What are three completions of the Romans in areas of architecture and engineering?

Answer 1

All the bridges and above ground aqueducts were important engineering achievements. The Mulvian bridge in Rome itself is still being used today with parts of others still in use empire wide. In architecture the Pantheon stand out as well as the descriptions of Nero's Golden House. The Tuscan and the Composite style of column were developed by the ancient Romans.

Answer 2

Take your pick among the following:

The biggest feature of Roman architecture is what historians call the Roman architectural revolution or concrete revolution. This involved the extensive use of concrete, the barrel arch and the vaulted arch.

Although the Romans were not the first in history to use concrete, they developed a type of concrete (opus caementicium) which was as resistant as modern concrete and which also set underwater (and therefore could be used to build docks for ports, dams, aqueducts and bridges). It was less fluid than modern concrete and had to be layered by hand. It was made by mixing a volcanic rock called pozzolana (which is named after Pozzuoli, a suburb of Naples) with lime and adding rubble from stones, bricks or pottery sherds as aggregates which added body and strength to it. It was one of the three elements which enabled the Romans to go beyond the use of Greek methods of enclosing space by the use of cut-stone and post-and-beam or post-and-lintel structures. Concrete had technical and practical advantages. It was exceptionally strong and could span great distances when shaped into arches, vaults and domes. It could be moulded. It was layered into a formwork and it took the shape of its container. It did not require skilled labour and therefore was cheaper. It was much faster for construction than laborious masonry walls. It was safer because concrete-vaulted roofing was fireproof, unlike the wooden-beamed roofs of traditional construction methods.

With this revolution the potential of the previously little used arch, vault, and dome was fully exploited for the first time. The Etruscans are said to have invented the simple (barrel) arch. The oldest example of the vaulted arch has been found in the Greek city of Pergamon (in western Turkey). The vaulted arch came into two forms: the groin arch was formed with two to four intersecting barrel arches and the rib arch, where the intersecting barrels were not of the same diameter. The Romans were first to fully appreciate the advantages of the arch and the vault. The arch has a strong load- bearing capacity. The vault has an even greater load bearing capacity and its structure is suited to support large roofs. Their construction in concrete made them easier to build and even stronger. This led to the use larger and monumental arches and vaults on a grand scale. However, the Romans did not abandon masonry arches and vaults.

Concrete and the arch and the vault became essential for large buildings and roofs. They were used to build basilicas (public buildings) amphitheatres (arenas), theatres, baths, circuses (racing tracks) domes, forts and fortifications, bridges, aqueducts, and dams. It was also used to assist the construction of the stone-paved roads. A ditch was ploughed down to the firmest layer of ground that was found. The ditch was filled with rubble from local materials or sand (when it could be found) up to one metre from the surface level. A flat floor of compacted gravel was made. Then a surface was made by embedding the stones in concrete to create the paving. The concrete was laid in two thin layers. The bottom one had coarse concrete and the top one had fine concrete.

With this revolution much longer bridges which could cross much wider rivers and valleys could be built. Trajan's bridge crossed the river Danube and although it was only functional for a few decades, it was the longest arch bridge in both total and span length for more than 1,000 years. It was 1,135 m (3,724 ft.) long, 15 m (49 ft.) wide, and 19 m (62 ft.) above the water level. If high bridges were needed, two or three tiers of arches were built on top of each other to reach the desired height. The Pont du Gard, a bridge for an aqueduct which supplied Nimes in southern France, is the greatest example of a multi- tier bridge. It has three tiers of recessed arches with the main piers in line one above the other. The first two tiers have very high and wide arches and a third tier has low and narrow arches. It reaches a height of 48.8 metres (160 feet). The lower tier is 142 metres (466 feet) long and has six arches 22 metres (72 ft.) high. The second tier is 242 metres (794 ft.) long and has eleven arches 20 metres (66 ft.) high. The upper tier is 275 metre (902 ft.) long. It originally had 47 arches (only 35 have survived) 7 metres (23 ft.) high. The width of the first pier is 6 metres (20th.), that of the second is 4 metres (13 ft.) and that of the third is 3 metres (23 ft).

The Romans invented segmental arch (a flatter arch in which the curve is a less than semi-circular segment of a circle). They realized that an arch did not have to be a semicircle. These arches were used regularly for houses, warehouses and bridges. The Limyra Bridge in south-western Turkey had 26 segmental arches. Its 27th arch at the eastern end collapsed and was replaced with by two smaller, semi-circular arches.

Concrete also enabled the Romans to be the first to build large and monumental domes. The best example of this is the dome of the rotunda of the Pantheon in Rome (a temple dedicated to all gods which is well preserved because it was converted into a Christian church). It is still the largest unreinforced concrete dome in the world.

The Romans experimented with the pendentive dome in the 2nd and 3rd centuries AD. It was fully developed with the revolutionary structure of for the famous Hagia Sophia church in Constantinople ( now Istanbul) in the 6th century. These are masonry domes which rest on pendentives: devices which allow the placing of a circular dome over a square room or an elliptical dome over a rectangular room. They are triangular segments of a sphere which fill the spaces between four arches placed in a square shape and form a continuous circular or elliptical base which supports the dome.

The Romans built great aqueducts. Most were underground conduits. They were on bridges when the aqueducts had to cross a valley or when they were needed to keep a gradient to make the water moving. In steep valleys a system of siphons was used. The siphons took the water to tanks lower down which fed other conduits.

The Romans invented the stone-paves roads. The network of these roads reached 80,500 kilometres (50,313 miles) which was 20% of the network of 400,000 kilometres (250,000 miles) of roads in the Roman Empire.

The Romans invented the amphitheatre, which was an arena for the gladiatorial games. They took the Greek idea of theatres with semi-circular seating and they extended it to a full circle or, more usually an elliptic shape. The Colosseum and the arena of Verona are the two most famous amphitheatres.

The Romans adopted the cranes of the Greeks and massively improved on them. The simplest one was the trispastos, which had a single-beam, a winch, a rope, and a block with three pulleys. It had had a mechanical advantage of 3:1, and single man could raise 150 kg. The pentaspastos had five pulleys and the polyspastos had a set of three by five pulleys with two, three or four masts. The latter was worked by four men at both sides of the winch and could lift 3,000 kg. When the winch was replaced by a treadwheel, the load could be doubled to 6,000 kg with only half the crew, because the treadwheel had a larger diameter and thus a much bigger mechanical advantage.

The Romans improved on the ballista which was a Greek crossbow-like catapult which launched a large projectile at a distant target with precision using torsion springs. The springs consisted of several loops of twisted ropes. The Manuballista was a handheld version of the traditional Ballista. The Carroballista was a cart-mounted version. The ancient sources said that the Romans developed the polybolos, a 'repeating' ballista which shot 11 shots a minute. This was at least four times the rate of an ordinary ballista. However, none has been found by archaeologists.

The Romans invented the onager, a sling catapult for launching heavy rock projectiles. The catapults of the Middle Ages were modelled on the onager.

The Romans invented the hypocaust, which was an underfloor heating system for heating houses and the baths using hot air. The floor was raised above the ground by pillars which left a space inside that was filled with hot air from a furnace. The heat from the underfloor heated the air in the room. Passages boxed by ceramic tiles were put inside the walls to move the air to flues on the roof and to heat the walls.

Answer 3

I don't know figure it out loser