Big Ben

Big Ben

By: Rachel Herman 7B

What is the structure and where is it located? How is it unique? Describe the structure feature.

Big Ben is the main four-faced clock in London. The clock tower has 61 meters of brickwork with sand coloured Anston limestone cladding. The rest of the tower is a framed spire of cast iron. A spire is a pyramid like structure. The tower is based on a 15-meter square raft. The raft is made of 3 meters of concrete. It goes 4 meters below the ground. The four clock faces are 55 meters on top of the ground. Inside the tower is 4,650 cubic meters.Big Ben is a combination structure. It is mostly a shell structure but is also solid because Big Ben has a couple rooms in it, which makes it partly solid. At one point Big Ben was the tallest four-faced clock in the world.

Answer:

What purpose does the structure serve?Answer:

The purpose of Big Ben is that at each hour you will here the bell chime. It has four faces so you can most likely see the time whenever you choose to, or from whichever direction you are standing. Big Ben’s main purpose is to be the clock that mostly everyone in London relies on.

W, Daniel, “what is the purpose of Big Ben?” Yahoo Answers, n/p, 2 years ago (2010)http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100519205928AAreWz5 Feb 1st 2012

n/n, “Tower”, Wikipedia, n/p, January 27th 2012,http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Ben#Tower Jan 28th 2012

n/n, “what is inside if Big Ben?”, Answers.com, n/p, n.d, http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_inside_big_ben feb 1st 2012

n/n, “What is the purpose of the tower Big Ben?”, Answers.com, n/p, n/d, http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_the_purpose_of_the_Big_Ben_Tower jan 31st 2012

Bibliography: