Curated category
Building materials
- ConcreteConcrete is the second-most-used substance on Earth, behind only water. Every year, more than 10 billion tonnes of it pass through human hands.
- Stainless steelStainless steel is the material that lets surgeons cut, chefs cook, and skyscrapers stand without rusting away. Walk into any kitchen, hospital, or chemical…
- AluminiumAluminium is the most abundant metal in the Earth's crust, making up 8.23% of it by mass, yet for most of human history no one had ever seen a piece of it.
- BrickBrick, the humble rectangular block, was already underfoot at Tell Aswad before 7500 BC, making it one of the oldest manufactured building materials on earth.
- SteelSteel begins with a feat that ancient people could not perform. Iron melts at about 1540 degrees Celsius, a temperature out of reach when the Iron Age began.
- IronIron sits in the periodic table as element 26, symbol Fe, a metal of the first transition series and group 8. By mass it is the most common element on the…
- CementCement is the invisible force holding the modern world together. It binds the sand and gravel in the concrete beneath your feet, the mortar between the…
- Roman concreteRoman concrete, known in Latin as opus caementicium, has outlasted almost everything else its builders made. Aqueducts, reservoirs, and bridges constructed…
- Cast ironCast iron snapped in May 1847, and five people died. A bridge carrying the Chester and Holyhead Railway across the River Dee in Chester collapsed under a…
- WoodWood grew on Earth long before any human could shape it. A 2011 discovery in the Canadian province of New Brunswick yielded the earliest known plants to grow…
- MasonryMasonry predates written history. Before anyone wrote down how to do it, people were already stacking stone and brick into walls that would outlast them.