Materials Science in Ancient Rome
Popular Physics
2011-07-20 v1
Abstract
Two books, the "De Architectura" by Vitruvius and the "Naturalis Historia" by Pliny the Elder, give us a portrait of the Materials Science, that is, the knowledge of materials, in Rome at the beginning of the Empire. Here, I am reporting some very attractive contents that we can find in these books. The reader will see the discussion proposed in fours case studies: concretes, coatings, amorphous materials and colloidal crystals, to describe them in modern words.
Cite
@article{arxiv.1107.3831,
title = {Materials Science in Ancient Rome},
author = {Amelia Carolina Sparavigna},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1107.3831},
year = {2011}
}