Hearst Michael - Curious constructions: a peculiar portfolio of fifty fascinating structures

For Nathan, the most curious kid I know.

Text copyright 2017 by Michael Hearst.
Illustration copyright 2017 by Matt Johnstone.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available.

ISBN 978-1-4521-4484-9 (hc)
ISBN 978-1-4521-6249-2 (epub, mobi)

Star Wars title and characters LucasFilm Ltd. & or where indicated.
All rights reserved.

LEGO is a registered trademark of the LEGO Group.
Longaberger is a registered trademark of The Longaberger Company.
Longaberger and the other basket and collection names are the property of
The Longaberger Company.

Design by Ryan Hayes.
Typeset in Friegh Micro and Big Noodle Titling.

Chronicle Books LLC
680 Second Street
San Francisco, California 94107

Chronicle Bookswe see things differently. Become part of our
community at www.chroniclekids.com .

Im fascinated by constructions. Especially curious ones. And by constructions I mean... wait, surely I dont need to explain to you what the word construction means, do I? I do? Okay, Ill try. But this gets complicated. If you are prone to confusion, just turn the page. If not, then here goes: In essence, a construction is something that is built or made. At least, thats one of the definitionsthe one thats most important to this book. But by that definition a construction could be just about anything! An airplane shaped like a beluga whale, a banana vending machine, a device that makes your bike sound like a galloping horse. (Look them up; they exist.) Unfortunately, thats way too much for a 102-page book. Another definition of construction (as written in the Macmillan Dictionary) is A building or other large structure. For example: the International Space Station, the Eiffel Tower, the Great Wall of China, etc. (Yes, a beluga airplane is also a large structure, but Im purposefully leaving out vehicles since they fit so nicely into their own category.) Okay, now that you know why Ive chosen what Ive chosen, its time for you to turn the page, for real.

MICHAEL HEARST

location arecibo, puerto rico

Listen closely! If Earth had an ear, you would probably find it in the rainforests of Puerto Rico, and it would probably look something like this. Welcome to the Arecibo Observatory. Back in the 1950s, an astronomer named William Gordon, along with a team of scientists and engineers from Cornell University, had an idea for building a radio telescope so powerful that it could pick up signals not just from Earths ionosphere, but also from regions of space billions of miles away! They were told it simply couldnt be done.

On a remote, hilly location in Puerto Rico, south of Arecibo, construction began in 1960... and just over three years later, the telescope detected its first signals! Today, the Arecibo dish is the worlds largest and most sensitive telescope. It picks up radio signals, which radiate from all objects in outer space and travel in every direction, including toward Earth. The signals bounce off the 40,000 panels on the dish, which is 1,000 feet (305 metres) in diameter, and are then collected by the domed reflector system dangling 450 feet (137 metres) above. The dish remains stationary, but the domed reflectors can be moved to change the direction from which the observatory receives signals. To this day, the Arecibo Observatory has discovered some pretty impressive things, including:

• the precise number of days it takes Mercury to orbit the sun (there are 59 days in a Mercury year).
• a binary pulsar (two neutron stars that orbit around a common center).
• the first exoplanets (planets outside of our own solar system).
• a group of one-eyed Martians who are listening back at us with their own giant radio telescope.

P.S. That last one isnt true, but you knew that. The Arecibo Observatory, however, was used in 1974 to broadcast a radio message toward a star cluster 25,000 light-years away. Were still waiting for a response.

Glad you asked. With a regular optical telescope, astronomers study light waves. Similarly, with a radio telescope, scientists study radio waves. The radio waves are detected by the telescope and then sent to computers that translate the signals and turn them into maps and images.

China is currently building an even larger radio telescope... the Five-Hundred-Meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (a.k.a. FAST) in Guizhou Province. As the name suggests, the telescope dish will be 500 meters (1,640 feet) wide, and will be three times more sensitive than the Arecibo Observatory.

location okhotsk sea, russian pacific coast

We humans have a big dependency on oil. And with such big dependency comes big construction. Although there are thousands of oil rigs around the planet, the Berkut oil rig is currently the largest, standing 472 feet (144 metres, or roughly equivalent to a 50-floor building) and weighing over 200,000 tons (181,436 tonnes). This monster of a machine can slurp up 4.5 million tons (4 million tonnes) of crude oil in a year. To boot, its been constructed to handle some of the harshest subarctic conditions, such as temperatures of 47 Fahrenheit (44 Celsius), or a wall of ice 6.5 feet (2 metres) thick. In theory, it can also survive a magnitude 9 earthquake and a 52-foot (15.8-metre) wave. President Vladimir Putin was on hand (via video link) for the platforms opening in June 2014. He commented, Thanks to projects like Berkut, we can now utilize richerbut difficult-to-accessoil fields, open up new production, and overall strengthen the socioeconomic development of our countrys most important region: the Far East. And to that I comment, Boo.

The Berkut oil rig is a gravity-based structure, which means that the concrete legs are directly anchored into the seafloor. The main platform contains mud pumps, drilling equipment, compressors, generators, firefighting equipment, pedestal cranes, and even living quarters.