MODERN CONCRETE FOR A MODERN WORLD

Modern concrete is the second most used resource behind water?

It sounds impossible until you look around, until you drive around, walk around.

Concrete buildings, concrete highways, concrete sidewalks.

You can’t eat it, drink it, but we can’t live without it.

We live in concrete, and if you’re in the wrong business, you might get fitted for a pair of concrete shoes.

Where did concrete get started? What’s the history of concrete?

 

Ancient materials were crude cements made by crushing and burning gypsum or limestone. Lime also refers to crushed, burned limestone.

When sand and water were added to these cements, they became mortar, which was a plaster-like material used to adhere stones to each other.

However, cement is not concrete.

Concrete is a composite building material and the ingredients, of which cement is just one, have changed over time and are changing even now.

 

Walking down cement sidewalks shows the variety.

One section is crumbling over time, where another the same age looks brand new.

Was it two different companies using their own formula?

Or was it the same company using a new formula that looked like the old, and saved money.

 

One Concrete Formula

In 1935, the Hoover Dam was completed after pouring approximately 3,250,000 yards of concrete, with an additional 1,110,000 yards used in the power plant and other dam-related structures.

The Grand Coulee Dam in Washington, completed in 1942, is the largest concrete structure ever built. It contains 12 million yards of concrete. Excavation required the removal of over 22 million cubic yards of dirt and stone.

 

This block shows the formula used for the Shasta Dam.

 

A total of 12 million yards of aggregate was gathered from a location near the Sacramento River in downtown Redding. All the gravel was delivered to stockpiles near the dam site using a conveyor belt.

The belt, manufactured by the Goodyear Tire Company, was the world’s longest at 9.6 miles long.

 

Then there’s the weight:

 

A cubic foot of solid concrete weighs more than a cubic foot of broken concrete, due to the spaces and cracks between broken pieces.

Concrete Weight per Cubic Foot

• A solid slab of concrete weighs 150 pounds per cubic foot.
• A cubic foot of broken concrete weighs 75 pounds.

Concrete Weight per Cubic Yard

• A solid slab of concrete weighs 4,050 pounds per cubic yard.
• A cubic yard of broken concrete weighs 2,025 pounds.

 

Buster Simpson put things together artistically at Shasta.

 

Give the link a click to see the concrete ingredients before it’s poured.

 

The Main Material In The Material World 

If concrete is the highest consumed product on earth besides water, it’s interesting that both share a fluid and solid state.

Iron has the same profile. First it’s fluid, then it cools.

Volcanic lava flows share the same characteristics.

It’s accurate to say that man has cracked the code on natural phenomena from concrete to the atom.

Also accurate is the destructive power of the tiny atom over the immense concrete buildings.

But my focus is on the creative powers of the material world.

 

Artists, both famous and obscure, take from the material world what they need to accomplish their goals of creation.

Through instinct and training they fuse memory and observation into a vision on canvas, in metal, wood, and textile.

They make us feel what they feel.

 

 

PS: A hole in a wall isn’t always asking to be fixed. Sometimes the view is more important.

PSS: Take a peak behind the scenes of a cement wall and you’ll see the pace of human evolution.