It looked like normal concrete. It poured like normal concrete. But it had a super power.
No fewer people would have slotxo wallet asked the question of when slots were played, breaking well, because Thais have been bound by faith for a long time. The more the number science.
James Baker, chief executive of Graphene@Manchester, couldn't quite believe what he was seeing as he observed the installation of a new roller disco floor in Manchester's Depot Mayfield development.
The concrete slab was setting so fast, and so strong, that the builders had begun gliding polishing machines over the driest part of the floor while their colleagues were still pouring the other end of the rink.
"Normally, you'd have to wait a week before you could do that," he says. The installation, in October last year, took less than a day.
This concrete was special because it contained a tiny but transformative amount of graphene, microscopic flakes of carbon atoms arranged in a honeycomb lattice.
Graphene is the strongest material ever discovered but for nearly two decades has struggled to find a revolutionary role in commercial products. Is that about to change?
Besides improving the mechanical properties of certain materials, it is hoped graphene could also make some projects more environmentally-friendly.
"By adding as little as 0.1% graphene into cement and aggregate, you can potentially use less material to get the same performance," explains Mr Baker. Reducing the amount of concrete used in construction for instance by 30%, could lower global CO2 emissions by 2-3%, he estimates.
Besides the roller disco, Mr Baker and his colleagues have also trialled the graphene-infused concrete, known as concretene, in a gym floor in Wiltshire and some road projects, including a section of the A1 several hundred metres long in Northumberland.
The team will also pour concretene in an as-yet undisclosed project in the United Arab Emirates this year.
These early trials have comprised fairly straightforward projects, Mr Baker explains - floor slabs, rather than walls or elevated platforms, which might be more risky. So far, the concretene has performed as expected, though.
