Granite as
you probably already know, is usually the first choice
that people make when deciding which stone to install
on the countertops during a custom bathroom or kitchen
renovation at least here in South Orange County. Did you ever wonder
why that is? Well, a complete answer would include
more than the obvious gorgeous look of practically every
granite stone available. The whole truth is that
besides simply being gorgeous and adding depth and sparkle
to your custom kitchen or bathroom renovation, granite
stone is simply MUCH more dense than most readily available
stones. What this translates to you as the consumer
is less stains, less chips, and less overall damage to
the counter top than you would find with other counter
covering products that are available to you. And yeah…it
looks amazing!
Anyhow, below I’ve enclosed a few interesting statistics
about granite, including where it comes from and how it’s
formed. Enjoy!
Granite is a common and widely occurring type of intrusive, felsic, igneous rock.
Granite has a medium to coarse texture, occasionally with
some individual crystals larger than the groundmass forming
a rock known as porphyry.
Granites can be pink to dark gray or even black, depending
on their chemistry and mineralogy. Outcrops of
granite tend to form tors,
and rounded massifs.
Granites sometimes occur in circular depressions surrounded
by a range of hills, formed by the metamorphic
aureole or hornfels.
Granite is nearly always massive (lacking internal structures),
hard and tough, and therefore it has gained widespread use
as a construction stone. The average density of
granite is 2.75 g/cm3 and its viscosity at standard temperature
and pressure is ~4.5 • 1019 Pa·s [1] .
The word granite comes from the Latin granum,
a grain, in reference to the coarse-grained structure of
such a crystalline rock.
Orgin
Granite is an igneous rock
and is formed from magma.
Granitic magma has many potential origins but it must intrude
other rocks. Most granite intrusions are emplaced at depth
within the crust, usually greater than 1.5 kilometres
and up to 50 km depth within thick continental crust.
The origin of granite is contentious and has led to varied
schemes of classification. Classification schemes are regional;
there is a French scheme, a British scheme and an American
scheme. This confusion arises because the classification
schemes define granite by different means. Generally the
'alphabet-soup' classification is used because it classifies
based on genesis or origin of the magma.
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