this post was submitted on 19 Jan 2024
68 points (95.9% liked)

Asklemmy

43120 readers
926 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy πŸ”

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

  1. Open-ended question
  2. Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
  3. Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
  4. Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
  5. An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Something like the pyramids, or colosseum

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] ricecake@sh.itjust.works 29 points 7 months ago (3 children)

Hoover and three gorges dams. That much cement will be noticable for a long time.

"Low cost" levys and break waters, since those just use large cut rock dumped in the water.

A lot of modern engineering uses a more advanced type of cement than the ones ancient people used.
It's chemically stable so it doesn't react with the environment and has a predictable lifespan.
A side effect of this is that it predictably only reliably lasts about 100 years.
Older cement could react with the environment, which meant sometimes it broke really fast, but also sometimes it is able to heal small cracks and last indefinitely, if it doesn't get a mold outbreak.

The pyramids are basically a big pile of rocks, so that isn't going anywhere.

So for modern buildings, you'll want to look for structures made from cement intended to last a very long time with low maintenance near water, like the biggest dams, or things made out of cut rock, like low cost commercial port break waters.

We just don't make as many structures out of raw rock or crappy cement anymore, so it's not as likely for a lot of buildings to survive.
On the flip side, we do have a lot more buildings, so they'll probably find random elementary schools in Nevada in 4k years.

[–] oehm@midwest.social 11 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Being pedantic but it’s concrete not cement. Cement is one of multiple ingredients of concrete. It’s a binder.

[–] ricecake@sh.itjust.works 3 points 7 months ago

That's fair. I was thinking about the active part that causes the difference in lifespan while typing. :)

load more comments (1 replies)