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As The Hoover Dam rose during its construction, it was built in a unique way—using individual columns instead of one solid block of concrete. Why?Engineers from the Bureau of Reclamation discovered that pouring the dam all at once would generate so much heat that it would take 125 years to cool, risking cracks and structural failure. To mitigate this, columns were designed in five-foot lifts to help manage the heat produced by the curing concrete.To cool the concrete, each column was equipped with one-inch cooling coils filled with river water, followed by chilled water from a refrigeration plant. Once cooled, grout was injected into interlocking grooves to bond the entire dam into a solid, monolithic structure.To learn more about how the dam was built, visit: https://ow.ly/m5AR50UPrNm.