TWP: The London Eye

Instead of writing about our trip to the London Eye, I will let Andy's TWP describe our experience:

As an engineer, I cannot help but write about my experience at the London Eye. It is a huge technical achievement to have built it is tall as they did. One of the things I find so interesting about it, is that as huge as it is, and as expensive as it was to build, it was originally only designed to be a temporary attraction. After all the engineering that went into it, the original plan was tear it down. However of course, most people know that it has become incredibly popular. So much so, that instead of tearing it down, they decided to make it a permanent London attraction, and today it is one of the city’s most famous attractions.

Of course, what impacted me the most about the London Eye was the actual view of London from the top of it. The city looks truly stunning spread about before you unobstructed by little more than an inch or two of glass. I could see all of the various places I had already been we were so high up. Even Big Ben seemed small compared to the scale of the London Eye.

Finally I felt I was able to appreciate the London Eye not only as a tourist, but also as an engineer. After our site visit to Ramboll, I have a greater appreciation for not only the difficulties of building massive structures like the London Eye, but also challenges of building in London at all. I don’t know the actual specs, but I do know that the London Eye is one of the tallest structures in London, and it is built right next to the Thames. That gave the engineers a whole other set of problems to solve with the tidal forces that affect the area, and the general instability of riverside ground. I noticed the massive supports pulling the Eye towards the land, and thought about some engineer somewhere had to go through the process of rolling all of the building challenges into a single set of numbers, to know what the tolerances needed to be and how big that support needed to be. Although I’m a computer engineer, and not a civil or mechanical engineer, I definitely had to respect the challenges that I’m sure the London Eye presented to its designers.

Overall, I’m really glad we were able to visit the London Eye as part of our study abroad experience. It’s a great example of civil/mechanical engineering that resulted in a fantastic viewing experience for everyone who has visited it.