team are keen to make sure no-one is on the receiving end!
Wow! So that's half the pressure
on a lump of concrete the same weight as me.
Yeah, you're right, about a 140 pounds.
Yes, 64 kilos. 10 stone. OK.
Do you wanna go and get that? OK, let's do it. Crikey.
The launcher blasts my concrete twin well over 90 metres.
The top of Taipei 101 is 4 times that distance - straight up.
And the record-breaking concrete column was 220 times heavier than me.
I now understand the amazing pressures Phil's pumps achieve,
sending concrete up to the 101st floor of the Taipei tower.
It's buried itself.
It's buried itself, yeah.
It's quite impressive. Look at it - 106 paces.
The mechanical pump has come a long way from Newcomen's wheezing steam engine!
That's how they got concrete to the top, but how do you transport people to such heights,
safely and quickly?
Which brings me to elevators...
and - who'd have thought it? - sports cars.
Whatever type of transport you are using, including elevators, there's a roblem with going faster.
You have gotta be able to stop faster too.
Higher speeds mean more braking loads, more loads mean more heat,
so how do you provide a braking system that can work without overheating and risking a fire?
In total, 67 elevators are needed to move the 10,000 people who can use Taipei 101.
Thirty-four are even double-deckers.
But for tourists wanting a flying visit to the sky-high viewing gallery,
these regular elevators aren't fast enough.
The challenge is whisking a visitor like me directly to the 89th floor super quick, but super safe.
This is the answer, the world's most technologically advanced elevator.
Well, obviously this is a model, but the real thing is much bigger so that you can get in it.
Digitally controlled, it has a pressurised, aerodynamic capsule with shake reduction
and even earthquake sensing.
The designers say it also goes really fast.
I want to know how fast.
This elevator - one of a pair - has been officially certified by the Guinness Book Of World Records
as the fastest elevator in the world - and they have given it to me to play with.
They reckon it can do the next 84 floors in 37 seconds.
Ellie, when you're ready,
thank you. In your own time, go. As soon as we start moving, I'll start the clock.
Go.
I think we've started moving.
I can't... There's no noise.
There's a fan.
Apparently the whole lift is pressurised like an aircraft to help stop your ears from popping.
Talking of aircraft, this actually accelerates vertically
more rapidly than a commercial passenger airliner taking off.
And my ears are now popping.
Right, we're 20 seconds in, 25...
There is no sense that we're actually...
we're going faster than the city speed limit,
if we did this horizontally through the streets we'd be in trouble.
There's no noise...
ELEVATOR DOOR BEEPS
And that's it!
And that was under 37 seconds and this is the top.
The high-speed elevator launched me at 40 miles an hour
almost a third of a mile into the sky.
It's a long way up,
and a frighteningly long way down.
If the elevator cables give way, it's an 84-floor drop,
with only the emergency brakes between you and the basement.
In extreme events like this metal brakes overheat and can fail.
To halt Taipei 101's super-elevators the engineers need a material
that performs consistently, even when things get seriously hot.
It's an engineering line of thought
that owes a lot to the automotive industry.
This is a high-performance Porsche Boxster S, and my next connection.
Porsche was one of the first car companies
to experiment with alternatives to metal brake discs.
The material that performed consistently at extreme temperatures was ceramic.
Their tests report the ceramic disc brakes don't get as hot as metal
and can even grip better the hotter they get.
I want to check out the difference in performance
between metal and ceramic brake discs for myself.
So I'm meeting Craig Dawson, a motorsport engineering expert.
So, Craig, what are you doing?
Well, basically, I'm trying to get a benchmark
for the disc temperatures on the two cars.
These two cars are completely identical in every way
apart from the brakes.
That's correct. The yellow car has a traditional cast-iron disc,
like every modern-day road car.
The red car has what is known as a ceramic disc.
The ceramic compound that makes up these brake discs
is usually silicon carbide or silicon nitride.
It's baked at extremely high temperatures
to form a heat-resistant material.
And why is heat such an issue in brake discs?
Well, with a cast-iron disc it can get to the point
where it gets too hot, it begins to not work as well.
The friction that it actually produces goes down.
So the pads can't grip as well on the disc and it doesn't work as well cos there's too much heat.
And there's double trouble when metal brakes overheat.
Not only do they stop gripping as well,
but if they fail to dissipate the heat,
they can set fire to what's around them,
as this very extreme example from the world of motor-racing shows.
COMMENTATOR: We have flames!
Not good for emergency brakes in an out-of-control elevator.
Almost the opposite applies with ceramic brakes. It needs heat to get them to work in the first place.
But they can go to a higher temperature as well.
How are we, with just these two cars and that, gonna show all of that?
Well, basically you're gonna perform a series of repeated stops
which are gonna build the brake temperature up.
Here I go, five laps!
The first test. Drive very fast, then hard on the brakes 20 times over 5 laps.
Reckon I can manage that.
The idea is to build up the brake temperature
so I can feel if their performance changes as the heat increases.
To gauge the temperature, we're using a camera that turns heat into visible light.
The reds are hotter than the blue colours.
White means it's getting serious.
Craig also wants to see how quickly they LOSE their heat.
A lack of heat-loss is what can build catastrophic temperatures in metal discs.
I can smell brakes, I dunno if that's good, scientifically.
627. OK.
When I pull in, Craig immediately checks the surface temperature
of each brake disc.
The readings on the front discs are well over 300 degrees centigrade.
They are still functional, but as hot as the inside of a jet engine.
290.
Craig will take a further series of readings
to check the rate of cooling.
Thinking back, the brakes did begin to feel different
once they had got very hot.
But still perfectly safe.
Now it's time to take the ceramics for a spin.
How will they perform?
To begin with everything seemed the same.
The ceramics get white hot on the heat camera with my multiple braking.
But then I notice a difference.
The brakes feel real y sharp each time I use them...
even as they heat up.
Every brake is as good as the first.
When I pull in, Craig gets an immediate result.
His first temperature reading on the ceramics is lower than the metal.
They stayed cooler.
Did you notice any difference in the braking performance itself?
Yeah, they clearly weren't being as affected by the heat that was being put into them.
It felt, each time I braked again, fresh.
So every time it felt more consistent, basically? Yeah, exactly.
They do pong a bit!
So what have we got, what have we learnt?
Well, basically the ceramic brakes didn't get as hot as the iron brakes.
They were dissipating the heat better whilst you were using them out on the track.
When you stopped here the temperature wasn't as high. So they'd already lost some.
Absolutely, and what we have then seen from the temperature results
is that they have lost that heat that they had when you stopped, more quickly as well.
From a driver's point of view, these ceramic brakes also inspire confidence.
The harder I work them, the better they feel.
In the end, they stay cooler and lose heat quicker,
reducing the risk of fire.
This concept of using fireproof and heat-resistant ceramics for vehicles
took off last century.
Rewind to 1981.
The first flight of NASA's shuttle is the culmination
of a decade of research into heat-resistant materials.
The problem is protecting the craft from re-entry temperatures capable of melting the aluminium body.
Using a compound based on sand, aerospace engineers Lockheed Martin
develop a new silica ceramic insulation.
This forms the basis of the shuttle's heat tiles.
A ceramic tile can heat to over 648 degrees centigrade on one side
and stay cool enough to touch on the other.
In really extreme situations the tiles can withstand temperatures
of over 1,600 degrees centigrade.
That's hot enough to melt rock.
Heat-resistant ceramics are now well and truly proven,
with their origins in rocket science,
and a track record in performance-car brakes.
On Taipei 101 they are the engineers' choice
for brakes to halt a runaway high-speed elevator.
This is mission control for Taipei 101, where they monitor everything and everyone.
One full section just monitors all the elevators
including the state-of-the-art ceramic emergency brakes.
Should the cables snap on the high-speed elevator,
the emergency brakes will activate.
Two silicon nitride ceramic pads will grip a steel safety runner.
The pads will withstand almost 1,000 degrees Celsius.
That's as hot as molten lava.
The elevator brakes will halt 22 tons speeding at 48 miles an hour,
within 40 metres.
Less than half a football pitch.
Thanks to ceramics.
And that's what connects a sports car
with stopping the fastest elevators in the world.
But for me, the most surprising thing about Taipei 101
connects your car seatbelt with stopping diners up on the 85th floor
spilling their soup when the high winds hit.
It's not fear of collapse but a delicate issue of customer comfort.
The typhoons that blast through the city of Taipei
mean driving rain and 100-mile-an hour winds slam against Taipei 101,
and it feels it.
You see, a tall building like this is prone to bend in the wind.
Remember the bamboo, flexibility and all that?
Some flexibility in a tall building is a good thing,
and is difficult to avoid.
But too much, and it can give the people inside motion sickness.
When I asked the engineers what a typhoon might feel like
in a tall building,
they said, "Try eating soup on a bus. " So I did.
Before Taipei 101 was built it had to overcome the problem
all flexible buildings face...
swaying back and forth in high winds.
And like any structure it has a natural frequency,
and in this case one complete cycle of swaying motion,
from here to here and back again, takes about 7 seconds
that would be like sitting on a bus
And that's the delicate problem I'm talking about.
At the top of the Taipei Tower in a typhoon
you wouldn't just spill your soup.
You'd probably see your lunch again!
The building's accelerations, or movements, can be plotted.
This is uncomfortable.
The designers of Taipei 101
must slow down the acceleration and deceleration,
smoothing the rate of change to avoid motion sickness.
But how do you stop a building, nearly a third of a mile high,
from picking up a nauseating sway in strong winds?
This is how.
The world's largest and heaviest damper,
suspended between the 92nd and 87th floors on 16 huge steel cables.
Heavier than 3 jumbo jets, the giant ball will swing like a pendulum.
The swinging counteracts the building's sway.
It uses a property that all objects have.
It's called inertia.
If something is stationary it wants to stay still.
If it's moving, it wants to carry on.
The desire of an object to keep doing what it's doing
is inertia at work.
Back in the 1950s, a researcher at American university, Cornell,
encountered the destructive side of inertia.
His name was Hugh De Haven.
After surviving a serious air crash,
De Haven was motivated to study collisions.
As surprising as it may sound today, back then,
the common belief was that you were better off being thrown free in a car crash.
De Haven realised the damage was done as passengers fly lose
and impact their surroundings.
And that inertia was the culprit.
But restraining them would protect them.
In 1951, Hugh De Haven files a patent for the three-point seatbelt,
and car passenger safety leaps forwards.
Two decades later, the "inertia reel" safety belt is introduced,
initially by Volvo and Ford.
It leaves you free to move around, only locking under sudden movements.
It uses the very same property of inertia
that Hugh De Haven realised caused injury.
Inside an inertia seatbelt sits a heavy steel ball.
When a car is in a collision the inertia of the ball
means it will move independently.
The moving ball hits an arm
that pushes up and triggers a process that locks the belt.
Inertia is also harnessed in the giant 600-ton steel ball
suspended at the top of Taipei 101.
When the building sways it swings like a giant pendulum.
It then pushes against oil-filled shock absorbers, or dampers,
that dissipate the sway.
I want to check out the damper for myself
so I have permission to go into a construction area underneath it.
It feels a bit like caving, except I'm in a tunnel over 80 storeys up.
Wow!
Here it is, the heart of it!
6 metres in diameter and made up of 41 separate steel plates.
Only now do I get a sense of what a radical and inspired idea it is.
Suddenly, now I see it,
I understand much better about how it works.
This massive ball, this weight,
sits here in the middle of the building,
and as the building starts to move,
at first the ball resists that movement.
Then it starts to move, but that's where these come into play.
And they're kind of like the shock absorbers on your car,
only massive.
And as the ball moves, these absorb the energy, they soak it up.
And all of this is happening.
Hundreds of tons of steel swinging about, 80, 90 storeys up.
CP Wang, the architect of Taipei 101,
has his own demo of the damper at work.
So I went to meet him at the top of his award-wining building.
When wind hits the building,
the building really moves and starts doing all that for a long time.
It makes people uncomfortable working in the building,
so what we have designed is this.
If you would please take that. OK.
OK. And this is more... Replace this with this.
This has got a ball in it.
This is our damper at the heart of the building.
Wang explains his metal ball in this demonstration,
is in an oil-filled tube.
This best represents the oil-filled shock absorbers
attached to the giant damper.
So if you would put that in... I'll mount that there.
So this is now with your damper in. Now the wind is blowing again, and...
Wow! So it doesn't stop it moving,
but once it's started moving
it takes the violence out of the movement.
It doesn't accelerate or slow down as quickly.
It's a more gentle feeling.
It's giving you a better ride up here.
Yes, buildings are for people to use,
if we cannot make people comfortable you don't have a good building.
On the 3rd of October 2005
Typhoon Longwang blasts hurricane-force winds across Taiwan,
and presents the damper system with its first serious test.
This film shows the ball in action
as the 70-mile-an-hour winds blow that day.
As it begins to swing, the giant oil-filled cylinders
take up the energy from 600 tons of swinging steel.
This extraordinary footage, filmed on a mobile phone,
reveals the ball damping 545,000 tons of skyscraper
as she sways in the typhoon.
After 3 hours, the winds abate
leaving Taipei 101 to face another day.
So, thanks to scientists from the past understanding inertia,
today anyone can enjoy soup in a storm
at the top of one of the world's tallest buildings.
Looking down watching the bustle of life on Taipei's city streets,
it's hard to comprehend the incredible feats of design and engineering
that went into making this extraordinary tower possible.
Taipei 101 reaches skyward thanks to a birdcage.
It's built to beat earthquake and typhoon
with insp ration from bamboo and ancient outriggers.
It uses Industrial Revolution style piston power
for world-record concrete pumping.
It calls on high-tech ceramics to stop the world's fastest elevators.
And is inspired by the inertia seatbelt
to have storm-beating stability.
Taipei 101's exceptional engineering connections
mean Taiwan's record-breaking tower
is one of the modern world's most spectacular construction icons.
From down here, there's just no getting away from the size,
the sheer presence, of Taipei 101.
Now, where's me moped?
Uh, there was a grey one like that, but not... No, that's...
Ooh, ooh! Excuse me! Is that...? No, that's not mine.
Why didn't I get a yellow one? One I could spot?