Mercedes museum hosts most powerful artificial tornado

How better to get visitors to your museum than to create a massive man-made tornado in the middle of the building? Clearly, our cynical suggestion is not the motivation behind the creation of Mercedes-Benz's artificial tornado in the Mercedes-Benz Museum in Stuttgart: their excuse was that the building had to abide by fire safety guidelines, which state that the massive open spaces in the museum required big fire doors the museum owner didn't want to put in place. The solution was apparently a 34.4 meter high tornado, powered by 144 jets and capable of moving 28 tons of air designed to clear smoke from the building -- and, for demonstration purposes, stage smoke. It's certainly not anyway near as powerful as a real tornado (the video after the break attests to that), but it's definitely just as pretty.

[Tim @ Oct 27th 2007 6:57PM]

If those fans are supposed to suck smoke out if there's a fire, what if the power goes out? Plus I think the noise would detract from experiencing the museum. Not a good trade off in my opinion.

[Reader @ Oct 27th 2007 7:34PM]

Well the power thing is a good argument I suppose, but they probably have a backup. And I'm sure they don't run that thing constantly, only at certain times for everyone to check out.

[Andrew @ Oct 29th 2007 12:26AM]

And what replaces the smoke? Why clean, fresh, fire-fueling oxygen of course!

[Twitchy @ Oct 28th 2007 7:36AM]

Yeah, same goes for rollercoasters. I mean, why the hell do they have them in theme parks? They only create noise, instigate spontaneous bouts of projectile vomiting, and are in a whole heap o' trouble if the power goes out. Should get rid of them too. Screw the entertainment value.

BTW, you are forgetting that this was designed for a German company, it probably has a triple redundancy on the backups.

[huarng @ Oct 27th 2007 6:57PM]

spelled MUSEUM wrong. and you're a writer?

[strider_mt2k @ Oct 27th 2007 7:04PM]

Give 'em a breqak!

[huarng @ Oct 27th 2007 7:06PM]

haha sorry was a little harsh

[Andrew @ Oct 27th 2007 8:09PM]

and your grammar is wrong. You should not start a sentence with "and". - lol

[holopaste @ Oct 28th 2007 12:55PM]

and ur captlizashin is rong.

[JDizzle @ Oct 27th 2007 7:08PM]

I doubt they leave it running all the time, probably just turn it on at specific demonstration times if there's not an emergency.

[NightBlade @ Oct 27th 2007 7:21PM]

Cooooool.
I'd like to stay right under it! Yes, I know it's smoke, but still.

[MikeG @ Oct 27th 2007 7:43PM]

Stage smoke

[Shane @ Oct 27th 2007 7:27PM]

One of the facilities I was involved with building had a similar fire code requirement. They did in fact test it by filling up the space with smoke and then setting off the smoke exhaust system. It was quite cool though not clearly as cool as this...

As for emergency power, the generator for the building had to be sized large enough to power this as well as the fire pump. It was way oversized for the load of the building alone...

[Victor @ Oct 27th 2007 7:28PM]

Too bad they didn't invite the public. I live a 20 minute U-bahn ride to the museum, and that would have been awesome to see in person.

[esteban @ Oct 27th 2007 8:36PM]

What's a MUSUEM??? LOL

[Orpheus @ Oct 27th 2007 8:40PM]

It must really suck in the customers...haha...it must have quite a lot of drawing power. Haha. Ok sorry guys.

[NightBlade @ Oct 27th 2007 8:44PM]

lol

[strider_mt2k @ Oct 27th 2007 8:42PM]

That sucks.

I...I mean it blows!

Awww I don't know what I mean, I'm all turned around!

[Danny Gdam @ Oct 27th 2007 8:44PM]

doesn't look very exciting. they should up the power on it and throw a cow in for demonstrations. :D

[Brock @ Oct 28th 2007 12:22AM]

A cow would be cool. If it's not powerfull enough for a cow, a cat would do just fine.

[Blah @ Oct 27th 2007 9:08PM]

I want one in my house. Can that be done?

[Chino B @ Oct 27th 2007 9:32PM]

Don't be crying when you see your bill. lol

[LurkingEngadgeteer @ Oct 28th 2007 12:05PM]

Actually Blah, you can build one, and its quite easy =). I built one for my year 9 geography weather project. what you need is a long rectangular box such that it sits longways vertically.

Then you make some windows so you can see the tornado (a cardboard box with glad wrap would do it). And vertically across each corner you make a rectangular hole from top to bottom.

On the bottom end, you need a smoke generator. Or you could use steam. Get a mini butane gas stove heating a pan of boiling water would do it. Then on the top you need a powered fan to suck the air up.

When you get it all going, the vortex forms from the smoke source (steam) and will run all the way to the top through the fan. Looks pretty cool =)



Amazingly after some Googling, the website I used as my instruction guide is still up. Here it is:
http://www.tornadoproject.com/cellar/workshop.htm

[michas_pi @ Oct 27th 2007 11:16PM]

Now THIS thing will blend.

[Hammond X @ Oct 29th 2007 9:07PM]

The last time I saw fans suck that hard was at the iPhone unveiling.

[strider_mt2k @ Oct 28th 2007 9:17AM]

We would have also accepted "a Sugar Ray concert".

We have a winner! No more entries!

[vpinecone @ Oct 28th 2007 11:20PM]

zing!

[skhawaja @ Oct 28th 2007 4:39AM]

wow - go big or go home!

throw styrofoam animals up there - a nice scene from TWISTER ;)

hundreds of balloons - virtual lava lamp?

[zed @ Oct 28th 2007 5:10AM]

In case of fire...Just grab a car and run-run-run! Leave others waiting for the "jet tornado"

[Michael @ Oct 28th 2007 10:02AM]

How is that the "most powerful artificial tornado"? Iowa State University can simulate up to an F5... I'm pretty sure that Mercedes wouldn't want to try to beat that in their own lobby.

[MacBandit @ Oct 28th 2007 1:13PM]

I can't find any reports backing this up on google. I've read where they plan on building a vortex building but no information on it being finished or what class tornado it will develop.

Do you have a link?

[Michael @ Oct 28th 2007 2:10PM]

No, but I have been in the building on a tour. The building it's in seems to be brand new but I don't have any idea how long they've had it. I'm just repeating what I was told by the guide.

[ryanrayla @ Oct 28th 2007 2:45PM]

http://www.iastate.edu/Inside/04/0430/tornado.shtml

[MacBandit @ Oct 28th 2007 2:56PM]

Looks pretty cool but I would say that since the simulator is only 18 feet high that there is no way that the resulting tornados contain or require the amount of energy necessary to generate the huge Mercedes one.

[steve @ Oct 28th 2007 3:16PM]

Researcher 1:So, we've created this great tornado machine that can similate up to an F5.

Researcher 2: Hmm, so now what are we going to do with it.

Researcher 1: Lets find something to throw in there and see what happens!

Researcher 2: Brilliant!

[T-Macy @ Oct 28th 2007 10:11AM]

Well that sucked, or blew, whatever

[ryanrayla @ Oct 28th 2007 2:43PM]

http://www.iastate.edu/Inside/04/0430/tornado.shtml

[Iridium @ Oct 29th 2007 1:05PM]

You can see this at Universal Studio's Twister the Ride