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Gallery: The 100 Best Innovations of 2010

Our Best of What's New 2010 winners, all in one place

Posted 12.20.10 at 12:42 pm 5 Comments

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Engineering Grand Award Winner: Burj Khalifa

The 2,716.5-foot-tall Burj is not merely “the world’s tallest building”; it’s taller than any other building by more than 1,000 feet. In structure, scale and sheer weight, the pride of Dubai is “a different animal,” says Skidmore Owings & Merrill engineer Bill Baker, who designed the beast with architect Adrian Smith. The engineering has the potential to transform the world’s skylines.

Where the puny Willis (formerly Sears) Tower, for example, has a traditional relationship between height and girth (to make it taller, the footprint would have had to be to an unmanageable size), the Burj Khalifa can, because of its layout and core shape, rise without growing wider throughout its height. The tower’s floors wind upward in a series of setbacks around a central hexagonal core. That core is supported by one of three “legs” that form a sort of flattened tripod. The Burj is stronger for being heavier—the spire alone weighs 4,000 tons—and all that downward pressure helps keep it in place, while reinforced concrete maintains the structure’s stability.

Not that the architects didn’t have to windproof the thing. They put models in a wind tunnel to measure vibrations from the powerful gusts that blow past the building’s upper floors and compensated as they went. It took a while. “Our first shape was not so good,” Baker says, “but like a musical instrument, you tune it.”

See more at the Best of What's New 2010 site.

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5 Comments

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holabird

12/20/10 at 2:38 pm

Pikes Peak is in Colorado. EH?

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inaka_rob

12/20/10 at 11:34 pm

I am sorry. I have a single HDMI wire running from my pc to my TV. how much is it going to cost to get rid of this wire. its free right? no I have to PAY to get rid of one tiny almost loss less HDMI cable.
also my TV is my PC. I guess stuff like this and apple and google TV is perfect for people like parents.

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inaka_rob

12/21/10 at 1:56 am

Coolest: USB 3. Wifi Alliance. Improved Scramjet tech. Unmanned reusable space ship. Palm Nailer, Hand held ultra sound. Sealegs boat with wheels. Patriot AR drone. FAIL: Sony move. The product is cool and not a fail. It just shouldn't be on this list becuase of it is simply sony's version of the Wii mote. Also fail: onLive. onLive can and probably will be really cool. Right now it doesn't offer a single recent game. All the games are years old. you can put a pc together for 200 bucks that will run most of the games they are offering at this point. Fail: Google TV. Any body who is tech savy has had their pc or laptop wired to their TV for years. It is the only way I watch tv or movie now. The only time I use a remote control is when I turn on my TV. I control everyone thing from my pc after that.

I actually want to buy the Kor-fx but 200 bucks is way too much.

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Moon born

12/22/10 at 1:10 am

Philips EnduraLED's make trees in the Sahara live.

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Observer

12/31/10 at 12:21 pm

"398 pound-feet of torque"?? Torque is measured in foot-pounds. 398 foot-pounds of torque. "pound-feet" is meaningless. Unless one is weighing feet (recipe for pigs feet perhaps)? Pounding feet (medieval torture)?

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