The Pentagon

Who thought a building could be shaped as funny as the Pentagon? A pentagon is a five-sided polygon, and this building surely has five sides. A pentagon is a unique shape because when each corner is connected with a line, a star is made.

The Pentagon building is the headquarters of the Department of Defense. It is located across the river from the Capitol in the city of Arlington, Virginia. Because construction began in 1941 during World War II, very little steel was used. During World War II, most of the steel was used to make equipment for our soldiers overseas. Instead, The Pentagon was made out of concrete. To save even more materials, sand from the Potomac River was used to make the concrete.

In 1943, The Pentagon was finished. It is so large that if the Empire State Building was laid on it’s side, the Pentagon would almost reach the top. There are five sides, five floors, and five corridors on each floor. That means almost 26,000 people can fit inside. In fact, if you took each floor and corridor and laid them out in a row, you could walk for seventeen and a half miles. That would be a lot of exercise! I seem to be getting a lot of exercise, too. Time to travel to the next stop!