High-heeled shoes exert more pressure on the ground than a skyscraper.

Credit: Andrii Borodai/ iStock

Close-up view of woman walking down the stairs in high heels

Walking in high heels requires a skillful mix of balance and coordination, but for something so graceful, these shoes actually pack a surprising amount of pressure underfoot. Pressure is the amount of force distributed over a specific area, and when that area is small, such as the tip of a high heel, the pressure exerted increases. For example, if a 160-pound person shifts their weight onto a heel tip measuring just a quarter of an inch — roughly the size of a pencil eraser — approximately 640 pounds per square inch (psi) are being felt under the heel.

Let’s compare that to the pressure exerted by a skyscraper — specifically the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, the world’s tallest building as of 2025. At 2,717 feet tall and weighing more than 500,000 tons (or 1 billion pounds), the tower is undeniably massive. But that weight, of course, is spread across a significantly larger area than the heel of a shoe. Measurements of the concrete foundation — which extends beneath the tower’s central core and the three wings that make up its footprint — put the base at around 35,575 square feet. So even with that astonishing amount of weight, the building exerts only about 196 psi on the ground.

The world’s first skyscraper was in New York City.

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Chicago’s Home Insurance Building, completed in 1885, is considered the world’s first skyscraper.

It’s the same idea behind lying on a bed of nails: If you spread out the weight over a larger area, the pressure drops, but if you focus it on a small pinpoint, it will skyrocket. This also explains why high heels can dent floors or sink into the ground — and why they’re even banned at certain historical sites such as the Acropolis in Athens to prevent damage to the ancient stone.

Numbers Don't Lie

Price of the world’s most expensive shoes, made of gold, diamonds, and meteorite

$19 million

Year Christian Louboutin first painted the soles of his famous high-heeled shoes red

1993

Pressure (in psi) at the bottom of the Mariana Trench, more than 1,000 times what we feel at sea level

15,750

Person-hours it took to build the Burj Khalifa

22 million

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The Eiffel Tower grows and shrinks in size.

The Eiffel Tower has undergone a few changes since its completion in 1889: It was once painted yellow, and over the years, it’s gained radio and television antennas. But in addition to those more purposeful transformations, there’s another subtle change continually occurring: The iconic Paris landmark tends to grow in the summer and shrink in the winter. This fluctuating height is caused by the expansion and contraction of the tower’s iron in response to temperature shifts. The variation isn’t visible to the naked eye, growing or shrinking by just a few millimeters. And it’s not the tower’s only trick — on hot days, the sun-facing side warms and expands more than the shaded side, causing the entire structure to tilt slightly away from the sun.