Why did the tightrope

Follow Twitter Instagram Facebook. Can you walk the tightrope? Why do tightrope walkers carry long poles? What is funambulism? Wonder What's Next? Try It Out Are you ready to walk the tightrope?

Ask a friend or family member to help you explore the following activities: What's the scariest or most amazing tightrope walk you could imagine? One tightrope walk that amazed the world many years ago can be experienced via pictures online. What do you think? Could you have performed this amazing feat? What do you think it would've been like to look down from that height with only a thin wire under your feet?

Tightrope walking isn't just limited to the circus. It has international appeal! For a fascinating look at the cultural importance of tightrope walking in one unique town, read through The Tiny Russian Village Where Everyone's a Tightrope Walker. If you lived there, would you become a tightrope walker, too? Why or why not? Want to become a circus performer one day? You'll learn how to get started and what kinds of balance exercises will help you learn the skills you'll need to master the tightrope!

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Join the Discussion. Cole May 2, You need to put the video at and you can see the guy land on his face. Also, I would like to walk on a tightrope. May 3, Looks like it would be tough! Let us know if you get to try one, Cole! Nov 17, That's right, lola, it would take lots of practice to achieve! Anneliese Nov 4, Nov 4, We think so too, Anneliese! It must take a lot of practice to master.

Each step along the cable invites it to spin underfoot, potentially throwing the walker off balance. To keep from falling, the walker must increase something called rotational inertia—effectively, positioning the body so that it fights against the wire's want to rotate. As any child on the playground knows, the best way to improve your balance on a cylindrical object is to stick out your arms horizontally.

This spreads out your mass and improves your ability to fight rotational forces, giving you enough time to correct your motions if you start to slip. Many tightrope walkers boost this effect by carrying a long balancing pole. For his daredevil walk between the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in , currently depicted in the Joseph Gordon-Levitt vehicle The Walk, French high-wire artist Philippe Petit carried a foot balancing pole he crafted for the act.

Captivated by the plan, Greenhouse obtained fake building IDs for Petit and his crew, which allowed them to impersonate workers and gain access, along with documents that authorized them to bring equipment to the upper floors.

The team settled on the idea of using a fishing line to run the steel cable between the towers, and after much consideration, Blondeau came up with the solution of bow and arrow to shoot the line from one tower to the other. Another logistical feat was anchoring the cavalleti stabilizing wires , which ordinarily make contact with the ground but in this case needed to be connected back to the towers. None of this could be done on the fly, so to speak: careful planning and rehearsal went into a final push that had to happen overnight.

That night, August 6, Petit and two teammates ascended to the th floor of the south tower with their equipment. When a guard approached, one of the conspirators panicked and fled, while Petit and the other man hid under a tarp on an I-beam over an open elevator shaft. They remained there for hours, finally emerging when all seemed quiet and made their way to the roof. Blondeau and another recruit had similarly snuck up to the roof of the north tower, and they shot the fishing line across.

All did not go smoothly: The line was so thin it was difficult to locate Petit found it by getting naked and feeling it on his skin , and the steel cable flopped around for a while between the towers before the men managed to get it positioned.

Philippe Petit answers reporter's questions as he is escorted from Beekman Hospital by Port Authority police officer, after being arrested for walking a tightrope between the two towers of the World Trade Center. Shortly after 7 a. He not only walked but knelt on one knee, laid down, conversed with gulls and taunted police officers ready to arrest him on either end.

The backstory for Petit's infamous walk is this: He was a French street performer prior to the daredevil act. One day, years before it was executed, he had a dental emergency and saw a rendering of the Twin Towers pre-construction in a newspaper in the waiting room, prompting his dream to one day walk between the two.

He described that day in Man on Wire:. My story is a fairy tale. Here I am, young, years-old, with a bad tooth in one of those uncolorful waiting room of a French dentist. I see two towers and the article says one day those towers will be built.

They're not even there yet. And when they are, they will become the highest in the world. Now, I need to have that, this little tangible start of my dream, but everybody's watching, but I need that page. And so what I do is under the cover of sneeze, I tear a page, put it under my jacket, and go out. Now, of course I would have a toothache for a week.

But what's the pain in comparison that now I have acquired my dream? Petit walked between the towers of Notre Dame in , and in , he walked between two of the pylons of the Sydney Harbour Bridge.

Like his permit-less street performances, these two acts were also illegal. But they were important stepping stones on his way to the World Trade Center. When Petit first arrived at the Twin Towers, seeing them nearly crushed his dream, as he recalled:. I knew that my dream was destroyed instantly… Impossible, impossible, impossible.

It's clearly impossible, not only to walk across, this I probably hardly thought of it.