I understand that it’s made up of minerals but what is in the minerals?
I just can’t put my finger on it, what is that igneous stuff made of, and are the metamorphic rocks made of the same thing??
In: Earth Science
Igneous rocks are made of lava that has cooled down. A lot of it is composed of the mineral quartz (Silicon oxide, SiO2). These rocks eventually break down because of weathering. The individual particles of the broken rock get swept downstream by water and deposited somewhere. Over time these deposits get compressed by the weight of more accumulating deposits above them and turn into a sedimentary rock, e.g. sandstone, a large part of which is also quartz, not coincidentally. As this sedimentary rock gets buried or pushed extremely deep, it turns into a metamorphic rock, e.g. quartzite (guess what it’s made of). After this rock eventually melts into lava, it can get spewed out through volcanic action again to become igneous rock and start the cycle anew.
Another common mineral is feldspar, which is an aluminosilicate, made of aluminum, silicon and oxygen. Another common stuff is calcium carbonate, which is what mollusk shells are made of, and again not coincidentally dying shells is how it gets deposited in the first place.
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