the.com/concrete
the only material that gets stronger the longer you ignore it
means A hard building material made by mixing cement, water, sand, and gravel that hardens into stone-like solidity — or, figuratively, anything specific, tangible, and real rather than abstract.
from From Latin 'concretus,' the past participle of 'concrescere,' meaning 'to grow together' — from 'con-' (together) plus 'crescere' (to grow), the same root that gives us 'crescent' and 'increase.' The image is of separate things hardening into one mass. English borrowed it first as a word for the abstract idea of 'congealed' or 'solidified,' and only later — fittingly — did it set into the name for the gray stuff in the sidewalk.
- self-healing
- Roman concrete repairs its own cracks with seawater
- ancient flex
- the Pantheon's dome is still the largest unreinforced one
- carbon villain
- makes up 8 percent of global CO2 emissions
- never done
- keeps curing and hardening for decades, even centuries
- liquid stone
- poured underwater without ever touching the air
hoover dam — 702 feet tall structure completed in 1936, constructed from 3.3 million cubic yards of concrete
three gorges dam — world's largest concrete dam in china, completed 2012, contains 28 million cubic meters of concrete
interstate 90 — longest interstate highway in us spanning 3,020 miles, primarily constructed of reinforced concrete