For a abbreviated period of time Wednesday afternoon , a man who hollo himself “ Steve ” capture our vision . He attempted to descale the side of the Trump Tower with suction cups , proving that cartoons are n’t so detach from realism after all .

https://gizmodo.com/watch-man-mounts-trump-tower-1785110693

“ Steve ” has since been lead into police custody , and the spectacle has died down for the consequence , so we ’re endure to take the time to look at this event and attempt to image out how the hell he did it .

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He ’s not even the first somebody to descale a glass skyscraper with suction cup . Dan Goodwin , otherwise make out as “ Spider - Dan , ” surmount the Sears Tower in Chicago in 1981 with suction cups and skyhooks . Of course , he was fit out as Spider - man . He also did something similar in 2010 in San Francisco .

But how did both of these guy manage to scale spyglass buildings , besides trust on the help of being ridiculously in shape and the power of portion ? It comes down to suction .

A suck cupful is a curving object — normally malleable and flexible like rubber or plastic — that push out the breeze between it and the airfoil it ’s pressed against , creating a vacuum , which has a lower pressure than the aura around it ( call atmospheric pressure ) . This difference in pressure level ensures it stay down . The edges of the cup are able to keep that vacuum cleaner intact since no melody can get out .

Argentina’s President Javier Milei (left) and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., holding a chainsaw in a photo posted to Kennedy’s X account on May 27. 2025.

suck cups are incredibly strong and do n’t strike off easily . When removing a suction loving cup from a surface , you unremarkably ca n’t just raise it off from the center . You have to peel back one of the sides , letting air in and decrease the pressure .

The big the cup , the more weight it can hold ( the amount is equal to the surface country multiply by the atmospherical pressure ) .

The same kind of acclivity can be perform with anything that create a vacuum cleaner , like say a vacuum . so as to certify one of its new vacuums , LG recruited a professional climberto graduated table a 33 - story edifice in South Korea .

William Duplessie

Despite how easy it seems to be , we do n’t commend sample this at home . These are probably specialised suction cups like the single that Goodwin used . Using another sucking cup , such as a piston , would n’t quite work the same way . You ’d also need a clean , smooth aerofoil so that no particles get stuck . Glass is in all likelihood the good for this , as it is also non - porous and therefore wo n’t rent any air in .

We also would n’t want to anyway because oh god that ’s high .

[ Washington Post ]

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