Washington Monuments Research Paper

The Washington Monument stands in Washington D.C., the tallest building in its vicinity and the tallest monument in the world. It was built to memorialize world renowned first president of the United States, George Washington. George Washington’s historical importance is overwhelmingly apparent given the size of the monument (555 feet tall, 5 ⅛ inches, according to the National Park Service, measured in 1884). One can easily determine from the size of the monument that George Washington must have been a great man; but what about the shape and why is it made of two different types of concrete? The Washington Monument’s obelisk shape can be attributed to a revival of Egyptian architecture, one that was sweeping the nation at the time and affected …show more content…
The monument is made out of concrete; two different types to be exact -- the first layer which is about ⅓ of the monument high, is made of a lighter shade of marble than the rest due to the Monument’s halted construction of 1854 which was then resumed in 1876 and completed in 1884. At the top of the Monument there is a piece of aluminum (97% pure) in the shape of a pyramid. “Why might there be aluminum on the top of the Washington Monument?” you may ask. You may be thinking that aluminum is a cheap, abundant metal that conducts electricity very well. That sounds like it only serves as a potential lightning conductor which sounds dangerous and badly planned. So why is there a pyramid shaped chunk of aluminum at the top of the Monument? The answer is quite simple: aluminum was a very valuable metal at the time, equivalent to the value of silver to us today. To honor a man such as Washington, the architect, Robert Mills, thought it necessary to only include the best of the best materials, and to get that chunk of aluminum at the time was very costly. However, the aluminum lost its value over time as it became increasingly abundant, causing the value of the aluminum at the top of the Monument to decrease as well. Now not only is there a cheap chunk of metal on the top of the Monument that is dedicated to arguably one of the greatest men in history, there is still the problem of aluminum being a great electricity conductor at the top of a tall structure. Sound like a lightning problem? It is. In fact, the aluminum has been hit by lightning more times than I can count, proving that the saying “lightning never strikes the same place twice” is false. To solve this issue, a non-conductive layer was placed around the aluminum; fixing the lightning problem but not the fact that cheap aluminum is being

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