“Homemade cement” experiment

How to make cement at home

It’s easy to make the sim­plest type of ce­ment your­self. In this ex­per­i­ment, we’ll pre­pare a mix­ture which you can use to make a lit­tle house, for ex­am­ple for a dog.

Safe­ty pre­cau­tions

Wear a pro­tec­tive mask, gloves and glass­es, and work in a well-ven­ti­lat­ed room.

Warn­ing! Only un­der adults su­per­vi­sion.

Reagents and equip­ment:

  • build­ing lime (cal­ci­um ox­ide, 100 g);
  • sand (300 g);
  • wa­ter (100-150 ml);
  • deep con­tain­er for mix­ing;
  • trow­el;
  • bricks.

Step-by-step in­struc­tions

Mix the build­ing lime with wa­ter. Grad­u­al­ly add sand and stir thor­ough­ly. We get a sim­ple ce­ment mix­ture. Ap­ply it to bricks and leave for a week. The bricks are stuck to­geth­er!

Pro­cess­es de­scrip­tion

In the re­ac­tion of cal­ci­um ox­ide with wa­ter, cal­ci­um hy­drox­ide forms.

СаО + Н₂О = Са(ОН)₂

In air, cal­ci­um hy­drox­ide re­acts with car­bon diox­ide with the for­ma­tion of durable cal­ci­um car­bon­ate, which en­velops and sticks the sand par­ti­cles to­geth­er

Са(ОН)₂ + СО₂ = СаСО₃ + Н₂О