Concrete

Concrete is a composite material composed of fine and coarse aggregate bonded together with a fluid cement (cement paste) that hardens (cures) over time. Concrete is the second-most-used substance in the world after water, and is the most widely used building material. When aggregate is mixed with dry Portland cement and water, the mixture forms a fluid slurry that is easily poured and molded into shape. The cement reacts with the water through a process called concrete hydration that hardens over several hours to form a hard matrix that binds the materials together into a durable stone-like material that has many uses. This time allows concrete to not only be cast in forms but also to have a variety of tooled processes preformed.

Concrete is distinct from mortar. Whereas concrete is itself a building material, mortar is a bonding agent that typically holds bricks, tiles and other masonry units together.

See also

• Brick
• Cement
• Gravel
• Lime Mortar
• Sand
• Sandstone

References

This article uses material from the Wikipedia article Concrete, which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License (view authors).