I’m very tired. Please help me understand this.
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The two most common minerals on earth are quartz and feldspar. Granite is a mix of those two with a few other things added, and many other rock types are the result of those mineral being mixed and re-combined with heat and pressure.
Feldspar is actually a family of minerals, but what you get if you heat it to melting is basically porcelain, rather than glass.
When weather breaks rock down over the course of many years, it separates the quartz and feldspar, because of the difference in particle size and weight. Sand is mostly quartz, and clay is mostly feldspar. We make lots of things by heating clay, just like we heat glass, but a mix of the two isn’t really good.
Glass is only about 70% silica, the rest is lime and a mineral called soda ash, which is somewhat similar to fireplace ash. Pure quartz glass is used for some purposes, but it is difficult to work with and requires much higher temperatures to make.
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