this post was submitted on 30 Jan 2024
105 points (96.5% liked)

No Stupid Questions

35809 readers
1157 users here now

No such thing. Ask away!

!nostupidquestions is a community dedicated to being helpful and answering each others' questions on various topics.

The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:

Rules (interactive)


Rule 1- All posts must be legitimate questions. All post titles must include a question.

All posts must be legitimate questions, and all post titles must include a question. Questions that are joke or trolling questions, memes, song lyrics as title, etc. are not allowed here. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.



Rule 2- Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.

Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.



Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.

Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.



Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.

That's it.



Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.

Questions which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.



Rule 6- Regarding META posts and joke questions.

Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-question posts using the [META] tag on your post title.

On fridays, you are allowed to post meme and troll questions, on the condition that it's in text format only, and conforms with our other rules. These posts MUST include the [NSQ Friday] tag in their title.

If you post a serious question on friday and are looking only for legitimate answers, then please include the [Serious] tag on your post. Irrelevant replies will then be removed by moderators.



Rule 7- You can't intentionally annoy, mock, or harass other members.

If you intentionally annoy, mock, harass, or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.

Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.



Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.



Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.

Let everyone have their own content.



Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here.



Credits

Our breathtaking icon was bestowed upon us by @Cevilia!

The greatest banner of all time: by @TheOneWithTheHair!

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

Why is it so expensive and is there an alternative out there that won’t break so easily especially in the winter? My state is spending like a billion dollars a year on roads that they’ll probably have to fix in 5 years, it really seems like a huge waste of money.

Good Public transportation would fix a lot of these costs I know but what other road materials/solutions are out there?

Thank you for the answers and for putting up with my follow up questions. I’m learning a lot!

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] Zonetrooper@lemmy.world 25 points 9 months ago (2 children)

Specifically talking about asphalt vs. concrete:

  • Asphalt is relatively cheap vs. concrete. This is partly because asphalt is a whole lot easier to recycle than concrete, which is almost un-recyclable, but also because asphalt is a relatively "simple" material - it's mostly petroleum byproducts and gravel.

  • Concrete doesn't grip very well, compared to the relatively textured surface of asphalt. Especially when wet! This is why you often see concrete formed with "ridges" or "bumps" cast into it. However...

  • This also makes concrete noisier and bumpier to drive over, making drivers less happy. It's why it's often used for short, low-speed uses like driveways, parking lots, or side streets.

Just about the only thing concrete has going for it is it's endurance, which it definitely wins handily.

Every few years another engineered road solution is conceived - I've seen variations that would use glass which could be 're-fused', concepts for recycling plastic waste, and many more. Most of these run into the issue that they're either less 'grippy', or that they simply cost more even accounting for the longer lifespan.

[–] J12@lemmy.world 5 points 9 months ago (3 children)

Thanks, I had no idea asphalt was a byproduct of petroleum. Is concrete just rocks?

[–] snooggums@kbin.social 13 points 9 months ago

Not technical definitions:

Asphalt is for roads is small rocks held together by petroleum byproducts.

Concrete is small rocks held together by cement.

[–] pishadoot@sh.itjust.works 11 points 9 months ago

Concrete is gravel, sand, cement, lyme, and water, mixed in various ratios.

There's a lot of variations and additives that can change how quickly it cures, often to speed it up or slow it down to account for weather (temperature and humidity play a huge part in how it cures), or to modify the pace of how it cures so you can keep building on it if you're building vertically.

It's a simple concept that gets incredibly complicated very quickly.

Big rocks, little rocks, cement, water.

[–] Zonetrooper@lemmy.world 2 points 9 months ago

Like the other comment says, concrete is rocks of various sizes (called "aggregate") mixed with a cement and other additives to change its particular properties.

The cement is the really important point, because once water is added to the cement, it undergoes a chemical reaction which hardens it. Saying cement "dries" isn't quite correct - yes, it stops being wet, but some of the water actually ends up incorporated into the molecules of the final cement. This is also why cement is really hard to recycle - you have to undo that chemical reaction, as opposed to asphalt which stays the same material.

Fun fact: When concrete is mixed at a big plant, it begins curing immediately. Concrete being carried in those big mixer trucks needs to be delivered before it cures in the truck!

[–] volvoxvsmarla@lemm.ee 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

As for city streets, wouldn't concrete also be more dangerous for pedestrians? I can imagine that a fall on concrete is more likely to result in injury than on asphalt, with broken bones and skulls etc.

[–] Zonetrooper@lemmy.world 3 points 9 months ago

I'm not honestly sure. Asphalt (or, more properly, asphalt and gravel as a mixture, which is what is mostly used as a road surface) and concrete both are pretty 'hard' materials.