When I was in Paris I didn't just drink coffee and piss of the French with my bad accent and attitude. I also drank whiskey with my father in a small funky neighbourhood bar where the waitress had the same name as my mother, and I traipsed around town and saw things like the Arc and the Champs and the Louvre and all those things you're supposed to see.
One of them was the Eiffel tower.
Built in 1887 it is still the highest standing structure in Paris. Made entirely of Iron it's gotta weight a ton. Wait, no. Scratch that. It's gotta weigh a
lot of tonnes.
According to
Wikipedia, it weighs 7,300 of them. Tons, that is.
As we know from the twoonie debacle of metal shrinkage (sounds like a bender problem), when metal is cold it takes up less space than when it is warm. Heat expansion and all that mumbo-jumbo. I think it's like that PV = nRT thing. You get the drift. Anyway, depending on the temperature du jour (oh, look! french!),
the top of the Eiffel tower may shift away from the sun by up to 18cm, due to thermal expansion of the metal on the side facing the sun. The tower also sways 6-7cm in the wind.
Think I can use that as an excuse?