How does the earth support heavy buildings?

Moment of Um

American Public Media

Kids & Family, Education For Kids

4.4 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 13 May 2025

⏱️ 5 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Did you know the tallest building in the world is a skyscraper in Dubai called the Burj Khalifa? It has 163 floors and weighs as much as 100,000 elephants! But how can the Earth even support such a huge building?! Why doesn’t the ground just collapse underneath it? We asked geologist Rónadh Cox to help us find the answer.

Got a question that’s weighing heavily on your mind? Send it to us at BrainsOn.org/contact and we’ll help build you up with a great answer!

Transcript

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0:00.0	From the brains behind brains on, this is the Moment of Um.
0:05.3	Um, Um, Um, Um, Um, Um, Um, Um, Um.
0:08.0	Moment of Um comes to you from APM Studios. I'm Anna Weggle, and it's my first time in New York City.
0:15.7	Um. Just look at it. New York City.
0:24.6	People from all walks of life. the bright lights of Broadway. The food.
0:26.6	The subway.
0:27.6	The buildings.
0:29.6	Dare I say those skyscrapers sure look like they're actually scraping the sky.
0:34.6	I've been keeping my eye out for one building.
0:38.3	That one!
0:39.3	The Empire State Building!
0:41.3	102 stories of pure magnificence.
0:45.3	It's beautiful inside and out, a true architectural marvel.
0:49.3	And it's the mama of all buildings, weighing 365,000 tons. That's more than 54,000 elephants. And there are
0:58.7	lots of really heavy buildings out there. So how is the earth able to support them all? Jasper had this
1:04.1	question too. Hi, my name is Jasper Kavanaugh. I am nine years old and from Chapel Hill. My question
1:09.9	is, how does the earth support really heavy
1:12.5	buildings like the Empire State Building? The crust of the earth is actually very thick. It's about 20 miles
1:18.4	thick. My name is Rona Cox and I'm a professor of geosciences at Williams College. If you imagine
1:27.0	that the earth is like an orange,
1:28.5	so you know when you hold an orange, it's got all the little lumpy bits on the skin, the mountain
1:33.2	ranges on the surface of the earth would be smaller than the lumps on the skin of the orange.
	...

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