It stands out thanks to its durability and elegance. Easy to clean and tougher than anyt other natural stone, quartzite will enhance the value and appeal of your house. These are the main advantages of kitchen countertops made of quartzite:. Facade cladding is extremely important both for functional and for aesthetical reasons. Quartzite is a good choice for exterior cladding. It protects any construction against climatic conditions. This type of rock is easily installed and require minimal maintenance.
This natural stone cladding varies from the oranges and yellows to contemporary black, white and silvers. Natural stone facades will serve for years. Quartzite can be used in landscape designs. The sand grains of sandstone melt and recrystallize, cemented together by silica. Quartzite arenite is the intermediate stage between sandstone and quartzite.
Arenite is still considered to be a sedimentary rock, but it has an extremely high quartz content. However, it's difficult to identify the transition from sandstone to quartzite. Some geologists use the term "quartzite" to refer to metamorphic rocks consisting almost exclusively of quartz.
Here, quartzite is identified by the way it fractures across grain boundaries, while arenite breaks around them. Other geologists simply identify "quartzite" as a tightly-cemented rock found above or below a band of sedimentary quartz rock. Quartzite consists almost entirely of silicon dioxide, SiO 2. Otherwise, quartzite commonly contains iron oxide and may contain trace amounts of the minerals rutile, zircon, and magnetite.
Quartzite may contain fossils. Quartzite has a Mohs hardness of 7, which is comparable to that of quartz and considerably harder than sandstone. Like glass and obsidian , it breaks with a conchoidal fracture.
Its coarse texture makes it difficult to hone to a fine edge. Under magnification, quartzite's interlocking crystal structure becomes apparent. Quartzite forms at convergent tectonic plate boundaries. Converging plates bury sandstone and exert compression.
As the boundary folds, mountains arise. Thus, quartzite is found in folded mountain ranges worldwide. While erosion weathers softer rock away, quartzite remains, forming peaks and cliffs.
The rock also litters mountain sides as scree. The town of Quartzite in Arizona takes its name from the rock in the nearby mountains. Beneficial Features: Quartzite is a decorative stone which is used for kitchen countertops, to cover walls, as roofing tiles, in flooring, and for stair steps. Quartzite is extremely popular due to its marble-like appearance and granite-like properties, which make it an ideal choice to be used in kitchens. Care Instructions: Use a stone sealant for an additional layer of protection.
There are instances when a particular block of a quartzite can have traces of calcium carbonate, which can be a cause of localized etching if that particular section comes in contact with anything acidic. Photograph by Jackdann88, used here under a Creative Commons license. The interlocking crystalline structure of quartzite makes it a hard, tough, durable rock. It is so tough that it breaks through the quartz grains rather than breaking along the boundaries between them.
This is a characteristic that separates true quartzite from sandstone. Quartzite is usually white to gray in color. Some rock units that are stained by iron can be pink, red, or purple.
Other impurities can cause quartzite to be yellow, orange, brown, green, or blue. The quartz content of quartzite gives it a hardness of about seven on the Mohs Hardness Scale.
Its extreme toughness made it a favorite rock for use as an impact tool by early people. Its conchoidal fracture allowed it to be shaped into large cutting tools such as ax heads and scrapers. Its coarse texture made it less suitable for producing tools with fine edges such as knife blades and projectile points. Obsidian , flint and agate were better suited for tools where sharpness was important. Quartzite scree: A steep slope covered with an unstable blanket of quartzite scree.
Scree is a name used for resistant pieces of broken rock that cover a talus slope. This photo was taken near Begunje na Gorenjskem, Slovenia. A Creative Commons image by Pinky sl. Most quartzite forms during mountain-building events at convergent plate boundaries where sandstone was deposited on a continental plate.
There, the sandstone is metamorphosed into quartzite by the intense pressure of a plate collision and often by deep burial. Compressional forces at the plate boundary fold and fault the rocks and thicken the crust into a mountain range.
Quartzite is an important rock type in folded mountain ranges throughout the world. Catoctin Mountain is part of the Blue Ridge Mountains.
The Chimney Rock Formation in this area caps many of the ridges, drapes the flanks of the mountains as scree, and is made up mostly of quartzite. Quartzite is one of the most physically durable and chemically resistant rocks found at Earth's surface. When mountain ranges are worn down by weathering and erosion, less-resistant and less-durable rocks are destroyed, but the quartzite remains. This is why quartzite is so often the rock found at the crests of mountain ranges and covering their flanks as large boulders, or as a surface litter of scree.
Quartzite is also a poor soil-former. Unlike feldspars which break down to form clay minerals, the weathering debris of quartzite is quartz. It is therefore not a rock type that contributes well to soil formation. For that reason it is often found as exposed bedrock with little or no soil cover. Fuchsitic Quartzite: A specimen of quartzite that contains significant amounts of green fuchsite, a chromium-rich muscovite mica. This specimen measures about 7 centimeters across and was collected from a small abandoned quarry where the flaggy rocks were produced and cut for use as decorative stones.
Photograph by James St. John, used here under a Creative Commons license.
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