Re: Scientist Says Concrete Was Used in Pyramids

David Johnson <trolleyfan_nospam@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Have you in fact _not_ been reading what others have been posting? Or
are you just so wedded to this idea, that you refuse to let it sink
through?

Your comment was vague. I need accurate arguments to reply.

So, why:

See, it worked :-)


1) Probably 95% of the (physcial) effort involved in building the
pyramid is moving the material around. Two-and-a-half ton blocks or
two-and-a-half tons of "concrete" mix, it doesn't matter - it takes the
same effort. Unfortunately for "concrete", you not only have to move the
"mix", but the water to mix it as well - around 15-20% of freshly mixed
concrete is water. That means for every two-and-a-half tons of mix you
now have to _also_ move half a ton of water.

Or, IOW, you've just increased the amount of material needed to be moved
by 20% or so. When that's all being moved by man-power without so much
as a wheelbarrow, this is _so_ less than good.


The reconstituted limestone is a wet premix which does not contain as
much water as today's concrete => the overweight is negligible,
especially when you consider that a fraction of the pyramid was made of
casted blocks. Moreover, advantages of casting blocks largely balance
the reconstituted limestone "overweight". See below.



2) If you had been reading the past posts to you on the subject, you
would know by now that the limestone doesn't just "dissolve" in water
(or "disaggregate" or dis-anything else - it just gets wet).

It is not clear if there was or wasn't a source of limestone much like
Davidovits describe it (weathered or easy to crush). I need to discuss
this point with him (if I manage to contact him). Anyway, addition of
natron and lime yield NaOH which dissolves the silicate of the 1% kaolin
clay contained in the limestone and help to disaggregate the stone
(calcite does not dissolve).


That means
you have to go in there and break it up by hand.

And breaking up two-and-a-half tons of limestone into little
concretable-sized bits is a _lot_ more work than simply splitting out
single two-and-a-half ton blocks. A _lot_ more work. Oh, it isn't
anywhere near as _precision_ work - but it's still work.


Absolutely not more work. The crushing work was done at the same time as
the carving work. I proved that for each ton of carved blocks about half
a ton of waste (crushed limestone) is produced. That's plenty enough to
be used for the casted stones that represent only a fraction of the
stones in the pyramid (according to Barsoum). Actually you spare energy,
since you recycle the waste and so, doesn't have to carve more blocks.
But other advantages can explain why casting stones could be more
interesting. See below.


3) And after having put all the work into making your mix, and hauling
water, and mixing it up, and making a mold, and pouring the mold, and
waiting four hours or whatever for it to set up, the _result_ is a block
that could have been made the same way as all the _other_ limestone
blocks in the pyramid! That's right! You've probably doubled or tripled
the effort require to make a block and are left with a block with _no_
advantages over one simply cut out of stone...by stonemasons who have
had a couple of million blocks to get _really_ good at it.

Your analysis miss a couple of important points:

You need to build a gigantic ramp to haul the carved stones to the top
of the pyramid. That's a lot of energy and time to build such a large
ramp which, according to Lehner, would have a volume about half of the
pyramid itself. So pouring stones starting at a certain height vs
building a larger ramp will spare a lot of energy.

The joints between the stones forming the outercasing and inner casing
are perfect. It takes an awful amount of time to carved stones with this
perfection. Much more time than it was necessary for the roughly carved
stones of the core and much more time than casting the blocks.
Again you gain both time and energy.


So, like I said - a stupid waste of time and effort for no benefit.

In contrary, I showed that important gain is achieved by casting the
blocks of the top and of the outer/inner casing. I think answered each
of your points.



Anyway, the microstructure analysis of Barsoum's samples from the blocks
proved clearly that they did not come from the quarries and were
synthetic. That's the point you need to critic. Sadly, It seems that
nobody can do it. So until these evidences are disproved, It stands that
blocks in the pyramid were casted. Period.

David

* A _very_ rough calculation shows them cutting 20-30 blocks an _hour_.
How many individual groups each cutting out a block this is, I don't know
- but if it's under 80 or so...yes, they can cut a block faster than
yours can dry.

1200 stones carver is the estimation by Lehner.

--
Florian

"Tout est au mieux dans le meilleur des mondes possibles"
Voltaire vs Leibniz
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Scientist Says Concrete Was Used in Pyramids
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  • Re: Scientist Says Concrete Was Used in Pyramids
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