The Mind Blowing Physics Behind the Leaning Tower of Pisa!

OMG you guys, I'm still freaking out about Italy! 😍

A couple of years back we visited Italy during my summer vacations, and I can't stop thinking about the Leaning Tower of Pisa! Like, we've all seen pictures of it, but seeing it in person? Totally different experience! In the photo, that's my brother and me admiring the Tower of Pisa! It looks like it should fall over any second, but it's been standing there for over 800 years! How is that even possible?? My physics obsessed brain needed answers!

Why does it even lean in the first place? 🤔

So, here's the scoop: they started building the tower in 1173 without really checking what was underneath! Big mistake! The ground on the south side is basically just soft clay and sand. Not exactly ideal for supporting a massive marble tower! My brother would call this a "foundation engineering failure" lol.

By the time they built just the first three floors, the tower had already started tilting because the soil was compressing unevenly. The builders were like "umm, that's not supposed to happen" and literally abandoned the project for almost 100 YEARS hoping the soil would settle! Can you imagine starting a project and then just ghosting it for a century?? 💀

Center of gravity is EVERYTHING! ⚖️

The physics that makes the Leaning Tower so fascinating is all about the center of gravity. Physics says that an object will fall over if its center of gravity moves outside its base of support. I was standing there tilting my body to match the tower's angle (about 4 degrees now), and I could feel exactly how my weight shifted!

The tower's center of gravity is way off from the center of its base, but somehow still within the footprint of the foundation - literally by just a few feet! It's like when you lean over to pick something up and feel like you're about to fall, but just barely keep your balance. Except the tower has been doing this balancing act for centuries!

I was literally measuring the angle with this app on my phone while my parents were taking the classic "holding up the tower" photos (so embarrassing but I did one too 🙈).

How is it not falling over right now?? 😱

The tower is basically a giant physics experiment that's been running for 800+ years! Here's the science behind why it's still standing:

• First, the curved design! When the builders continued construction after that 100-year break, they tried to compensate for the tilt by making the new floors slightly taller on the sinking side. If you look closely (which I obviously did because I'm a nerd), you can see the tower is actually curved! It's like a giant banana! This curving redistributes some of the weight to help counter the lean.

• Second, the foundation is actually really wide and deep. Standing there, I could see that the base is much wider than the tower itself, which helps distribute the weight over a larger area. Our tour guide said the foundation goes down almost 10 feet!

• Lastly, engineers have done some serious work to save it! In the 1990s, they removed soil from under the high side using this method called "soil extraction" to let the tower settle back a bit. They literally removed 70 gons of soil! That's like taking away 70 grand pianos from beneath one side! This reduced the lean by 17 inches and gave the tower another 300 years of stable leaning. Talk about job security for future engineers! 👷‍♀️

Standing next to this massive leaning structure made physics come alive in a way that studying for tests never could

Italy was life changing!

Seeing the Leaning Tower made me realize that physics isn't just formulas and tests - it's literally everywhere around us! Plus, the gelato in Pisa was insanely good. I had pistachio and dark chocolate after climbing all 294 steps to the top of the tower (my legs were dead, but the view was worth it!).

The coolest part was realizing that sometimes even massive mistakes (like building a tower on soft ground) can turn into something amazing that people travel from all over the world to see. Maybe there's a life lesson in there somewhere? 🤷‍♀️

I took approximately 300 photos of the tower from every possible angle! Who else has been to Pisa? Did your legs feel like jelly after climbing all those steps too??