There are skyscrapers sitting 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 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 kinetic?
Answer
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.
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