Solving the 800-year mystery of Pisa's Leaning Tower

The Telegraph ^ | 28 Jul 2010 | Alastair Smart

[Daffynition]

Professor John Burland has spent the last two decades striving to save - and understand - the Leaning Tower of Pisa. After defying gravity, Italian bureaucracy and accusations of corruption, it seems he’s finally cracked the case.

[snip]

Via his data analysis, Burland unlocked the 800-year mystery as to why the tower leans south not north: namely, a fluctuating water-table on the upper layer of silt. By a quirk of local geography, Pisa’s water-table rose higher on the tower’s north side, often reaching within one foot in rainy season, and this gave the tower an annual ratchet southward.

Armed with this vital information, in 2003, Burland introduced a new drainage system beneath the piazza’s north side, one that lowered and stabilised the water-table, so there’s no kick in either direction. Problem solved.

[snip]

[Daffynition]

**Oh Rhett ...whatever do you mean? What memes?**

[rawhide]

That is the best photo posted in this thread, so far!

[Daffynition]

Thank you.

[SunkenCiv]

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