not for use at home

[angledge]

One of the engineers from our Sacramento office just sent me some photos of the largest earth mover in the world.




Specifications:

• The mover stands 311 feet tall and 705 feet long.
  
• It weighs over 45,500 tons.
  
• Cost $100 million to build.
  
• Took 5 years to design and manufacture ...
  
• ... and another 5 years to assemble. 
  
• 5 people are required to operate the mover.
  
• The bucket wheel assembly is over 70 feet in diameter with 20 buckets, each of which can hold over 530 cubic feet of material. 
  
• It can remove over 76,455 cubic meters each day. (100,000 large dump trucks at 40 yds. each)

The mover was built by the German company, Krupp, and is used in an open-pit coal mine.

Comments

[marasca.livejournal.com]

This makes me wonder what the biggest piece of machinery ever build was.

[angledge.livejournal.com]

This was described as the largest earth mover in the world. Offhand, I can't think of any machine that could reasonably be larger.

[marasca.livejournal.com]

That's what I was thinking. Then again I had never seriously considered that there might be earth movers bigger than the ones they use for making buildings. For all I know there's a 500 ft circular saw somewhere out there. ;)

actually I thought of one

[angledge.livejournal.com]

Well, if a ship qualifies as a "machine". An aircraft carrier would be larger than this thing.

Re: actually I thought of one

[marasca.livejournal.com]

I wonder if a ship would qualify. I'd say the engine would be a machine, as would other parts, but not the ship itself? Or maybe the whole "make it go" mechanism would be a machine?

In any case the human ability to build huge things is pretty amazing (and scary).

Re: actually I thought of one

[sskipstress.livejournal.com]

Guinness World Records web site sez:

Largest Scientific Instrument
The world's largest scientific instrument (and arguably the world's largest machine) is the Large Electron Positron Collider. It is a circular tube 3.8 m (12 ft 6 in) in diameter and 27 km (17 miles) in circumference. It is situated in a giant donut-shaped tunnel 100 m (330 ft) below the area around the Swiss-French border in Geneva. The machine began operating in 1989 and was officially closed down at 8 am on November 2, 2000. It was used to examine the smallest particles of matter by accelerating electrons and positrons that collided with each other. The collisions produced tiny sub-atomic particles and enabled physicists to study the fundamental nature of the universe.

Re: actually I thought of one

[marasca.livejournal.com]

That does seem to take the cake.

Wacky!

Re: actually I thought of one

[ataralas.livejournal.com]

LEP is being turned into the Large Hadron Collider which will turn on in 2007. It extends it by about another 1km and adds a bunch of functionality.

I work there. (at least for the summer)

Re: actually I thought of one

[angledge.livejournal.com]

*waves to you in Switzerland*
Stay out of the way of all those speeding subparticles, OK?!?!

Re: actually I thought of one

[ataralas.livejournal.com]

::waves back::

Alas, I have not started work yet, but I will remember this when I start!

Re: actually I thought of one

[marasca.livejournal.com]

Pray tell what a Hadron is. Is it one of those things that wasn't discovered yet when I was in 11th grade chemistry?

Re: actually I thought of one

[chaosvizier.livejournal.com]

Whatever it is, we know that Brian's older than it.

Re: actually I thought of one

[fizrep.livejournal.com]

And shorter.

Re: actually I thought of one

[ataralas.livejournal.com]

A hadron is something made out of quarks. So, for example, a proton or a neutron. But also more exotic things like kaons and pions and sigmas, etc.

So they were discovered when you were in 11th grade Chem, but they just didn't tell you about them.