28/08/2026
🛣Fact Friday
Next time you drive, you are riding on about 40 mm of asphalt. Everything holding you up is underneath it.
A wheel presses down on a small patch of tar. The asphalt passes that weight to the crushed stone base, which hands it on across a wider area. The gravel sub-base widens it again. By the time the weight reaches the soil at the bottom, it is spread over enough ground that ordinary earth can carry it without moving.
That is the point of building in layers. A tonne concentrated in one spot would sink into the soil. The same tonne, spread out, does not.
Thousands of vehicles a day, for years and all of that work happens where nobody can see it.
Engineering is often like that. The part you see is the smallest part of the work.
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