science

Revolving restaurant

Revolving restaurant is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Revolving restaurant rather than just read about it. In short: A revolving restaurant or rotating restaurant is a tower restaurant designed to rest atop a broad circular revolving platform that operates as a large turntable. The building remains stationary and the diners are carried on the revolving floor.

Key takeaways

Revolving restaurant belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Revolving restaurant to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Revolving restaurant from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

A revolving restaurant or rotating restaurant is a tower restaurant designed to rest atop a broad circular revolving platform that operates as a large turntable. The building remains stationary and the diners are carried on the revolving floor. Such restaurants are often located on upper stories of hotels, communication towers, and skyscrapers.

Design and construction

Revolving restaurants are designed as a circular structure, with a platform that rotates around a core in the center. The center core contains the building's elevators, kitchens, or other features. The restaurant itself rests on a thin steel platform, with the platform sitting on top of a series of wheels connected to the floor of the structure. Alternatively, some designs, like one in Memphis, Tennessee, have the platform mounted on tires. A motor rotates the restaurant at less than one horsepower. The speed of rotation is noted to vary, depending on preference.

History It is believed that Emperor Nero had a rotating dining room in his palace Domus Aurea on the Palatine Hill with a view of the Forum Romanum and Colosseum. Archaeologists unearthed what they believed to be evidence of such a dining room in 2009. Architect and designer Norman Bel Geddes proposed a rotating restaurant for the Century of Progress, the 1933 World's Fair in Chicago, although it was not built. During the first half of the 20th century, several rotating bars were built in hotels and nightclubs, such as the Chez Ami Supper Club, which opened in Buffalo, New York in 1934. After World War II, dining was integrated into the concept, and in cities across the world revolving restaurants were built at a great pace. They were viewed as symbols of "modernity and progress". A barrel-shaped, but stationary, restaurant on Fernsehturm Stuttgart, a TV tower in Stuttgart, Germany, built in 1956, is credited as the inspiration for the idea of a revolving restaurant. A revolving restaurant on Florianturm, a TV tower in Dortmund, Germany, was brought into service in 1959. The Egyptian architect Naoum Shebib designed the Cairo Tower with a revolving restaurant at its top, which opened in April 1961. The revolving restaurant on the top floor of the OTE Tower was part of the 34th Thessaloniki International Fair in 1965. The revolving restaurant was then closed, but has been in continued service since 1969.

John Graham, a Seattle architect and early shopping mall pioneer, is said to be the first in the United States to design a revolving restaurant, at La Ronde, atop an office building at the Ala Moana Center in Honolulu. The revolving restaurant was opened to the public in 1961, but La Ronde was closed in the 1990s after a mechanical failure. Graham was awarded a US patent for the invention in 1964 and incorporated the mechanics into the New York Marriott Marquis and Hyatt Regency Atlanta. Revolving restaurants and the prices of their dishes have been subject to ridicule.

Safety One death has been attributed to the operation of a rotating restaurant. On 14 April 2017, a five-year-old boy's skull was crushed between the rotating part of the restaurant and a stationary wall at the Westin Peachtree Plaza Hotel in Atlanta, Georgia, United States, dying in hospital later that day. A lawsuit filed against the restaurant by the child's parents was settled out of court.

See also Floating restaurant Googie architecture List of revolving restaurants

References

External links

"Revolving Restaurants – Turntables – Macton Corporation". Retrieved 10 March 2013. "Restaurant 181 – Munich". Retrieved 10 March 2013.

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Revolving restaurant

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Revolving restaurant claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Revolving restaurant before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Revolving restaurant ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Revolving restaurant

In research: Revolving restaurant appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Revolving restaurant in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Revolving restaurant is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Observation decks, Restaurants by type, Revolving restaurants, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Revolving restaurant outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Revolving restaurant in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Revolving restaurant means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Revolving restaurant out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Revolving restaurant in simple terms?

Why does Revolving restaurant matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Revolving restaurant?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Revolving restaurant.