Re: [papercreters] Re: Styrocrete anybody?

Once I went on a tour of the Army Corps of Engineers facility at Vicksburg, MS where they have models of the Mississippi river and various harbors, rivers, and dams. One of the things they do there is test various kinds of materials - often by building them and blowing them up. In one area were samples of various mixes of concrete, all cut to the same size, but with very different properties. There was 'standard' concrete filled with Mississippi river gravel as a reference. Next to it was concrete filled with lead pellets, maybe for nuclear bunker material - that was hard work just to lift the sample. There was also a sample using closed-cell styrofoam pellets - that felt practically weightless after trying to lift the lead sample. I suppose they were testing it for insulation and lightweight properties. It looked like it may have been about as strong as standard concrete and could be mixed in a standard cement mixer. The inner beads exposed where they cut the concrete appeared to be bonded with the concrete, not shrunk away from it. I don't understand people's comments about papercrete shrinking away from imbedded material - I put a piece of rebar into a test block and it remains stuck tightly. In general when things shrink, every part of it gets smaller. If you shrink a donut, the hole gets smaller, not larger.

Be of good cheer,
Dick

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