🏢 Earthquakes can cause buildings to collapse due to the forceful shifting of tectonic plates.
🌎 Building designs must consider the location's earthquake guidelines and intensity of forces.
đź’° Creating earthquake-proof buildings is possible but costly.
🏢 Designing earthquake-resistant buildings involves making them stronger or more flexible.
⚙️ Reinforcing concrete with steel is one way to make buildings stronger, but base isolation is more effective in high-risk areas.
🏛️ Base isolation, a concept dating back to the 4th century, involves building a structure on a separate base to minimize building movement during earthquakes.
🏢 Taipei 101 uses a giant ball called a “tuned mass damper” to combat earthquakes by swinging the opposite direction when the building sways.
🔬 Researchers are developing technology to make buildings invisible to shock waves using a shield made of concrete and plastic buried underground.
🌊 The shield surrounding the building has strips that become stiffer the further they are from the core, allowing the shock waves to travel more easily through a stiff and hard layer.
⚡️ The design of buildings is crucial for earthquake survival
🔍 The curvature of tectonic plates helps protect buildings from shock waves
🌍 Earthquakes are measured using the Richter scale