Math & Engineering Facts about Eiffel Tower

The Eiffel Tower was built to provide the arched entrance way to the 1889 World’s Fair in Paris. It’s located in Paris on the Champ de Mars. It is an iron lattice tower named after Gustave Eiffel, the engineer whose company designed and built the Eiffel Tower.

It is a cultural and global icon of France. It is also one of the most recognizable man-made buildings in the world.    Around 250 million people have visited the tower since it opened since its opening in 1889.

Like all towers, it allows us to see and to be seen, with a spectacular ascent, a unique panoramic view of Paris, and a glittering beacon in the skies of the Capital. If you want to have a panoramic view, please click on the link…Virtual Tour to Eiffel Tower

The Tower also represents the magic of light. Its lighting, its sparkling lights, and its beacon shine and inspire dreams every evening.

As France’s symbol in the world, and the showcase of Paris, today it welcomes almost 7 million visitors a year (around 75% of whom are foreigners), making it the most visited monument that you have to pay for in the world.

Since the 1980s, the monument has regularly been renovated, restored and adapted for an ever-growing public.

Let’s do some data analysis about the Visitors of Eiffel Tower……

Where do they come from ?

How do they get there ?

Why do they come ?

How old are they ?

Who do they come with ?

The tower is 1063 feet tall. This is approximately equal to the height of an 81 storey building.

There are three visitor’s levels. The first and second levels can be reached by a lift (elevator) or by stairs. The third level is only available by the use of a lift.

The Tower still has two of its original elevators. Each year, the Tower’s elevators travel a combined distance equal to 2.5 trips around the world, or more than 103,000 kilometers (64,000 miles).

There are more than 300 steps to reach the first level by foot. It’s about the same to the second level. Although there are stairs to the third level this option is usually closed to visitors.  It has 1710 steps. There are restaurants on the first and second levels for visitors to enjoy. It was assembled from 18,000 parts, held together by 2.5 million rivets.

The design for the structure was decided by a contest. Contestants had to submit their designs for consideration. Eiffel’s design won. Gustave Eiffel was also responsible for creating the Statue of Liberty’s internal framework. It cost 7,799,401 French gold francs to build the Eiffel Tower in 1889.

It weighs in around 10,000 tons. In the summer the poles expand, causing more weight to be added. The heat causes the metal tower to expand and cold causes it to shrink, the height of the Tower can vary with the outside temperature by 15 centimeters (5.9 inches). Winds can cause the top of the Tower to sway, side-to-side, by up to 7 centimeters (2.8 inches).

It takes approximately 50 – 60 metric tonnes of paint to paint the tower. This is done once every seven years to protect the iron from rust. It takes about 18 months for 25 painters using 1,500 brushes to repaint the entire Tower.

There is a replica of the Eiffel Tower at Paris Las Vegas Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada (half size), and Tokyo Tower in Tokyo, Japan (full size).

It is also sometimes referred to as La Dame de Fer, meaning the iron lady.

There are 5 billion lights on the tower. It would be hard to miss at night.

The Eiffel Tower is often used in films, especially to establish Paris as the location of the story.

The Tower took 2 years, 2 months and 5 days to build.  While being built it became the tallest man-made building in the world as it was taller than the Washington Monument. For 41 years after it opened in 1889, the Eiffel Tower remained the tallest building in the world until 1930, when the Chrysler Building was built in New York City. In 1957, an antenna was added to the Eiffel Tower, once again making it taller than the Chrysler Building.

Eiffel’s building remained the tallest in France until 1973. If you don’t include the antennas in total height, the Eiffel Tower is second tallest in France. The Millau Viaduct is the tallest.

When Gustave Eiffel was making the Eiffel Tower, he had to think about wind resistance. He put a curve on the outer edges so the tower wouldn’t fall. At the base of the Eiffel Tower, four curved pillars tilt inward at an angle of 54 degrees. As the pillars rise, and eventually join, the angle of each gradually decreases. At the top of the Tower, the merged pillars are almost vertical (zero degrees). French engineer Gustave Eiffel calculated that 54° angle as one that would minimize wind resistance. In interviews at the time, Eiffel said that his Tower’s shape was “molded by the forces of the wind,” notes Patrick Weidman. He’s an engineer now retired from the University of Colorado Boulder.

Weidman and a colleague analyzed the shape of the Tower. They also examined Eiffel’s original notes and blueprints. The two experts determined that a single elegant mathematical expression known as an exponential best describes the Tower’s curves. The researchers described their conclusions in the July 2004 issue of the French journal Comtes Rendus Mecanique.

The day after the Tower was inaugurated, Gustave Eiffel installed a meteorology lab on the third floor. He aslo wanted to add an elevator beacuse of the height of the tower. He had a small wind tunnel built at the foot of the tower, to put the elevator in. From August to December 1909 he carried out five thousand tests.  In addition, Gustave Eiffel wanted others to perform experiments on the Tower. In fact from 1889 onward, the Eiffel Tower was used as a laboratory for scientific measurements and experiments. Only intended to last 20 years, it was saved by the scientific experiments that Eiffel encouraged, and in particular by the first radio transmissions, followed by telecommunications.

The tower moves in the wind. On days with high, gusting winds, the wind can reach speeds in excess of 100 mph at the top of the tower.

Visitors can feel the tower swaying gently at the top level. Under such wind conditions, the tower is usually closed to the public, although there is always an engineer present at the summit to monitor telecommunications equipment. The magnitude of the sway in the tower, under worse case condition, is about six inches. There is no danger of the tower being damaged by wind-induced movement since it is designed to withstand movements easily five times beyond those produced by the highest winds ever recorded. Today, the movements are monitored by a laser alignment system.

The Eiffel tower was very nearly demolished in 1909. It was saved by its use as a telecommunication tower.

The 1889 World’s Fair to be held in Paris was meant to celebrate the French Revolution’s centennial.  

Gustave Eiffel was known for his revolutionary bridge-building techniques, which formed the basis for the Eiffel Tower. One lightweight bridge built by Eiffel over a waterway in Europe supported a 4-ton, single-axle oxcart, deflecting, or bowing, less than 1 inch under the strain. The project included 50 engineers and designers (who produced 5,300 blueprints), 100 ironworkers (who produced 18,038 individual pieces for assembly) and 121 construction workers (who used 2.5 million rivets).  In addition to contractor Gustave Eiffel, the effort included engineers Maurice Koechlin and Emile Nouguier and architect Steven Sauvestre.

The doodle, shows the tower being painted by cheery workmen in berets and overalls, swinging from the tower marking 126th Anniversary of the public opening of the Eiffel Tower.