First Batch of 5 Scrambled Paragraphs

Answers are under the paragraphs.  Please keep scrolling down.

1.  Concrete is a compound material made from sand, gravel and cement.  

_____(Q) The pink sand turned out to be fine volcanic ash and they had inadvertently produced the first 'pozzolanic' cement. 

_____(R) The oldest known surviving concrete is to be found in the former Yugoslavia and was thought to have been laid in 5,600 BC using red lime as the cement. 

_____(S) The Romans found that by mixing a pink sand-like material which they obtained from Pozzuoli with their normal lime-based concretes they obtained a far stronger material.  

_____(T) Pozzolana is any siliceous or siliceous and aluminous material which possesses little or no cementitious value in itself but will, if finely divided and mixed with water, chemically react with calcium hydroxide to form compounds with cementitious properties.

_____(U) The first major concrete users, however, were the Egyptians in around 2,500 BC and the Romans from 300 BC.

 Source:

http://www.azom.com/details.asp?ArticleID=1317

2.  Designing the first Ferris Wheel was no easy task, even for experienced engineers.

_____(Q) Difficulties were also met in obtaining financing, for in 1892, the country was in the midst of a severe depression.

_____(R) His ideas were first treated as those of a lunatic and he became known as "The Man with Wheels in his Head."

_____(S) Stresses for such a structure had never been determined, so the theory of design had to be derived from first principles.

_____(T) Armed with completed plans and guaranteed financing, Ferris approached the Columbian Exposition's Ways and Means Committee in the spring of 1892.

_____(U) But Ferris's quiet yet enthusiastic manner inspired confidence and the Ferris Wheel Company was eventually capitalized at $600,000.

Source:http://www.hydeparkhistory.org/newsletter.html

3.  Less than a decade after the Emancipation Proclamation, the insatiable appetite of the railroads drew former slaves into work as steel drivers to create the tunnels and lay the tracks needed to expand rail routes across the American continent.

_____(Q) Living under conditions scarcely better than their days in slavery, steel drivers labored in hard, dirty, cramped and life-threatening circumstances to drill through the living granite heart of the Appalachians.

 _____(R) From the isolated, brawling. death-defying lives of these men, stories arose - some true, some imaginary - to inspire, amuse and entertain the workers: the most enduring of these, in song and myth, is the Legend of John Henry.

 _____(S) The partner held in place a steel shaft with a cutting head that the "driver," often working from awkward angles, forced into the native stone with repeated strikes of his hammer.

 _____(T) To do this, a steel driver worked with a partner.

 _____(U) Once the shaft had cut a hole sufficiently deep, a blaster would pack the hole with explosives and blow another notch into the tunnel.

source:

http://www.ibiblio.org/john_henry/steel.html

4.  In Latin, “Cogito ergo sum.” means: “I think, therefore I am.”

_____(Q) Therefore, regardless of even a trick by Satan himself, whenever I think, I know that I exist.

_____(R) This was a dictum coined in 1637 by René Descartes as a first step in demonstrating that we can know certain things are absolutely true.

_____(S) Furthermore, he argued, the statement “I am” (sum) expresses an immediate intuition, not the conclusion of dubious reasoning, and is thus indubitable.

_____(T) The statement is indubitable (not doubtable), Descartes argued, because even if an all-powerful demon were to try to deceive me into thinking that I exist when I do not, I would have to exist for the demon to deceive me.

_____(U) In conclusion, therefore, whatever I know, I know intuitively that I am.

Source:http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/124443/cogito-ergo-sum

  

5.  Archeological evidence suggests that people consumed tea leaves steeped in boiling water as many as 500,000 years ago.

_____(Q) The difference between the teas is in their processing.

_____(R) Antioxidants are substances that scavenge free radicals -- damaging compounds in the body that alter cells, tamper with DNA (genetic material), and even cause cell death.

_____(S) Free radicals occur naturally in the body, but environmental toxins (including ultraviolet rays from the sun, radiation, cigarette smoke, and air pollution) also give rise to these damaging particles.

_____(T) Green tea is made from unfermented leaves and reportedly contains the highest concentration of powerful antioxidants called polyphenols.

_____(U) There are three main varieties of tea -- green, black, and oolong.

Source

http://www.umm.edu/altmed/articles/green-tea-000255.htm

Answers:

cement: 4,1,3,5,2          4 = Q, 1 = R, 3 = S, 5 = T, 2 = U

ferris wheel: 2,5,1,4,3

john henry: 1,5,3,2,4

cogito: 3,1,4,2,5

tea: 2,4,5,3,1