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I'm following this question that was closed as unclear. I think the OP meant the potential energy.

There are skyscrapers sitting there and pushing on the ground with tremendous weight. Is it possible to convert this weight/force to harness energy to power the building?

Maybe, build the building on top of some type of pendulum that will rotate under the pressure and when one cycle of rotation reaches the equilibrium point we could give it a kick from the stored energy of the same source to continue rotation.

Was something like this created or tested and found useless?

Note: maybe my question should be is it possible to convert the potential energy of a building into a kinetic?

In classical mechanics, absolute values of potential energy are meaningless. In your case of a skyscraper just sitting there, we could say it has a large positive amount of potential energy, no potential energy, or even negative potential energy. It doesn't matter at all. What is important is a change in potential energy.

is it possible to convert the potential energy of a building into a kinetic?

Based on what is said above, you would need to decrease the potential energy of the building and find a way to harness that change in potential energy. The issue is that for gravity, the potential energy just depends on the distance from the Earth, so this would mean that you would have to move the building (or at least parts of the building) closer to the Earth. The utility of buildings is typically that they remain stationary so people can use them consistently and for a long time, so I don't see this being feasible.

To see how gravitational potential energy can be converted to other types of energy in other systems, see some of the other posted answers.

An example of harnessing gravitational potential energy is a hydroelectric power plant which converts the potential energy of water falls, dams and the like into electrical energy.

As far as harnessing the potential energy of a building sitting on the ground, I suppose if you caused the building to topple you could harness the energy of the falling portions of the building. Obviously ridiculous.

All practical examples of harnessing potential energy involve its conversion to kinetic energy.Hope this helps.

Simply No. If you could generate energy simply from the potential energy of the building, induced by gravity, without somehow permanently decreasing that energy, you would build some sort of perpetuum mobile.

If you would gain usable energy (like an electrical current) out of the potential energy of the building, without reducing the mass of the building and without altering the gravitational field, you would have created energy out of nothing, but energy is conserved.

By convention, potential energy (which can be mechanical, gravitational, chemical, electromagnetic or nuclear) refers to energy stored in a field (electromagnetic field, gravitational field, gluon field etc.). This energy must be converted into kinetic energy in order to be "harnessed" or do work. For example, you can convert potential energy into:

• kinetic energy of an arrow, a pendulum or a pipe full of water


• heat energy (which at a molecular scale is just kinetic energy again)


• an electric current (moving electrons, so kinetic energy again)


• energetic neutrons and other products of fission or fusion (kinetic energy again)

So you can harness potential energy, but only indirectly.

Yes, you can convert the potential energy of the skyscraper into useful work. But, to extract useful work from the potential energy, must reduce the potential energy, that is: you must reduce the height of the skyscraper. You must tear the skyscraper down to get its energy.

You should note that skyscrapers aren't free and that someone used a crane powered by electricity or diesel to lift the parts of the skyscraper to their current positions. You are guaranteed to get less energy out of this process than was put in to build the skyscraper. You will waste a lot of energy in the process of converting energy from diesel or the electric grid into the potential energy of the skyscraper and then back into electricity. This would be a terribly inefficient way to store energy.

However, as noted by another answer, this is essentially what we do with hydroelectric dams. We move water from a high altitude to a lower altitude and extract useful work that is converted into electrical energy. This energy is free in the sense that the sun evaporated water somewhere and it rained down on the high altitude reservoir. So hydroelectric power is, at its core, solar power, because the sun effectively pumps the water uphill and we extract energy as it moves downhill.

Using actual electrically powered pumps, you can pump water uphill to store energy. You can use the energy later by allowing it to flow downhill.