Earlier quoted context omitted.
cobblestones for the roads
That is... not a smooth ride.
Sounds like a good way to make people slow down.
Why was Roman concrete so durable?
51–60 of 299 posts
Re: Why was Roman concrete so durable?
#52Earlier quoted context omitted.
Please don’t do this, it’s against the rules: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Please don't comment on whether someone read an article. "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions that".
Please don’t do this it’s also against the rules: Don't feed egregious comments by replying; flag them instead. Live by the sword die by the sword
[flagged]
Re: Why was Roman concrete so durable?
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
cobblestones for the roads
for slow neighborhood roads I see no reason why brick isn't used more often. my hometown had brick roads everywhere and once every 3-5 years a few bricks would get replaced here and there. in the 1990s I'd look around and see a lot of the bricks on those roads that were made in the 1930s, and there were probably older bricks to be found if I'd looked harder. the rough ride kept speeding down a lot more than the polic…
It's not the plowing that gets bricks in winter, or not plowing exclusively, it's the freeze-thaw cycling that kills anything with joints. Every grout joint / polymeric sand joint is an opportunity for moisture intrusion and in any climate zone that gets cold enough to freeze, those joints are going to degrade incredibly quickly. Bricks may make sense in the South, but definitely not in most of the US.
Re: Why was Roman concrete so durable?
#54Related:
Why Ancient Roman Concrete Outlasts Our Own (2017) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29366911 - Nov 2021 (67 comments)
2,050-year-old Roman tomb offers insights on ancient concrete resilience - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28833525 - Oct 2021 (101 comments)
Why Roman concrete is stronger than it ever was, while modern concrete decays - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25690803 - Jan 2021 (7 comments)
A chemical reaction in ancient Roman concrete makes it stronger over time (2017) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22580920 - March 2020 (64 comments)
How Ancient Rome’s Concrete Has Survived 2,000 Years (2017) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20482050 - July 2019 (81 comments)
How Did the Romans Make Concrete That Lasts Longer Than Modern Concrete? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15544128 - Oct 2017 (3 comments)
The Rock Solid History of Concrete - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15480165 - Oct 2017 (12 comments)
Why Roman concrete still stands strong while modern version decays - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14699652 - July 2017 (1 comment)
Ancient Romans made world’s ‘most durable’ concrete - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14695876 - July 2017 (4 comments)
New studies of ancient concrete could teach us to do as the Romans did - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14690329 - July 2017 (72 comments)
Ancient Roman Concrete Is About to Revolutionize Modern Architecture - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5883443 - June 2013 (23 comments)
How the pantheon has lasted 2000 years without steel in its concrete - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1852000 - Oct 2010 (35 comments)
Also:
The problem with reinforced concrete (2016) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27282927 - May 2021 (186 comments)
The problem with reinforced concrete - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11975695 - June 2016 (147 comments)
Re: Why was Roman concrete so durable?
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
Please don’t do this, it’s against the rules: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Please don't comment on whether someone read an article. "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions that".
Please don’t do this it’s also against the rules: Don't feed egregious comments by replying; flag them instead. Live by the sword die by the sword
But... you also just did it
Re: Why was Roman concrete so durable?
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
Please don’t do this, it’s against the rules: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Please don't comment on whether someone read an article. "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions that".
Please don’t do this it’s also against the rules: Don't feed egregious comments by replying; flag them instead. Live by the sword die by the sword
100% disagree with flagging.
Have the knowledge balls to respectfully disagree. flagging just looks like throwing rocks as opposed knowingly refuting something.
its also why I am very conservative upvoting anything, anywhere, any site.
Re: Why was Roman concrete so durable?
#57Disappointed that this article didn't at least give a "tip of the hat" to the dogged research done by Dr. Marie Jackson, et.al., over her career at multiple universities. Here is an excellent read on this subject from 2013: https://cedar.wwu.edu/geology_facpubs/75/
Says a lot doesn't it. Marie Jackson makes it into the citations twelve times. Otherwise not mentioned by name. Academia: You thought capitalists were greedy for mere money? Come meet academics.
The lead author of this study, Linda M. Seymour, worked with Jackson on reference 29, on the mortar of the Tomb of Caecilia Metella, which is referenced repeatedly and the samples from which form a significant part of the hypothesis.
That study: https://ceramics.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jace.18...
Story on that study: https://als.lbl.gov/unexpected-transformations-reinforce-rom...
Jackson is quoted, if briefly, by Science's article on the new paper. https://www.science.org/content/article/scientists-may-have-...
Jackson's work is focused on pyroclastic volcanism. Seymour's work has focused on Roman water infrastructure.
Jackson works for the University of Utah, Seymour works for MIT. The linked source is MIT's PR department.
Re: Why was Roman concrete so durable?
#58Disappointed that this article didn't at least give a "tip of the hat" to the dogged research done by Dr. Marie Jackson, et.al., over her career at multiple universities. Here is an excellent read on this subject from 2013: https://cedar.wwu.edu/geology_facpubs/75/
Says a lot doesn't it. Marie Jackson makes it into the citations twelve times. Otherwise not mentioned by name. Academia: You thought capitalists were greedy for mere money? Come meet academics.
[deleted]
Re: Why was Roman concrete so durable?
#59the article talks about evidence which has always been present in evaluations of Roman concrete which was "disregarded as merely evidence of sloppy mixing practices, or poor-quality raw materials," and this kind of thing REALLY infuriates me, as a layman. if you don't know how to make Roman concrete, don't assume anything about what you see in Roman concrete while you're trying to figure out how it was made. The mode…
I agree with the spirit of what you're saying but you go too far, ironically asserting without any supporting logic that the intelligence of homo sapiens has remained static for the last 2,000 years. But I suppose the disagreement hinges on what is meant by intelligence.
Here's a thought experiment: if you removed all technology (tools, writing, vast stores of knowledge) from a human child and raised them in this vacuum, would they be more or less intelligent? Would they understand their place in the solar system and the structure of the cosmos? Would they know how to protect themselves from sickness (germ theory)? Would their vocabulary and ability to express themselves be less or more?
Of course these questions don't have definitive answers and you can play the game the other way, arguing that modern humans would die in a couple weeks if transported back to caveman times.
But it's a poor model to view intelligence as some static property independent of technology, environment, gene mutation, sexual selection and all the other strings in the web of existence.
Re: Why was Roman concrete so durable?
#60the article talks about evidence which has always been present in evaluations of Roman concrete which was "disregarded as merely evidence of sloppy mixing practices, or poor-quality raw materials," and this kind of thing REALLY infuriates me, as a layman. if you don't know how to make Roman concrete, don't assume anything about what you see in Roman concrete while you're trying to figure out how it was made. The mode…
> if you don't know how to make Roman concrete, don't assume anything
That's not useful guidance for doing research at all. It's similar to some 19th-century physicists/philosophers saying 'if you can't see atoms, you can't possibly know anything about them or whether they even exist'. We also can't make supernovae or supermassive black holes, yet we can still try to learn about them through a combination of available data and educated 'assumptions' (ie theories).
What this research has done is replace one theory with another, and that theory might be replaced by another one later, that's just how science works.