Random Word Generated Friday: Concrete

Random Word: Concrete

Every Friday I do a random word generated post, the second thing I do (the first being getting a random word) is see what Google has to say about the word. That’s how I get things like the movie “Special” or writing about how the physics of bubbles proves they’re lazy, not efficient.

When this week’s word came up “Concrete”, I expected to be writing about the adjective meanings of the word rather than the noun. However, my Google search turned up the Wikipedia page’s Concrete-noun entry and like most Wikipedia pages about subjects I would never voluntarily read, I read the whole entry and several of the linked pages. Wikipedia, more than anything else in my life, has contributed to my long-held title as a “Source of Random and Useless Information”.

It turns out concrete is really interesting.

Most people know that the Romans in the construction of their empire used concrete, and analysis of the pyramids indicate that the Egyptians also made use of the material.  They also believe that the recipe was lost for 13 centuries until John Smeaton pioneered the use of hydraulic lime in 1756, however the Canal du Midi was constructed using concrete in 1670 and there are concrete structures in Finland that date back to the 16th century.

Modern concrete structures have a higher tensile strength due to the fact that we reinforce it with steel while the Romans relied on the properties of the concrete alone.

It is being billed as a very green construction material (what isn’t green these days? Does that word even have any meaning anymore?) because it has a 100-year service life, which means less material is used in making repairs. It also uses a fraction of the land required to extract materials that lumber does and is often manufactured within 100 miles of the building site, cutting down on the carbon cost of transportation.

The niftiest thing I learned about concrete is that over its lifetime it absorbs CO2, absorbing roughly 57% of the CO2 used in its construction over concrete’s lifetime.

Concrete as a building material also uses thermal mass to help regulate indoor temperatures by reducing thermal swings throughout the year. It also has much fewer air leaks than a traditional wooden structure, which is a large contributor to heat loss in the winter as anyone who’s live in an old Midwest house can tell you.

It also saves on fire insurance, as concrete does not burn or release toxic gasses when heated. Nor is it often damaged by the water used to put out fires, making insurance payouts on a concrete building fire roughly 50% lower than on a wooden structure. The non-combustible nature of concrete also helps prevent fires from spreading to surrounding buildings.

In conclusion: Concrete is pretty nifty.

Read more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concrete

Concrete in Art: http://www.scottsdalepublicart.org/collection/pimafreeway.php
http://www.concretenetwork.com/concrete/concrete-statuary/design-ideas/porsche.html
http://www.amazingonly.com/amazing/largest-concrete-keyboard-in-the-world/

*Edit*
One more concrete link:
http://www.concretenetwork.com/ugc/reuse.html