Classroom lesson 路 The Burj Khalifa馃嚘馃嚜 United Arab Emirates

The Burj Khalifa

The tallest building in the world 路 828 metres

The Burj Khalifa rising above the Dubai skyline at sunset

Photo 路 Wikimedia Commons

What is it?

The Burj Khalifa, in the city of Dubai, is the tallest building human beings have ever built. It is 828 metres tall - that is more than half a mile straight up. If you stood at the top, you would be looking down on the clouds.

Tell me more

The Burj Khalifa has 163 floors that people use, plus extra service floors above. Inside, there are homes, offices, a hotel and viewing decks where visitors look out over the desert and the sea. The lifts are some of the fastest in the world - they zoom up the building at around 10 metres every second.

Building it was a huge challenge. The desert ground is sandy, so engineers had to drill deep concrete piles into the earth - over 50 metres down - before the building could even start growing upwards. The tower stands on a base shaped like a three-petal flower, copied from a desert wildflower called the Hymenocallis. That shape helps it stay steady when the wind pushes against it.

The outside is wrapped in 26,000 panels of glass, each one cleaned by special teams who climb the sides on ropes. From a long way away, the building can look like it is changing colour - that is the sunlight bouncing off all that glass.

Because the Burj Khalifa is so tall, the sun sets at the top a few minutes after it sets at the bottom. During the month of Ramadan, people who live high up sometimes wait a little longer than people on the ground for the evening meal to begin.

In the classroom

Walk your class through this in 15 minutes.

Talk together

Discussion prompts

  1. 01Why might engineers copy a flower's shape when designing a giant tower?
  2. 02What would change about your day if you lived on the 150th floor?
  3. 03How do you think people stay safe building something this tall?
Try this

Classroom activity

As a class, find the tallest building you can see from your school window. Estimate its height. Now work out how many of them you would need to stack up to match the Burj Khalifa (828 m). Mark the height on the playground wall with chalk if you can.