Romans loved the shape of a circle because they thought the shape of a circle is the perfect shape. That is where the Romans got the inspiration for arches. The Romans got the love of the shape of a circle from the greeks who thought the circle was also a perfect shape next to a sphere. The Romans built the foundations of the bridge using cofferdams, cofferdams were used to build the bottom of the pillars for the Roman bridges. A cofferdam is made by tying big wood logs together to form a wall, then they pump out the water from inside the barrier. once they are finished the water is pumped back into the cofferdam, and then they remove the barriers. I used wondered how workers were able to build the pillars underwater it makes a lot more sense now. Here is a video about cofferdams:
Tag: History
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Before Roman Bridges – History of Inventions – Lesson 26
Going across terrain is hard, but it is even harder for the Romans because they would build straight roads across the landscape. They would run into a lot of streams, rivers, canyons, etc. and therefore needed to build bridges. With bridges, it is a lot easier to cross over obstacles. Bridges would mean that Rome wouldn’t have to build a longer road to the side until they found an easier way to go across a river, for example.
But the problem of building a bridge is that it would have to be able to support the weight of a full squad of armed Romans and support the weight of chests and wagons. It would also have to be able to withstand earthquakes and thunderstorms. In the beginning, Rome built wooden bridges, but it wouldn’t be able to withstand significant weather conditions. Then they started building bridges made out of stone, there was better, but the arches couldn’t withstand the weight of Roman traffic over time the arch could collapse. So Rome kept working on the engineering problem of the arches until the bridges were able to withstand the weight and traffic of Rome.
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Castle Pop-up Book
About a week ago, we bought a castle pop-up book from Goodwill. It has a page explaining a short story about the castle and the different places in the castle. When you flip to the next page, the castle pops out, and you can see all of the different areas in a castle. Here are some pictures of the castle fully folded out:
In the pop-up book, there is a page with all of the different castle words and definitions of them, like:
- Armory – a place where weapons and ammunition are stored.
- Ballista – a weapon for hurtling missiles.
- Battering ram – a long heavy beam with an iron head, used to break into a fortification.
There are lots of other interesting words, that I have never heard before! The first time I saw the castle I didn’t see that I can do lots of cool things like open and close the gate to the castle and move the draw bridge up and down. I also saw several enemy soldiers trying to get under the walls of the castle that I didn’t see at first. The book is very intriguing because I can see soldiers walking around the inside of the castle when I look through the gate, and you can see people doing their chores and work around the castle, and it looks pretty realistic!
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Three Different Types of Roman Roads – History of Inventions – Lesson 24
There were three different types of Roman roads:
- Private roads which were for Romans who could afford their own private roads.
- Public (high) roads which were paid for by the government to transport armies or government from one place to the other
- Branch Roads were roads that branched off of the private roads, and the public (high) roads to go to small villages or towns