The NIST stone test wall is an experiment by the United States National Institute of Standards and Technology to determine how different types of construction stone weather. It includes 2352 samples of stone from 47 different states within the US and 16 different countries. The wall measures approximately 12 m long, 4 m high, 0.6 m thick at the bottom, and 0.3 m at the top.
It includes varieties of andesite, argillite (slate), basalt, bluestone, breccia, conglomerate, coquina, coral, dacite, diabase, diorite, dolomite, gabbro, gneiss, granite, granodiorite, greenstone, labradorite, limestone, marble, melaphyre, pitchstone, pumice, pyrophyllite, quartz, quartzite, sandstone, schist, serpentinite, shellstone, soapstone, syenite, travertine, and tuff.
The wall was built by one stonemason, Vincent Di Benedeto, in 1948. He used two types of stone-setting mortar on the front. He used both a 1:3 lime mortar, with a high calcium hydrate and a 1:0.4:3 portland cement, whiting, and sand mortar.
The wall was moved from its original location in Washington, D.C. to Gaithersburg, Maryland in May 1977.
Famous quotes containing the words stone, test and/or wall:
“It is not quite the same when we are seventy-two as when we are twenty-seven; still I am glad of what is left, and wish we might both hold out till the victory we have sought is won, but all the same the victory is coming. In the aftertime the world will be the better for it.”
—Lucy Stone (1818–1893)
“This, then, is the test we must set for ourselves; not to march alone but to march in such a way that others will wish to join us.”
—Hubert H. Humphrey (1911–1978)
“When a wall is collapsing, everybody gives it a push.”
—Chinese proverb.