Millennium Tower (Filene's) | 426 Washington Street | Downtown

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^--- I know they are just temporary, but wow - is that top floor terrace's railing made of 2x4s and a plastic net? Scary.
 
In a lot of the recent shots it looks like MT has a thin white spire - is that true?
 
I am assuming that it is an antenna and not an actual spire or else they would have made it more prominent.
 
stick n move said:
Looks like a lightning rod
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Stick -- good observation -- one special feature of concrete frame buildings -- you don't get the natural lightning protection of the structural steel as a grounding conductor

24524372506_b786d0f188_z.jpg


While there is plenty of steel in the concrete -- there's not a unified conducting path to ground -- and given it height it makes a good target [witness the lightning strikes on the Pru]
Lightning_Strike_copy.jpg


Somewhere there's a fairly thick piece of copper connected to the rod heading on down into the subbasement level ending in group of rods and /or a big plate buried in the soil
 
Do they have to replace the wire after a strike? Is it possible to build a conduit that can handle the current of a lightning strike?
 
Mongo said:
Do they have to replace the wire after a strike? Is it possible to build a conduit that can handle the current of a lightning strike?
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Nope ... math makes it possible to size an appropriate amount of copper.

cca
 
Mongo said:
Do they have to replace the wire after a strike? Is it possible to build a conduit that can handle the current of a lightning strike?
Click to expand...

Mongo -- Voltage on the cloud to ground can be hundreds of MV but nearly all is dropped across the air path and so only a few 100 KV will end up on the lightning rod

The total Currents can be 10's of KA so the Power in Lightning is "amazingly large" in the range of [MWs to 10's GW] depending on whether the lightning is the Stepped Leader from the cloud to ground or the Return Stroke [actually the heaviest currents flow from the ground back to the cloud]

The peak currents only flow for very short times [10 to 100 micro seconds] so the total energy is quite manageable in the range of kJ to MJ

see for example
http://www.lightningsafety.com/nlsi...undamentals-of-Lightning-Protection-Rakov.pdf
Journal of Lightning Research, 2012, 4, (Suppl 1: M2) 3-11 3
1652-8034/12 2012 Bentham Open
Open Access
Lightning Discharge and Fundamentals of Lightning Protection
Vladimir A. Rakov
Click to expand...
 
After looking at the pictures DZH22 took I noticed how much the skyline has changed already with the addition of Millennium Tower and Avalon North Station and how much more it will be changing soon and with his permission I made an edit of one of his pictures showing how the profile of the downtown skyline has changed and will continue to change. I was partially inspired by a post is saw a while back that drew a line across the top of the Boston skyline to show the plateau effect.

Here is the image:

aZlvRFB.jpg


Key:
Red- past profile
Orange- current profile
Yellow- future profile

The future one probably peaks to high but I was trying to guess how much taller the winthrop garage tower would look from that angle and it was a total guess.
 
Apologies for the really bad camera zoom picture, but I wanted to post the way that the sunset reflected off the angles of this building - super cool looking!

f7sHFDW.jpg
 
With the crane down to fully appreciate Millennium Tower, I'm really struck at just how short and even squat 1 Lincoln looks now with this taller, more slender (from this angle at least) neighbor.

Prior to MT I feel like 1 Lincoln really anchored the view on the western side of the Financial District cluster from the south when heading in on the X-way. Now it just looks out of place.

Unexpected outcome for me.
 
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