The Burj Khalifa towers over Dubai like a giant glass needle. At 2,717 feet (828 meters) it is the tallest building humans have ever finished. To go from the ground floor to the top by stairs you’d climb 2,909 steps - about the same as climbing the Statue of Liberty 64 times in a row.
Building it was a serious puzzle. The wind at the top blows hard enough to shake a normal tower into pieces, so engineers shaped the building like a desert flower with three wings. The wings break up the wind so it can’t get a steady grip and push the whole tower over.
The Burj Khalifa is so tall that it has its own little weather system. The base can be sunny while the very top is wrapped in cloud, and the temperature near the top is usually about 11°F (6°C) cooler than down on the street. The building even sways gently in the wind - by about five feet at the top.
