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  • RESEARCH HIGHLIGHT

An iconic structure in London moonlights as a scientific tool

Researchers enlist the seventeenth-century memorial called the Monument to study physical deformation.
The interior staircase with 311 steps inside The Monument to the Great Fire of London.

The tall, sheltered spiral staircase in the London tower called the Monument proved the perfect setting for testing a wire’s reaction to stress. Credit: David Warren/Alamy

Physicists have made the most precise measurements ever of deformations in the shape of a wire. They did the experiment inside the 60-metre-tall column in central London known as the Monument — built in the 1670s to commemorate the city’s great fire of 1666.

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Nature 577, 453 (2020)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-020-00052-1

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