What do best-selling author Dan Brown, well-known NBC newscaster Brian Williams, and Pulitzer Prize–winning novelist Harper Lee have in common? They all have incorrectly referred to concrete as cement. In his most recent novel, The Lost Symbol, Dan Brown makes this error at least 12 times—I tired and stopped counting. Brian Williams, while standing in front of and reporting about an important wall in the Middle East, said it was constructed of cement, while it was obviously made of concrete.
Regardless of its ultimate place within a structure or facility, concrete is created by combining cement with aggregate (sand, gravel, rock) and water. Therefore, cement is just one component of concrete. Cement and water produce a paste that coats the aggregate and sand. As the paste hardens, it binds the aggregate and sand, resulting in concrete. The cement serves as the binding agent; it is the “glue” within the concrete.