- By Jim Evans
- Entertainment
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SMART TALK
by Dr. Perse Nickety
CEMENT vs. CONCRETE: Sometimes we have the pleasure of working with advanced patients at the Center for English as a First Language. English really is their first language; they just need a little polishing. These patients usually come to me, and we work on lapses such as not knowing the difference between that and which, or between cement and concrete.
Here's one of those advanced lessons.
Cement is the powder it all starts with. Limestone gets baked and ground to a powder with some other minerals. It reacts when you add water, and it turns back to stone.
Concrete is the mixture that comes in those big trucks. A basic concrete recipe is one part cement, two parts sand, and three parts gravel. What is any cement? It's glue. It sticks the sand and gravel together much as the sugar syrup does to the puffed rice in Rice Krispie treats.
A cement wall would be much more expensive than a concrete wall. All that filler of sand, gravel, and rock saves on cement. And money.
We tell our advanced patients to visit Johnson's Hardware and Mercantile in downtown Underbelly and notice the price difference between cement and concrete in those ready-to-mix bags. Sometimes that drives the lesson home.
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