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Q&A The more horizontal a building (on planet earth) is, the more years it can survive a collapse?

This is general mechanics: all objects have a center of gravity. On a square-shaped house, this center is right in the middle, at coordinates (width/2, height/2). The wider the building is in relat...

posted 3y ago by Lundin‭

Answer
#1: Initial revision by user avatar Lundin‭ · 2021-08-18T09:30:50Z (over 3 years ago)
This is general mechanics: all objects have a center of gravity. On a square-shaped house, this center is right in the middle, at coordinates (width/2, height/2). The wider the building is in relation to the height, the closer to the ground the center of gravity gets.

A building might collapse when the center of gravity for some reason ends up outside the base of either wall, as illustrated in [here](https://cdn4.explainthatstuff.com/how-walls-collapse.png). Where the blue dot is the center of gravity and the arrow is the G force of earth. 

Now of course the question if/when it collapses is more complex than that, it also depends on material, weight, friction of foundation vs the ground, how large the basement is etc etc (just look at the Leaning Tower of Pisa). In modern engineering, the quality of concrete, rebars and so on likely matter much more than mechanics. And naturally, buildings in areas with lots of seismic activity like earthquakes face higher risks.

So in general, a person with a collapse anxiety should pick a building with a big width-to-height ratio, even though the chance of collapse mostly depends on quackery during construction, such as using bad concrete. And they should avoid living in an area with seismic activity (North- and South American west coasts, Central America and the Carribeans, South-East Europe and most of Southern Asia, see [this map](https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Although-most-seismic-activity-takes-place-at-the-boundaries-between-tectonic-plates_fig2_242297789).)