Saw an article or documentary and it said something to the effect of Roman buildings heal themselves after being damaged or weather damage.
How can that be
In: Engineering
Cement is made from a chemical reaction of a special kind of rocks with water. Roman concrete was made in such a way (unintentionally) that some of the rocks did not fully react, so that cracks would expose the unreacted rocks and “heal” the concrete.
This is not done today because we expect concrete to be much stronger and do not care if it lasts 2000 years. So, it is cheaper to design buildings with fully reacted concrete since it is stronger.
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