When were bricks first used? Detailed answer

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When were bricks first used? Detailed answer

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When were bricks first used?

If you were asked to name a durable building material made by man, then most likely you would name a brick. It seems to be true: brick is able to survive granite, limestone and even iron!

Brick is quite a modern building material. It is used all over the world. But at the same time, brick is the same age as civilization! The Babylonians and Egyptians were making and using bricks for building as early as 3000 years before our era. According to the materials of archaeological excavations, it can be concluded that the brick was known even earlier.

Making bricks in ancient times was very hard work. The material for their manufacture was clay or shale, and then they were fired at a high temperature. The clay was kneaded and mixed with water without the use of any machinery: it was stirred by workers with bare feet. Chopped straw was added to raw clay for greater strength. The mixture was then used to make bricks of various shapes by hand, after which they were laid out in the sun to dry.

This method was used for many years, until it was found that firing clay on fire increases the strength of bricks and makes them much more resistant to moisture. No more straw needed to be added. Bricks dried in the sun would have been unsuitable for England, but in the hot Middle Eastern countries such bricks turned out to be so durable that some of the bricks from the buildings of ancient Babylon have survived to this day.

Author: Likum A.

Random interesting fact from the Great Encyclopedia:

How do coconuts grow?

As everyone probably knows, coconuts, or simply coconuts, grow on palm trees. Outside, they are covered with a hard shell, protecting the pulp from damage: when the coconut ripens, it has to fall from a considerable height! Coconuts reach a diameter of 8 to 20 centimeters. Directly under the hard peel is a not very thick layer of dense white pulp, and the void in the center is filled with a watery, pleasant-tasting liquid - coconut milk.

If you have ever seen a coconut close up, then you probably noticed that it has three "eyes" on the outer shell. These "eyes" are undeveloped buds. When a coconut is planted in the soil, one of them blossoms and sprouts, which eventually turns into a new palm tree.

However, before this palm tree begins to bear fruit, at least eight years must pass. A mature coconut tree blooms all year round and almost always has a few ripe nuts on it. However, the ripening of the walnut is a long process, depending on the place of growth and variety, it takes from several months to a year or even more. On one tree, an average of 50 nuts grow every year.

The height of various types of coconut palms ranges from 6 to 20 meters. There are no branches on their smooth trunks, and only the tops of the trees are decorated with bunches of dense, fleecy leaves 3-6 meters long. Coconut palms can grow at low elevations (up to 900 meters above sea level), but they are usually planted in lower places.

One of the features of these trees is that they willingly live in close proximity to sea water, although they do not need it at all. This is due to the ease with which the shallow roots of palm trees absorb moisture from the abundantly irrigated soil on the coast. Coconut skin is not damaged in salt water. This means that a nut that has fallen into the sea waves can be carried out to the open sea and, after long wanderings, thrown onto some distant shore, where after a while a young palm tree will appear.

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A study published in Environmental Science and Technology says that the switch to clean energy sources will cause a supply crisis for scarce metals. And these materials are very important for modern industry.

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