Vincent Massey Junior High School
Unit 4: Planet Earth
|
Minerals |
Rocks |
Erosion and landforms |
Volcanoes |
Mountains |
Moving Crust |
Fossils |
Geologic Time
|
Fossil Fuels Geology of Calgary |
Rock types:
Granite: Granular, composed of feldspar
and quartz, with
accessory biotite and muscovite.
: 
Granite
Andesite: Often flow-banded, white to black, but mostly medium grey. Mostly composed of feldspar, biotite and hornblende.
Andesite
Obsidian:
Obsidian is the result of volcanic lava coming in contact with water. Often the lava pours into a lake or ocean and is cooled quickly. This process produces a glassy texture in the resulting rock. Iron and magnesium give the obsidian a dark green to black color.
Pumice: Creamy
white when fresh, but turn pale brown on
surface when weathered.Composed principally of glass froth.
Pumice
Sedimentary rocks are generally
stratified, fine-grained or
composed of fragments of older rocks from which these
were derived, such as pebbles, sand, angular fragments of
older rocks, broken shells, rounded mineral grains and
alteration minerals such as clays. Limestones are easily
identified because they effervesce in dilute hydrochloric
acid. Many sedimentary rocks also contain fossils.
Conglomerate: Boulders,
pebbles, or shingle, set in fine-grained
matrix, sometimes resembling coarse concrete.
conglomerate
Sandstone: Sand in which
the grains are cemented together
by secondary silica calcite. May be loosely cemented and soft or well
cemented and hard. Colour: Buff to brownish; sometimes reddish, due
to presence of iron oxides, or greenish, due to presence of glauconite.
Sandstone
Shale: Spilts easily into thin plates along well-defined planes parallel to the original startification. Buff to grey very fine-grained silty rock. Complex mixture of microscopic clay mierals, plus mica and quartz.
Shale
Limestone: Pale grey highly
fossiliferous rock. Effervesces in
dilute hydrochloric acid. Not all limestones contain fossils.
Fossiliferous
limestone
Coal: Black, dirty, hard
to crumbly rock. Burns with a
bright-yellow flame. Made of highly compacted plant debris.
Coal
top
Gneiss: Whitish to dark grey containing mostly feldpsar, with quartz, mica, hornblendeand garnet.
gneiss
Schist: mostly composed of biotite,muscovite and quartz. Sometimes contains green chloride or garnets.Colour: Streaky, silver, black, white and green.
Schist
Slate: Greyish, very fine-grained, foliated rocks that split into thin sheets.
Slate
Quartzite: Compact, hard, very fine-grained rock, which breaks into sharp angular fragments. Quartzite is always associated with other metamorphic rocks, while cemented sandstone is always associated with other sedimentary rocks.
Quartzite
Marble: Fine to coarse-grained
rock that effervesces in dilute hydrochloric acid. Often banded with various
colours and sometimes
veined. Colour: Variable: white: cream,
grey, red, green and often streaky with light and dark patches.
Marble