Concrete is probably used more widely than any other substance except water, yet it remains largely unappreciated.

"Some people view the 20th century as the atomic age, the space age, the computer age - but an argument can be made that it was the concrete age," says Hendrik van Oss, a cement specialist with the United States Geological Survey. "It's a miracle material."

Indeed, more than a ton of concrete is produced each year for every man, woman, and child on Earth. Yet concrete is generally ignored outside the engineering world, a victim of its own ubiquity and the industry's conservative pace of development.

Now, thanks to environmental pressures and entrepreneurial innovation, a new generation of concretes is emerging. This high-tech, Willy Wonka-esque assortment of concrete confections promises to be stronger, lighter, and more environmentally friendly than ever before.

The concretes they will replace are, for the most part, strong and durable, but with limitations. Like a stick that can bear a body's weight yet be broken over one knee, concrete is sound under compression but weak under tension. Steel rebars, the porcupine-quill protrusions seen in half-finished structures, are used as reinforcement, but make recycling difficult when concrete breaks down - and break down it inevitably will. Cracks caused by stress grow larger over time, with water forcing them open and corroding the rebars within.

"When you put enough stress on it, concrete doesn't work like we want it to. We're asking too much of it now," says Mr. Van Oss.

Concrete is also a climate-change villain. It is made by mixing water with an aggregate, such as sand or gravel, and cement. Cement is usually made by heating limestone and clay to over 2,500 degrees F. The resulting chemical reaction, along with fuel burned to heat the kiln, produces between 7 and 10 percent of global carbon-dioxide emissions.

"When we have to repeatedly regenerate these materials because they're not durable, we release more emissions," says Victor Li, a civil and environmental engineering professor at the University of Michigan. Dr. Li has created a concrete suffused by synthetic fibers that make it stronger, more durable, and able to bend like a metal.

Li's creation does not require reinforcement, a property shared by other concretes that use chemical additives called plasticizers to reduce the amount of water in their composition. Using less water makes concrete stronger, but until the development of plasticizers, it also made concrete sticky, dry, and hard to handle, says Christian Meyer, a civil engineering professor at Columbia University.

"The engineer would specify a certain strength, a certain amount of water - and as soon as a supervisor turned his back, in would go a bucket of water," says Dr. Meyer of the time before plasticizers.

Making stronger concrete, says Li, allows less to be used, reducing waste and giving architects more freedom.

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