🔗 Rebar and reinforced concrete - All this

A recent episode of the 99% Invisible podcast, “Brilliantly Boring,” covers a topic near and dear to my heart: reinforced concrete—more specifically, the rebar that does the reinforcing. The show does an excellent job in a short period. I just want to fill in some details.

“The 99% invisible podcast Brilliantly Boring” must be the best name I’ve ever seen for a podcast. For any kind of show.

Anyhow, Dr. Drang’s post is very interesting and not at all boring. As a lawyer I work with many construction experts, architects and engineers, and I always enjoy listening to their technical explanations.

BTW, regarding this comment about the concrete from Ancient Rome:

It took me a while to write this post, mainly because I kept veering off on tangents about Frank Lloyd Wright’s home and office in Oak Park, strain compatibility, the weird belief among some people that Roman concrete was better than today’s, compression-only structures, rebar size nomenclature, and the tendency for concrete to use the waste products of other industries (like flyash and, perhaps, discarded cable car rope). I hope you appreciate how I managed to edit it down.

I guess they made tons of constructions with concrete and only the Pantheon survives. But the Pantheon is so impressive. I’d like to read a follow-up post by Dr. Drang explaining how was Roman concrete made and what the differences where with todays concrete (apart from the rebar, I guess).