From my first trip to Asia – a picture of the tuned mass damper at the top of Taipei 101.
This is a 728 ton ‘ball’ of steel suspended near the top of a 101 story building so that the building doesn’t sway too much in the wind and earthquakes of Taiwan. That’s the weight of 120 male African elephants (a much more relevant value, I’m sure) held approximately 1200 or so feet in the air used to make the building *more* stable.
To give a real dumb description of what it does, when the building moves one way because of some outside force – wind or ground – the inertia of the mass makes the ball want to stay in place. Through the cables and hydraulics, the building is able to exert force against the ball, pushing itself against the outside force. Read the Wikipedia article linked above if you want to actually understand how this works.
These are apparently commonplace in tall structures – though not always implemented as metal weights. Others include specifically designed and placed pools. This is also not the only one in Taipei 101 – though it is the largest – there are two smaller dampers higher up in the tower.
That goofy little dude in front of it – those are their promotional mascots, the damper babies. There’s a red, yellow, silver and black one. They’re completely ridiculous, but they’re all over the place.
Picture taken with Canon Rebel 350D, EF-S 17-85mm F4.5-5.6 IS lens @ 17mm, 1/6 sec shutter, f/4.0, ISO 400
