Buildings with Magnets?

I like the idea of building with magnets. How much fun would it be if you could reverse the poles on half of them?

Rubber and steel are cheaper materials to use to build building shock absorbers. Magnets use expensive materials and have additional design challenges.

The problem preventing widespread use of building shock absorbers isn't the design, it's the cost of including or adding them to buildings.

Or this could happen if you're carrying to many magnetic items in your pockets!

Yeh! I just wonder how that would effect cellphones,etc.

You could build a geodesic dome easy enough....I'm thinking it would be expensive and lacking in strength....

What about a suspended building?

Such specialty applications, such as structural vibration isolation, dampening, etc., have been around for quite a while now. The issue is how to get the structure to mitigate the impacts of all manner of (externally sourced vibrations) down to an acceptible level of structural damage that can be affordably repaired...

That is a matter of making the structure flexible enough to aborb such vibrations that would be too expensive to make rigid enough to simply resist such vibrations...

Building design techniques, materials, analysis, etc., are getting better, but they are not all the way ''there'' yet...

The above approach would pop-out the ground floor walls on at least two oppositite sides of any multistory structure, at the bare minimum, for lack of flexibility...

Two connected magnets produce a force that opposes tension. Under a building, you have high compressive forces, not tension. So magnetized "bricks" would not act any different than regular bricks except that the force holding a brick against the brick underneath would be slightly stronger.

I expect the loading force of the building weight would dwarf the magnetic forces. The resistance to shear would be the coefficient of friction times the normal force (weight) on the sliding surface. In short, it would not slide easily if it would slide at all.

What you need is something that moves horizontally without much force but can withstand the huge compressive forces from the weight of the building. A practical design would have to incorporate some kind of rollers, the same principle employed in bearings.

Making EM waves are easy. But, directing and maneuvering the EM Flux might be a difficult job.

Like how do you predict where the collision trajectory N-N magnets goes in 3D, Or can you concentrate it like photons on a lens or could you separate shares/portions of the flux with precision?

Magneto only does that.

Theoretically, you could stack bar magnets, (positive) end to (negative) end, like sections of a segmented fishing pole, that would be quite strong in axial tension and axial flexure...

However, for a sharp earthquake, at the base of such a structure like that, then relatively little resistance would be offered to one bar magnet just sliding off the top end of the bar magnet end immediately beneath it, at the ground level...

Also, such a structure would tend to snap, just like a buggy whip, and violently toss the (contents) back and forth at the top of such a structure...

And, if a standard H-column could be permanently magnetized, in-place, then exactly how much would that actually cost?... Certainly more than standard construction costs...

And, assuming the beams and girders did not also have to be magnetised as well, what kind of long-term consequence(s) would be (imparted) to people trying to do what kind(s) of work that close to magnetic fields...

Just as a matter of curiosity, about how much in the way of (iron filings) could be (magnetically mined) from a typical cubic yard of beach sand?... from yard dirt?... from farm land?... etc.?...

This might be helpful.

Electromagnets could be applied at the corners of buildings, but would be no good if an earthquake downed a power pole. But may be good for buildings that have a backup power system. Keeping the corners from toppling may be needed most to prevent the walls from getting damaged. The electromagnets would turn on when an earthquake is forecast or when a circuit detects vibrations.

There may indeed be some applicability to such a concept of electromagnetism being actuated by transient vibrations of magnitudes larger than (background noise level)-vibrations, as detected by vibration sensors powered by auxilliary power supply source(s) that would not turn it/them-self/selves off too soon...

Better solutions would include some combination of more appropriately flexible joints, diagonal tension spring barcing, and/or guided structural member connections, etc., coupled with existing vibration dissipation technology...

GA from me...