I spent part of the last five years learning how to make advanced cementitious/ceramic composites from geologic materials. On some level, I wanted to control my own destiny. It will be hard for anyone to take dirt away form me. I can always build a house in the wilderness.😂

This can't be cast with geopolymer.

For a trial mix design and after decanting the colloid above, I re-dispersed settled particles with a high-shear blade. After the remainder settled overnight, this stratification appeared. My guess: the dark band is 200–500 nm particles, just above colloidal size. The surprise,

I just hired a college student who wouldn't take no for an answer. We get internship applications regularly for TotalShield. But our program isn’t currently active - and I told Matteo that. Yet he kept following up, and not with generic "just checking in" emails either. Every

@Appalachia2023 @VrilmaxxedSam @GovKathyHochul Less then $200, can be made at home

Synthesizing some nano particles based on perlite ore as a filler for a nano composite.

@GovKathyHochul That’s cool, counterpoint , look at this functional Rocket launcher I printed

BREAKING NEWS: Western Governors University, the largest online college in the U.S., has closed on nearly an entire city block in Downtown Salt Lake City in what could be a major boon for the capital city. #utpol https://t.co/vpc6JOiJxx

Naturally assembled advanced cementitious composites will end up in the material space in the red within the next decade. Structural aerogel is where we are headed.

@benmagelsen #MICROSCOPES

This is how enjambment can work in a poem. Bridge 77 on the Macclesfield Canal allows a horse to cross the canal without having to untie it from the canal boat.

Chemistry is geometry. Once you see it that way, it becomes something to explore instead of an abstraction to memorize.

@benmagelsen @kellestadite Joseph Davidovits has ferro-sialate patents that incorporate iron-rich wastes (like iron oxides from ferralitic/lateritic soils or slags) along with silica and alumina sources to create sustainable cement-like binders. - WO2012056125A1 (2012): Covers a calcium

It's not optimization. It's the geometric ground state of an alkali-activated aluminosilicate in a close-packed oxygen scaffold. The lattice is the formula.

The ping pong ball model uses 40mm spheres for oxygen. At that scale: Si⁴⁺ = 7mm (small bearing) Al³⁺ = 15mm (large bearing) I can buy stainless steel bearings in exactly these sizes and drop them into the interstitial holes. Next step: see the actual truss network emerge.

This is what intrigued me about geopolymers in the first place. The nano-aggregates aren't solid balls - they can be crystallized into nanoscale trusses. Strength comes from network topology, not from filling space. Same principle as Greer's metamaterials, but self-assembled

When you stop and think about it: Every 1 K, 2 Si, 1 Al, 6 O formula unit has: 6 octahedral sites available 12 tetrahedral sites available Only 1 Al filling an octahedral site Only 2 Si filling tetrahedral sites That's only 1/6 of sites filled. No wonder geopolymer cements are

Every OH⁻ (green) has adjacent octahedral holes. Al³⁺ wants to sit there - it's +3 charge balancing the proton hole. So the OH⁻ wire positions template exactly where Al³⁺ nucleates. The K⁺ that was charge-balancing the OH⁻ gets displaced to a network-balancing role.

This is the key: HCP has 2 tetrahedral sites per 1 octahedral site Si⁴⁺ fits tetrahedral holes Al³⁺ fits octahedral holes Si : Al = 2 : 1 is the geometry itself Kriven didn't optimize this ratio. She discovered it. The lattice dictates the stoichiometry.

Now here's where Si and Al enter. In hexagonal close packing, each sphere borders: 6 octahedral holes (shared) → 1 per oxygen 8 tetrahedral holes (shared) → 2 per oxygen Ratio: 2 tetrahedral : 1 octahedral And the hole sizes match the cations almost perfectly: