NYC water towers

One of the many reasons to love the wooden water towers found on the tops of NYC buildings is that the structures themselves reveal the math behind how they work.

The distance between the metal bands holding the cylindrical structure together decreases from top to bottom because the pressure the water exerts increases with depth. The top band only needs to fight against the water at the very top of the tower but the bottom bands have to hold the entire volume from bursting out.

• architecture
• mathematics
• NYC
• physics