Word: thickness
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Fitting a modern laboratory into the construction ideals f the 1870's has been no easy job, as Stevens can well testify, Regardless of the opinions of latter day aspiring architects and Fine Arts students, Memorial Hall was built to last. Basement partitions measure four to five feet thick and are built of slabs of rock as well as brick. Pneumatic drills have been needed more than once to put in doors, ventilators, and staircases, as called for in the blueprints. The only visible change on the exterior of this monument will be the main entrance to the Laboratory, which...
...what makes the wheels of the Met go round. Of the Met's eight most frequently heard operas, four are his-Lohengrin, Tannhäuser, Tristan und Isolde and Die Walküre. From Caruso's debut (1903) until eleven years ago, the Met had a thick Italian accent. Then came the great Norwegian, Kirsten Flagstad, to join the great Dane, Lauritz Melchior-two singers with the bellows and brawn to shout down the batteries of trumpets and trombones that Wagner put to work in the pit. Since Flagstad went home to her quisling husband and semi-retirement...
...Arctic-conscious U.S. Army has to keep the Frozen North frozen. The reason: beneath much of Alaska, as in other Arctic lands, lies a thick layer of "permafrost," or permanently frozen ground. It is hard and firm, but, as Russians discovered in Siberia long ago, even a trickle of heat can turn it to slithery muck. Roads and airport runways, absorbing summer sun, get as squashy as cranberry bogs. In winter, the warmth of a heated building may seep into the permafrost, allowing floors to sink and walls to wobble drunkenly. Many Alaskan villages, built in defiance of permafrost, look...
...melting the holes with steam jets. The piles are then wrapped in tar paper and greased, so that the topsoil, freezing and thawing with the seasons, cannot stick to them and heave them. But piles are scarce in much of Alaska, and Army engineers think they know something better: thick insulating mats to keep the permafrost always frozen...
Near Fairbanks, the Army has laid down 20 runway sections insulated from the permafrost by layers of cellular concrete, asphalt, foam glass, gravel, moss and spruce boughs. Under each runway are thermometers to measure heat penetration. For buildings, the trick is to rest the walls on thick mats of insulating material, or allow cold air to circulate freely under heated floors. Roads will be insulated, too, to keep foundations frozen under thundering tanks and trucks...