The other way of breaking a material is to create a crack through it, which is how a glass or a tea cup breaks: unable to flow in order to accommodate the stress that is pulling it apart, a single weakness in this type of material compromises the integrity of the whole, and it splits or shatters. This is how concrete breaks, which was a big headache for the Romans. The Romans never solved this problem and so only used concrete in situations where it was being compressed rather than stretched, such as in a column, dome, or the foundations of a building, where every part of the concrete was
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