The secret of the strength of the Great Wall of China

The Great Wall: From Beginning to End

Ordnance Survey Office of China determined the exact length of the Great Wall of China.

According to recent measurements, the length of this grand building project antiquity - 8851 km and 800 m. The 2,232.5 km of the wall - from the natural mountain, and 6260 km - brickwork.

Scientists have long racked their brains trying to unravel the mystery of used when laying the bricks of the Great Wall of China. And now, chemists at the University of Zhejiang have still to determine its components are.

It turned out that the composition of which it bears the stone blocks of the Great Wall of China, consisted of boiled rice and slaked lime. And it is quite common of "cement" that the builders used the Ming Dynasty era (1368-1644gg.).

Hack strength solution gives a combination of organic and inorganic compounds: amylopectin of rice and calcium carbonate of lime.

Incidentally, the same figure, the Chinese workers who built the wall, eat at lunchtime.