rammed earth

(noun)

A construction material made by compressing or packing dirt.

Related Terms

Examples of rammed earth in the following topics:

  • Architecture of the Han Dynasty

    • Remains of Han Dynasty architecture include ruins of brick and rammed earth walls, rammed earth platforms, and funerary stone pillar-gates.
    • Architecture from the Han Dynasty that has survived until today include ruins of brick and rammed earth walls (including above-ground city walls and underground tomb walls), rammed earth platforms for terraced altars and halls, funerary stone or brick pillar-gates, and scattered ceramic roof tiles that once adorned timber halls.
    • Sections of the Han-era rammed earth Great Wall still exist in Gansu province, along with the Han frontier ruins of thirty beacon towers and two fortified castles with crenellations.
    • Han walls of frontier towns and forts in Inner Mongolia were typically constructed with stamped clay bricks instead of rammed earth.
    • Thatched or tiled roofs were supported by wooden pillars, since the addition of brick, rammed earth, or mud walls of these halls did not actually support the roof.

  • Domestic Architecture in Modern Africa

    • Vernacular architecture uses a wide range of materials, such as thatch, stick/wood, mud, mudbrick, rammed earth, and stone, with a preference for materials varying by region.
    • North Africa primarily used stone and rammed earth; West Africa tends toward mud and adobe; central Africa uses thatch, wood, and more perishable materials; southern Africa uses stone, thatch, and wood; and in East Africa the materials have varied.

  • Architecture during the Six Dynasties Period

    • Although mostly only ruins of brick and rammed earth walls and towers from the Six Dynasties have survived, information on ancient Chinese architecture (especially wooden architecture) can be discerned from more or less realistic clay models of buildings created by the ancient Chinese as funerary items.

  • The Vedas

    • According to the hymns of the Rig Veda, the most important deities were Agni, the god of Fire, intermediary between the gods and humans; Indra, the god of Heavens and War, protector of the Aryans against their enemies; Surya, the Sun god; Vayu, the god of Wind; and Prthivi, the goddess of Earth.
    • Afterward Purusha’s mind became the Moon, his eyes became the Sun, his head the Sky, and his feet the Earth.
    • Agni, the Indian God of Fire from the ancient Vedic religion, shown riding a ram.

  • Sculpture of the Igbo-Ukwu

    • These painted figures--sculpted in the form of deities, animals, legendary creatures, ancestors, officials, craftsmen, and foreigners--are made to appease the earth goddess.
    • Everyday houses were made of mud and thatched roofs with bare earth floors with carved design doors.

  • Norse Timber Architecture in the Early European Middle Ages

    • Archaeological excavations have shown that stave churches descend from palisade constructions and later churches with earth-bound posts.
    • Logs were split in two halves, rammed into the ground, and given a roof.

  • The development of life on Earth

  • Hardware and Software Improvements

    • Unlike standard computer memory (random access memory or RAM) in which the user supplies a memory address and the RAM returns the data word stored at that address, a CAM is designed such that the user supplies a data word and the CAM searches its entire memory to see if that data word is stored anywhere in it.
    • Because a CAM is designed to search its entire memory in a single operation, it is much faster than RAM in virtually all search applications.
    • This allows the separation of RAM from CPU by optical interconnects.

  • Greenhouse Gases and Global Warming

    • Because all objects are continually emitting radiation, the atmosphere (having absorbed the Earth's radiation) then emits radiation, some of which is then reabsorbed by the Earth's surface.  
    • Atmospheric reflecters, notably sulfates and nitrates, reflect and scatter light before it ever hits the surface of the Earth, effectively reducing the power that the Earth receives.
    • These trap heat before it leaves the Earth, insulating the Earth and increasing the Earth's equilibrium temperature.
    • In general, the earth radiates the same energy that it receives.
    • Since the Earth is cooler than the Sun, as the Earth absorbs radiation from the Sun and re-emits radiation from the Earth's surface, there is a net production of entropy.

  • Eratosthenes' Experiment

    • Eratosthanes sought to know the circumference of Earth.
    • Knowing geometry and having observed eclipses of the moon, he believed Earth was a sphere of matter.
    • Eratosthenes reasoned that this occurred because the rays of the sun struck Earth perpendicularly.
    • $C_{earth} = \pi D = \pi \left(2r_{earth}\right) = \pi \left(2\left(3979 \; miles\right)\right) = 25,000 \; miles$
    • Today the measured radius of Earth is taken to be 3963 miles.