Fun Kids Science Weekly with the book series Artisans, packed with magical powers and featuring an epic battle with the Sandman, Talking Cats and much, much more.

Hello there, thank you for popping along. We're in the middle of a grand adventure exploring the entire universe.

It's a lot to take on, so let's get to it. My name's Dan. This is the Fun Kids Science Midweekly.

Every Wednesday, I'm here answering your burning, boiling, bubbling science questions.

Today we're finding out how concrete's made, why we get headaches,

and why we can't use our coats like bird wings.

Which would be pretty incredible if that worked,

and I've got an idea for an alternative.

Hi, my name is Leo and my question is I want to know how concrete is made. Bye.

Leo, thank you for this. Now cement is a thick, gluey, rocky paste. It's used to bind and pull

building parts close together. When it gets hard, it becomes

concrete. The tricky thing when making cement is to keep it moving, to not make it become

concrete too quickly, because then you can't do anything with it. Cement is made of loads of

different rocks and elements that need to be dug from the ground.

Take a load of this list. Stuff like limestone, silica, aluminium, magnesium, sulphur trioxide, alkalines, iron oxide,

calcium, sulphate. They are all in the basic mix of cement. Then water and sand is chucked into it and it it's mixed, and it needs to keep mixing.

That's why you might have seen those huge turning barrels.

You know, they spin around on building sites.

Sometimes you even spot them on the back of lorries traveling up and down the roads,

and they're even turning when they're there.

It needs to keep turning, because when it stops, it starts to harden into concrete.

And when it becomes hard, you can't really do a lot with it.

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