What you get when you combine Microsoft's main products. Windows CE + Windows ME + Windows NT = Windows CEMENT. Proclaimed by some as the simple irony that when you realize that Windows is not an Enterprise Class Operating System, and you're rebooting the servers 15 times per hour, the feeling in your stomach is roughly equivalent to eating cement.

See also get your resume ready.

Cement is formed by heating limestone and clay. Powdered clay and limestone are roasted in a kiln to produce a complex mixture of calcium and aluminium silicates. This is cement.

When cement is mixed with water, a slow chemical reaction takes place that causes the cement to slowly set hard. It is used to bond bricks together in building. It is also often mixed with sand and chippings to make concrete, which is a very quick and cheap building material. Many consider it unattractive, however.

Cement is a complex mix of many chemical compounds. Of these, the principal four are:

Alite is the compound that gives cement its immediate strengthening property, whereas belite provides material strength over longer periods of time.

These compounds are obtained by a process known as clinkerization, which involves heating a mix of calcium oxide (CaO), silicon oxide (Si2O2), aluminum oxide (Al2O3) and ferric oxide (Fe2O3) at temperatures over 1400 Celsius to produce clinker, the main ingredient of cement.

The four oxides required to supply the clinkerization process can be obtained by raw materials like limestone, schist, clay, dolomite, silica sand, bauxite, wet fly ash and iron ore. These are obtained by quarrying. Silica oxide, aluminum oxide and ferric oxide are readily found in their respective raw materials, but calcium oxide must be extracted from calcium carbonate (CaCO3) found in limestone. This is achieved by a process known as calcination, which absorbs heat energy and releases calcium carbonate and carbon dioxide (CO2). Calcination occurs in a production stage before clinkerization, where the raw materials, having being mixed an milled into powder are being preheated to gradually reach kiln temperatures.

Clinker, which is produced in the form of sintered lumps, is then mixed with a small proportion of gypsum and milled into powder to produce cement. The addition of gypsum slows down cement’s hydration process to make it workable in construction, but does not alter cement’s base chemical properties. In some occasions the mix is diluted with clinker substitutes such as pozzolana to produce cement types with inferior chemical characteristics.

Ce*ment" (?), n. [OF. cement, ciment, F. ciment, fr. L. caementum a rough, unhewn stone, pieces or chips of marble, from which mortar was made, contr. fr. caedimentum, fr. caedere to cut, prob. akin to scindere to cleave, and to E. shed, v. t.]

1.

Any substance used for making bodies adhere to each other, as mortar, glue, etc.

2.

A kind of calcined limestone, or a calcined mixture of clay and lime, for making mortar which will harden under water.

3.

The powder used in cementation. See Cementation, n.., 2.

4.

Bond of union; that which unites firmly, as persons in friendship, or men in society.

"The cement of our love."

5. Anat.

The layer of bone investing the root and neck of a tooth; -- called also cementum.

Hydraulic cement. See under Hydraulic.

 

© Webster 1913.


Ce*ment" (?), v. t. [imp. & p. p. Cemented; p. pr. & vb. n. Cementing.] [Cf. F. cimenter. See Cement, n.]

1.

To unite or cause to adhere by means of a cement.

Bp. Burnet.

2.

To unite firmly or closely.

Shak.

3.

To overlay or coat with cement; as, to cement a cellar bottom.

 

© Webster 1913.


Ce*ment", v. i.

To become cemented or firmly united; to cohere.

S. Sharp.

 

© Webster 1913.

Log in or register to write something here or to contact authors.