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Don't Take it For Granite - Geology of Countertops · PlanetGeo: The Geology Podcast

0:02
SPEAKER_01: Welcome to Planet Geo, the podcast where we talk about our amazing planet, how it works, and why it matters to you.
0:12
SPEAKER_01: What's going on, Doc?
0:15
SPEAKER_01: So, Chris, it's gotta be cold over there, huh?
0:19
SPEAKER_01: Why?
0:20
SPEAKER_01: You got you got your beanie pulled in, you got your headphones over your beanie.
0:26
SPEAKER_01: I mean, is it cold in your basement today, or what's going on, man?
0:29
SPEAKER_00: Well, so uh it's a weird day.
0:31
SPEAKER_00: It's really gloomy outside, and that just that affects the way I feel.
0:36
SPEAKER_00: And then for those of you that don't know, I'm I I coach cross country as a part of my day job, and it was cold outside, it was windy and cold and gray and blustery.
0:45
SPEAKER_00: So I came home, ate dinner, and then I got a meet with you, and I just I never really warmed up.
0:52
SPEAKER_00: I'm still like cold.
0:54
SPEAKER_00: So I put I got my slippers on, I got my my hoodie on, my hat on.
0:59
SPEAKER_00: I'm oh you got your slippies, huh?
1:01
SPEAKER_01: It's slippy season over there.
1:03
SPEAKER_01: That's great.
1:04
SPEAKER_01: I haven't won my slippers yet this year.
1:05
SPEAKER_01: I gotta bust them out pretty soon, though.
1:07
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
1:08
SPEAKER_00: So I don't know, I just haven't warmed up.
1:10
SPEAKER_01: So, Chris, I think today we can get you warmed up and maybe even riled up a little bit.
1:16
SPEAKER_01: I think so.
1:17
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:17
SPEAKER_01: What are we doing?
1:18
SPEAKER_01: We're gonna talk about countertops, which is it's very cool.
1:23
SPEAKER_01: But if you know a geologist, if you're listening to this and you know a geologist, there's no better way to get a geologist riled up than to tell them about all the cool granite countertops you saw that are not actually granite, right?
1:34
SPEAKER_01: That don't fit into the exact definition of what we use as granite in geology.
1:40
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I've had actually students correct me on well, no, I have a black granite countertop, and uh I'm like, well, no, it's not, it's actually Gebro or it's uh you know Labradorite or something like this, and they're no, it's black granite.
1:53
SPEAKER_00: That's what they told us.
1:54
SPEAKER_00: That's what they told me, man.
1:55
SPEAKER_01: And then that's it, that's a way to get an immediate B on their exam, not an A, right?
2:01
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, well, don't ever correct me.
2:03
SPEAKER_01: And that's right.
2:05
SPEAKER_01: Do not correct Chris.
2:07
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
2:08
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so we're gonna talk today about all things granite and not granite countertops.
2:15
SPEAKER_00: So we're gonna talk about rock and not rock and composit, and I don't know.
2:22
SPEAKER_00: It's this I this is a cool episode.
2:23
SPEAKER_00: I'm fired up.
2:24
SPEAKER_01: You know, it's very confusing.
2:27
SPEAKER_01: The industrial naming scheme is extremely confusing because we have countertops that are called granite.
2:32
SPEAKER_01: All of them are called granite.
2:34
SPEAKER_01: Basically, if it's a natural rock, it's called granite, maybe marble.
2:37
SPEAKER_01: You also have things that are called quartz, which are they have quartz in them, but they're synthetic.
2:42
SPEAKER_01: Then you have things that are called engineered stone, which is a confusing word until you think about it, and it's actually just rock.
2:49
SPEAKER_01: That's it's actual rock, but it's man-made rock.
2:51
SPEAKER_01: Uh, and then we have all the other countertop types.
2:54
SPEAKER_01: So we're gonna kind of work through those in general, right, Chris?
2:57
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, but they also have the names that apply to real rock, and it's like they're naming carpet, not rock.
3:06
SPEAKER_01: I mean, there's some incredibly cool names.
3:09
SPEAKER_01: Blue Fantasy is a granite name.
3:14
SPEAKER_00: Costa Esmeralda is another name.
3:17
SPEAKER_01: It's a beautiful.
3:17
SPEAKER_01: That's let's see.
3:18
SPEAKER_01: Well, I don't know.
3:19
SPEAKER_01: Let's just say those are not the scientific names for the rocks, so they're not the actual geology names for the rocks.
3:24
SPEAKER_00: Well, I just want to say, so we're gonna go through some of the countertop types, but we also are gonna take this as an opportunity because that's what we do, to talk about the way the rocks actually formed as well.
3:38
SPEAKER_00: So we're gonna talk about the geology behind the rock countertops.
3:43
SPEAKER_01: That's exactly right.
3:44
SPEAKER_01: And we're gonna do this in a couple different passes.
3:48
SPEAKER_01: Basically, the high-level summary is if it's called granite, if your contractor or if the Home Depot people call it granite, it's a real rock and it's probably not actually granite.
3:59
SPEAKER_01: Like Chris, if you and I were out in the field and we were trying to identify this rock and understand its origins and where it came from and how it formed, it's not a granite, but it is a real rock.
4:08
SPEAKER_01: And so we're gonna work through the real rock names.
4:10
SPEAKER_01: We're gonna go into short descriptions about what they are.
4:12
SPEAKER_01: The other thing is if the contractor, the Home Depot person calls it quartz, it's it's probably got quartz in it, but it's the rock itself is a synthetic amalgam of crushed up pieces of real rocks with some resin and it's made to look colored and beautiful, and and it's really nice, it's really solid.
4:30
SPEAKER_01: It has all the great textures and behaviors of rock, but it's not.
4:33
SPEAKER_01: So that's just a general rule.
4:36
SPEAKER_01: Granite is not granite, and quartz is not quartz, but they can be.
4:39
SPEAKER_00: Well, hold on.
4:41
SPEAKER_00: If it's granite, like you said, it's real rock and it can be granite, but if it's not overall light colored, like kind of pink or this kind of salmon-y orange color to white with black speckles all mixed in it, then it's not granite.
4:56
SPEAKER_00: It's a rock, a real rock, but it's something else other than granite.
5:00
SPEAKER_00: And so, well, let's start, Jesse, with talking about granite countertops, the only ones that should be called granite.
5:09
SPEAKER_01: Let me interrupt there, Chris.
5:11
SPEAKER_01: Real quick, before we get to the names, which I'm excited to talk about too.
5:14
SPEAKER_01: I can see you're you're pumped up about this.
5:15
SPEAKER_01: Let's just level set with the size of the market here, because this is a big market.
5:20
SPEAKER_01: I was shocked by the numbers here.
5:22
SPEAKER_01: So, countertops, this is just in the US right now.
5:25
SPEAKER_01: Countertops are predicted by 2026 to be 1.1 billion square feet.
5:30
SPEAKER_01: And that's a number, much like age of the earth, that doesn't really mean anything to me.
5:35
SPEAKER_01: Like I can't picture what that is, but it's basically 400,000 homes completely covered with countertop.
5:43
SPEAKER_01: So I, you know, I don't know how many homes of countertop that is, like of actual countertop size, but this is 400,000 homes on average, 2,500 square foot home that are completely full of countertop material, like chock full, wall to wall.
5:57
SPEAKER_01: This is a huge, huge market, and that's everything, but about a quarter of that is natural stone, what we would call granite, and the rock types that we're gonna mostly go through and identify here.
6:09
SPEAKER_01: So this is a big, big, big industry.
6:11
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that is huge.
6:12
SPEAKER_00: I do want to also say, and I'm a little ashamed to say this, to admit it out loud.
6:18
SPEAKER_00: Uh, as many rocks as I have at my house, I have two rock fireplaces that are gorgeous with specimens I've collected all over the country.
6:26
SPEAKER_00: Uh, I don't have any granite countertop.
6:29
SPEAKER_01: Is that right?
6:29
SPEAKER_01: I was trying to think of this when we were talking about this script.
6:32
SPEAKER_01: And yeah, when we were talking about this, you don't.
6:34
SPEAKER_01: Okay, well, bummer.
6:36
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
6:37
SPEAKER_00: It's something that I really want, but I only want to do this once.
6:41
SPEAKER_00: So I I want to get it right when I do it, and just like life crops up and like, oh, well, I don't have three thousand dollars anymore.
6:49
SPEAKER_00: That's right, that's right.
6:50
SPEAKER_00: Or whatever it's gonna cost me to put granite countertops in.
6:53
SPEAKER_00: So I really, really want it.
6:55
SPEAKER_00: I just have other things that have like jumped the priority list.
6:58
SPEAKER_00: So I'm a little embarrassed about it.
7:00
SPEAKER_01: It's the geologist dream.
7:01
SPEAKER_01: Like, if you ever go to a geologist's house and they just get their house redone and they had the money to do it up really well, they've got incredible countertops.
7:08
SPEAKER_01: One of my PhD supervisors built this new house.
7:11
SPEAKER_01: I was kind of in the middle of my PhD, built the new house.
7:14
SPEAKER_01: We went over there.
7:15
SPEAKER_01: This countertop, Chris, is incredible.
7:17
SPEAKER_01: It's a kyanite garnet schist, big blue blades of kyanite in it and red garnets.
7:24
SPEAKER_01: It's unbelievably beautiful and tells a great story, too.
7:28
SPEAKER_01: Because in all the geologists, we'll go over there for Christmas, and you know, they're making like amazing salmon on this like wood plank, beautiful dinner, and all the geologists are like hovering around the countertop, studying the countertop, right?
7:40
SPEAKER_01: Classic.
7:41
SPEAKER_01: So the I'll just round this out real quick and then let's get to the rocks.
7:45
SPEAKER_01: The industry is a big industry,$90 billion.
7:47
SPEAKER_01: So that 1.1 billion square feet ends up being around$90 billion for just countertops alone, which is a huge, huge market.
7:54
SPEAKER_01: So, all right, Chris, let's get into the rock names.
7:56
SPEAKER_01: Where should we start here?
7:58
SPEAKER_00: Well, there's only one place to start, Jesse.
8:00
SPEAKER_00: We got to talk about granite countertops in the proper sense of the word.
8:04
SPEAKER_00: So let's start when we talk about each one.
8:07
SPEAKER_00: Let's talk about the geology of granite.
8:09
SPEAKER_00: Okay, because we have to.
8:10
SPEAKER_00: This is a geopolitic.
8:11
SPEAKER_01: Let's talk about the geology, and then let's talk about you know how to kind of generally identify it.
8:15
SPEAKER_01: So if you are in your house with granite countertops and you don't know what it is, quote unquote granite countertops, you don't know what it is, or you're going over to your aunt and uncles and they have quote unquote granite countertops.
8:24
SPEAKER_01: We're gonna help you identify these really briefly.
8:26
SPEAKER_01: So we're gonna go through each rock type, what it is geologically, and then what it kind of generally looks like.
8:32
SPEAKER_01: And just to preface this, there's a lot of weird ones that we won't cover.
8:37
SPEAKER_01: We're just kind of covering the most common, the five or six most common here, right?
8:42
SPEAKER_00: That's right.
8:42
SPEAKER_00: So granite, the rock itself, is an intrusive igneous rock that forms really deep inside the earth.
8:49
SPEAKER_00: We're talking miles deep.
8:51
SPEAKER_00: So it comes from magma that never made its way to the surface.
8:56
SPEAKER_00: It maybe approached several miles before it got to the surface, then it began to cool slowly.
9:02
SPEAKER_00: And with igneous rocks, the general rule is the slower they cool, the bigger the minerals get.
9:08
SPEAKER_00: And so granite is gonna be made up of mostly light colored minerals like quartz and feldspar.
9:16
SPEAKER_00: And so it's gonna be like grayish white, and the feldspar can give it these these kind of really pretty pink colors or orange colors, and then more white colors, and then it's gonna have some darker minerals like biotite and horn blend that are kind of sprinkled in to give it these black flecks throughout.
9:34
SPEAKER_00: And all of the minerals are gonna be smaller than the width of your pinky with this kind of rock.
9:41
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's a really important point there, that most of the grains are gonna be kind of smaller than your pinky fingernail, right?
9:48
SPEAKER_01: You know, roughly.
9:48
SPEAKER_01: They might be around that size.
9:50
SPEAKER_01: Because this brings us to the next rock, which is pegmatite.
9:53
SPEAKER_01: And pegmatite, we've talked about this before, but pegmatites are the really, really coarse grained ones.
9:59
SPEAKER_01: So if you have big grains, big crystals that are one big white block in there and a pink block and a big black block of biotite, this is probably a pegmatite.
10:11
SPEAKER_01: Pegmatites are basically the same minerals as granites, more or less, except they have really big grain sizes.
10:17
SPEAKER_01: The grains are huge, and these things form, they're usually associated with granite bodies, these intrusive bodies of magma that cool deep beneath the earth, but pegmatites form from the late stage fluids.
10:30
SPEAKER_01: So they form after most of the magma has cooled already, and they form from this kind of really fluid-rich stuff.
10:37
SPEAKER_01: So the grains can grow really big really quick because the elements that make them up, the sodium and aluminum and silica that make up feldspar, can all diffuse through that fluid really, really quickly.
10:48
SPEAKER_01: So the grains grow really big really quick in a pegmatite.
10:52
SPEAKER_01: That's P-E-G-M-A-T-I-T-E, pegmatite.
10:56
SPEAKER_01: And that's they look kind of similar.
10:58
SPEAKER_01: The grains are just much, much bigger in a pegmatite countertop.
11:02
SPEAKER_00: And they are spectacular.
11:04
SPEAKER_00: It's one of my favorite kind of rock types.
11:06
SPEAKER_00: And Jesse, you and I have collected a lot of pegmatites in our past.
11:11
SPEAKER_00: They're beautiful rocks, they make gorgeous countertops.
11:14
SPEAKER_00: I also want to say before we move on to the other kind of rock types, that the it's a common type of countertop to be igneous and very dark colored to black with flecks of other minerals in it.
11:28
SPEAKER_00: Like you can get uh, you know, uh an intrusive, like a gabbro that is coarse grained where the grains are all smaller than your pinky, and then it'll have disseminated like copper flecks in the that are naturally there.
11:41
SPEAKER_00: Okay, they're not added late or anything like that.
11:43
SPEAKER_00: It's actually part of the real rock.
11:45
SPEAKER_00: So those are what they often call or refer to as black granite or dark granite in the industry, but they're not, they're not granite at all, they're actual different igneous rock types, like gabbro or pegmatitic gabbro.
12:00
SPEAKER_00: And then one of my personal favorites too is, and I'm gonna test you on this because you don't know I'm asking you this question, labradorite.
12:08
SPEAKER_00: So, what is that mineral and what does it look like in a countertop?
12:12
SPEAKER_01: Labradorite is a felt bar, it's a type of feldspar, it's a sodium and calcium-rich felt bar that, well, it's more calcium than sodium, but it's on what we call a solid solution, where sodium and calcium are substituting for one another in the crystal structure.
12:27
SPEAKER_01: And this is one that it iridesces, it's a kind of a deep, deep, deep dark black and blue, but it iridesces and along certain what are called cleavage planes within the mineral, when the light hits a certain plane that is natural part of the crystal structure, it causes the light to kind of give off this iridescent structure.
12:48
SPEAKER_01: And they're stunningly beautiful.
12:49
SPEAKER_01: So the rock will look black with big grains, and every once in a while you'll catch these glints of this kind of shimmering purple blue surface within the feathers of a peacock, you know?
13:00
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's a good thing.
13:01
SPEAKER_00: Where when you're looking at those minerals that are in the counter, it iridesces or shines these different colors depending on the angle that you're looking at.
13:09
SPEAKER_00: So the colors are constantly changing in this, and it's a it's a it's a highly sought-after kind of countertop, it's rather expensive, and it's often referred to as black granite, but it's not, it's a pegmatitic labradorite.
13:22
SPEAKER_01: That's right.
13:22
SPEAKER_01: And it's labradurite, it's basically made just of one mineral.
13:26
SPEAKER_01: So, Chris, let's move on to marble.
13:29
SPEAKER_01: Marble, I think most people know this term marble.
13:33
SPEAKER_01: It's a metamorphosed limestone.
13:36
SPEAKER_01: So you take limestone, which has calcite, it's mostly the mineral calcite.
13:40
SPEAKER_01: It makes up limestone the rock.
13:42
SPEAKER_01: If you metamorphose that, it gets heated up, it gets squished, the minerals, the calcite grains recrystallize, and they form what is called marble.
13:52
SPEAKER_01: This is now a metamorphic rock.
13:53
SPEAKER_01: It's really white.
13:55
SPEAKER_01: Most people know what marble tile looks like, maybe, or at least you've seen it in pictures.
14:00
SPEAKER_01: Uh, this it's a really white rock.
14:02
SPEAKER_01: Sometimes it has these really nice, beautiful black streaks running through it.
14:06
SPEAKER_01: And sometimes it can look like kind of grains that that you've got a big white patch and a big kind of creamy colored patch, and another a sort of a darker tannish patch.
14:16
SPEAKER_01: But marble is really soft, so it's less often used for countertops, it's more often used for tile work, but you can find marble countertops to it.
14:27
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I would myself, I would never have a countertop out of marble because I just couldn't be trusted.
14:32
SPEAKER_00: I would beat it up too bad.
14:33
SPEAKER_00: It's a really spilling your chili all over that countertop.
14:40
SPEAKER_00: I would.
14:40
SPEAKER_00: I oh, I'd be staining the heck out of it because it's very porous, too.
14:43
SPEAKER_00: So it would not be good in the bullheist household.
14:46
SPEAKER_00: But um one thing I want to emphasize is that what you said, it's metamorphosed limestone.
14:51
SPEAKER_00: Limestone is a rather crappy looking rock.
14:54
SPEAKER_00: There's really nothing pretty about limestone.
14:57
SPEAKER_00: And then you you know heat it, you put it under pressure, and the calcite crystals that make up the limestone recrystallize, they grow into beautiful calcite that is all interlocking with each other, and that's what marble is.
15:11
SPEAKER_00: And like you said too, that it has these like intricate veins that cut across it, which give it that marbleized texture, which is it's absolutely gorgeous.
15:19
SPEAKER_00: It just doesn't really make for a great countertop, I don't think.
15:23
SPEAKER_01: Chris, I agree completely.
15:24
SPEAKER_01: Limestone's not a great looking rock, marble is a very, very good looking rock.
15:28
SPEAKER_01: So we're gonna move on now and continue in the theme of a metamorphic rock.
15:31
SPEAKER_01: So something that has been altered and changed by heat and pressure.
15:34
SPEAKER_01: The minerals have actually changed composition from whatever they were before, and we're gonna move into shist or nice.
15:41
SPEAKER_01: These are two of the rock names that are the punniest in the geology undergrad world, shist and nice, s-h I S T and Nice, G-N-E-I-S-S.
15:52
SPEAKER_01: Those are two different rock types.
15:54
SPEAKER_00: Real quick, what's your favorite old man dad geo joke with shist and nice or shist or nice?
16:02
SPEAKER_01: Am I wearing let me see, am I wearing my geology?
16:05
SPEAKER_01: No.
16:05
SPEAKER_01: So my wife What are we doing?
16:07
SPEAKER_01: You're I was looking at my shirt, my under my t-shirt, what I'm wearing under here.
16:11
SPEAKER_01: Because every year my wife has she knows I don't really love geology puns.
16:15
SPEAKER_01: Like I kind of really don't like them.
16:17
SPEAKER_01: And so every year for my birthday, she doesn't get me a birthday gift, she gets me a geology pun t-shirt.
16:23
SPEAKER_01: I really like Tess.
16:25
SPEAKER_01: I know you think she's hilarious.
16:27
SPEAKER_01: She thinks she's hilarious.
16:28
SPEAKER_01: I do not think she's hilarious, but I would I have one that says uh it something about you know, geologists make the nice shist or something like that, or geologist schist is nice.
16:42
SPEAKER_01: And that that's a shirt she bought me, which is okay, but it's in the basket of bad buns, I think.
16:48
SPEAKER_01: What about you?
16:49
SPEAKER_00: Uh the students always like to they always like the dumb shist one.
16:53
SPEAKER_00: That's the the common one, okay.
16:55
SPEAKER_00: But uh one I really like is I saw it at a geology picnic.
17:00
SPEAKER_00: Okay, and yes, everybody, those things actually exist.
17:04
SPEAKER_01: They're they're very exciting.
17:06
SPEAKER_01: The conversation is just stunningly engaging.
17:09
SPEAKER_00: I was watching though one of these people that I am associated with walking around with a all black shirt with white lettering on the front over the chest.
17:18
SPEAKER_00: All it said was nice chert.
17:22
unknown: That's great.
17:23
SPEAKER_01: I like it.
17:24
SPEAKER_01: It just makes me laugh.
17:25
SPEAKER_01: Just think of it.
17:25
SPEAKER_01: Come on, that's a good one, isn't it?
17:27
SPEAKER_01: Uh you're so you're you're what am I doing here?
17:30
SPEAKER_00: I mean you're so you you need to know that chert is a is a you know kind of rock that forms in certain settings.
17:38
SPEAKER_00: It's a you know silica-rich rock that forms in the bottom of the ocean, and so it's a combination of the colour.
17:43
SPEAKER_01: Chris, Chris, yeah, I'm gonna cut you off.
17:44
SPEAKER_01: This doesn't make it better.
17:46
SPEAKER_01: This just doesn't make who cares.
17:48
SPEAKER_01: Wow, yeah, okay.
17:49
SPEAKER_01: It's not better.
17:50
SPEAKER_01: It's not better.
17:51
SPEAKER_01: Anyway, so schist and nice, these are metamorphic rocks, and they have a really distinctive pattern to them.
17:58
SPEAKER_01: Like the main feature of this in a countertop is that they're gonna be banded.
18:02
SPEAKER_01: Schist will not be banded light and dark, but it will definitely have structure to it.
18:10
SPEAKER_01: And and this is a hard thing to kind of get across.
18:12
SPEAKER_01: It'll have lines of material in it.
18:14
SPEAKER_01: Like you'll be able to see light and dark bits, and you'll be able to see all the minerals are kind of aligned in a certain direction.
18:20
SPEAKER_01: They're all pointing in one direction.
18:21
SPEAKER_01: That'll be rare in most other countertop types.
18:25
SPEAKER_01: Is that right, Chris?
18:26
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, could I interject here?
18:27
SPEAKER_00: The reason that happens is because metamorphic rocks are subjected to intense heat, which makes the rock soft.
18:35
SPEAKER_00: They're also subjected to a lot of times, differential pressure, like the kind of pressure you get if you put something in a vice.
18:43
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so if you if you were to put clay, let's say, in a vice, because the clay is soft, so it's behaving like this really hot, soft rock, put it in a vice and squeeze the vice, the clay is gonna flow perpendicular to the direction of the vice.
18:59
SPEAKER_00: So then any minerals that are in that rock, then or in that material, that clay, are gonna line up in the direction of flow.
19:08
SPEAKER_00: And so this can give us that pattern that you're talking about with metamorphic rocks, and it can give us this toothpaste kind of look to the rock that you look at it and you're like, whoa, this rock was flowing as it was forming.
19:21
SPEAKER_00: You know, it's it's really obvious.
19:23
SPEAKER_01: It's a great description, Chris.
19:24
SPEAKER_01: If so, if your countertop looks like it has been squeezed in a tectonic plate-sized vise, it's probably schist or gneiss, a metamorphic rock that was deformed and has this flow structure to it.
19:36
SPEAKER_01: A couple other definitive patterns here are if there's a big, deep, or not even big, if there's deep purple little garnets in it or big garnets, it's probably a schist or a gneiss.
19:46
SPEAKER_01: If there's light and dark banding and it looks like the light banding has kind of wormed its way through the dark banding, it's probably a gneiss.
19:55
SPEAKER_01: And the difference between schist and gneiss here is that the gneiss is what we call a higher grade metamorphic rock.
20:00
SPEAKER_01: It has been metamorphosed, it has been squeezed to hotter temperatures and higher pressures so that the light colored minerals start to melt out and they kind of coalesce together and form these light bands, and they kind of all get together and they start to flow in one direction.
20:16
SPEAKER_01: So that's a gneiss and a schist is just all the minerals are kind of aligned in one direction.
20:21
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, let's keep in the theme of metamorphic rocks.
20:24
SPEAKER_00: Let's do that.
20:25
SPEAKER_00: There is another one that I personally love.
20:28
SPEAKER_00: It's and we talked about it in our last episode, I think.
20:31
SPEAKER_00: It's called serpentinite.
20:33
SPEAKER_00: Serpentinite is named because the texture of the rock resembles the skin of a snake, and so it has this kind of serpentine look to it, you know.
20:43
SPEAKER_00: I love it because I love the deep green that it typically shows.
20:47
SPEAKER_00: It's just what my favorite color.
20:49
SPEAKER_00: And it also has this kind of greasy, kind of soapy feel to it or slippery, it's often described as.
20:56
SPEAKER_00: And this forms by metamorphism of ultramafic mantle material like peritotite.
21:02
SPEAKER_00: And uh, we did talk about this in our last episode.
21:05
SPEAKER_00: So it's beautiful.
21:06
SPEAKER_01: And the way it'll it is beautiful, and the way you can kind of identify it is it has a various shades of light and dark green, and some of it'll be really, really dark, like almost black.
21:17
SPEAKER_01: And then some of it will be really, really light, like a really kind of a tan color.
21:21
SPEAKER_01: And usually you'll have veins of the light-colored stuff going through the dark colored bits, or at least that's what it'll look like.
21:27
SPEAKER_01: And this is an alteration texture.
21:29
SPEAKER_01: So the serpentine is the alteration mineral of the peridotite, of the olivine and the paritotite.
21:35
SPEAKER_01: So those light layers are the altered bits of the dark pieces, but it is a metamorphic rock.
21:40
SPEAKER_01: And Chris, we're gonna move into two more rock types here, and both of these are metamorphosed sedimentary rocks, so they're very much like marble.
21:49
SPEAKER_01: They were primarily a sedimentary rock, now they're metamorphosed.
21:52
SPEAKER_01: The first one is a conglomerate.
21:53
SPEAKER_01: These are rare in countertops, they're very obvious because it's basically a bunch of big.
22:00
SPEAKER_01: Round pieces of stuff, a mishmash of big round chunks that are all cobbled together.
22:06
SPEAKER_01: Usually they're touching one another.
22:08
SPEAKER_01: It's usually green, it can be light red, uh, it can be pinkish, it can be white.
22:15
SPEAKER_01: And a conglomerate, it just looks like a stream bed, usually an ancient stream bed, because that's what it is.
22:20
SPEAKER_01: It's a big stream bed that the cobbles were laying there, it got filled in with sand, got buried, formed a rock.
22:27
SPEAKER_01: But conglomerate, just in itself, Chris, you and I love conglomerates.
22:31
SPEAKER_01: We've collected a bunch of them.
22:32
SPEAKER_01: But conglomerate, if it's not metamorphosed, is a really crumbly, crappy rock.
22:37
SPEAKER_01: You wouldn't want to make a countertop out of it.
22:38
SPEAKER_01: So these conglomerates in countertops are usually metamorphosed.
22:42
SPEAKER_01: And this metamorphism, as you described, can squeeze them in a vice, squeeze the rock in a vice and stretch things.
22:49
SPEAKER_01: And sometimes you will see these conglomerates, the little blocks in there, the little pieces, the cobbles of other rocks, those can be stretched and made into an oblong shape.
23:00
SPEAKER_01: And we would call that a stretch pebble conglomerate.
23:03
SPEAKER_01: And I love conglomerates.
23:06
SPEAKER_00: One of my favorite rocks right there.
23:08
SPEAKER_00: I'm oh do you remember us collecting it?
23:11
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
23:12
SPEAKER_01: Where were we?
23:13
SPEAKER_00: Come on, I'm putting you to the test right now.
23:16
SPEAKER_01: We have collected a couple times, a couple of them, haven't we?
23:19
SPEAKER_01: But I think we're in upstate New York or Vermont.
23:20
SPEAKER_01: I'm not sure which is the one.
23:21
SPEAKER_00: We were in Vermont when we collected the stretch bubble conglomerate.
23:24
SPEAKER_00: I this stuff is amazing.
23:26
SPEAKER_00: So it's the same reason, right?
23:28
SPEAKER_00: Put this rock in a vise, make it soft by heating it up, squeeze the vise down, and the pebbles all line up and they get they get soft too.
23:38
SPEAKER_00: And so they they become really uh oval and stretched out, and they're all lined up in the same direction.
23:45
SPEAKER_00: It's a beautiful rock.
23:47
SPEAKER_00: This is like this would be the top of one of the top of my list for a countertop.
23:52
SPEAKER_00: It's amazing stuff.
23:53
SPEAKER_01: I agree.
23:54
SPEAKER_01: I agree.
23:55
SPEAKER_01: It is just such a beautiful rock.
23:56
SPEAKER_01: All right.
23:57
SPEAKER_01: Unbelievable.
23:57
SPEAKER_00: One more.
23:58
SPEAKER_00: Let's talk about quartzite countertops, which is not to be confused with quartz countertops.
24:03
SPEAKER_00: It's metamorphic.
24:05
SPEAKER_00: Quote unquote quartz.
24:06
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
24:06
SPEAKER_00: It's also metamorphic due to heat and pressure, just like all the other metamorphic rocks we've discussed.
24:12
SPEAKER_00: But the quartz grains that make up the quartzite used to be in a quartz sandstone.
24:19
SPEAKER_00: So imagine like a beach, like a Lake Michigan beach or a Florida beach, whatever, where it's 90% or even higher of just sand-sized little quartz grains.
24:30
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
24:31
SPEAKER_00: That's a sandstone that gets lithified and compacted and cemented, and you have this sedimentary rock.
24:38
SPEAKER_00: Then it has to get subjected to heat and pressure, which causes the grains to kind of while they get soft, sometimes they grow a little larger and they stick together.
24:50
SPEAKER_00: And it becomes this really, really well put together metamorphic rock that is now called quartzite.
24:58
SPEAKER_00: It resembles sandstone.
25:00
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes it has even the same structures that the sandstone had, like ripple marks and mud cracks and things like that.
25:06
SPEAKER_00: But it is way better put together than it was as a sedimentary rock sandstone.
25:13
SPEAKER_00: So it can be really pretty, blonde colored, reddish colored, kind of purple colored, pink as is a common one too.
25:22
SPEAKER_00: I'm a big fan of quartzite, and it also tends to have these dark-colored veins that run through it, which also gives it that marbleized kind of texture, but it's way better than marble because it's so much more durable, it's way harder than marble is.
25:40
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, Chris, this leads us into a really good point that I think we should end all of our rock descriptions on here is that all of these rocks we've listed are either metamorphic rocks or igneous rocks.
25:52
SPEAKER_01: And the reason that you only get countertops out of metamorphic or igneous rocks is because the process of metamorphism and the process of being igneous means that all the grains are interlocking, all the grains have recrystallized and grown together, which makes them it's just a well-put together rock.
26:09
SPEAKER_01: It's hard to break because you don't want a countertop that is crumbling and chipping things off.
26:14
SPEAKER_01: And when we talked last episode about how your pyrite, you know, in your in your wall, Jenny was vacuuming and it kind of started to crumble, right?
26:22
SPEAKER_01: You can't have that with a countertop.
26:23
SPEAKER_01: So you have to go back to have what's that?
26:25
SPEAKER_01: You have an update for us on the pyrite?
26:27
SPEAKER_00: I I do.
26:28
SPEAKER_00: I accused Jenny after we stopped recording.
26:30
SPEAKER_00: I accused her of knocking it with the with the vacuum and not telling me I I caught some hell for that.
26:38
SPEAKER_00: Uh she that did not happen.
26:40
SPEAKER_00: Um it just it just fell off organically.
26:43
SPEAKER_00: We can set the record straight.
26:44
SPEAKER_00: That didn't happen.
26:45
SPEAKER_00: No, it was just weathering.
26:46
SPEAKER_01: It was just weathering in your basement.
26:48
SPEAKER_01: But you can't have this in a countertop.
26:50
SPEAKER_01: We have to have really well put together rocks in order to make them into countertop material.
26:54
SPEAKER_01: So the only rocks you're gonna see are metamorphic or igneous in your countertops.
26:58
SPEAKER_00: We want hard minerals, low porosity, and low permeability.
27:03
SPEAKER_00: That's what you're looking for on a countertop, and it's gotta be obviously gorgeous, then you're good to go.
27:08
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
27:08
SPEAKER_01: Oh yeah, you gotta put a pretty one in your counter.
27:11
SPEAKER_01: So this leads us really nicely into quartz, quote unquote quartz.
27:15
SPEAKER_01: You touched on it, Chris, that quartzite, the rock, the metamorphic rock, metamorphosed sandstone has a lot of quartz in it, and so it's really durable.
27:22
SPEAKER_01: And it's also really stainproof, actually, which is why when we make synthetic materials for countertops out of natural stuff, you use quartz.
27:30
SPEAKER_01: A lot of this is quartz.
27:32
SPEAKER_01: We actually just renovated the kitchen here in our house in Pennsylvania, and we got a nice, beautiful, light gray quartz countertop in the kitchen.
27:41
SPEAKER_01: It's beautiful, it's stain resistant, it's really hard, it's really solid, it's gonna last for decades.
27:46
SPEAKER_01: And it's not actually all quartz and it's not natural.
27:51
SPEAKER_01: There might be some quartz in there, but this is a synthetic thing.
27:54
SPEAKER_01: It's basically crushed up bits of rock and quartz in there that are held together with a resin and given a little coloration to it.
28:03
SPEAKER_01: So it's a synthetic thing.
28:04
SPEAKER_01: The quote unquote quartz countertops are synthetic.
28:08
SPEAKER_00: I think the name is very misleading.
28:10
SPEAKER_00: I think a lot of people think the wrong thing about a quartz countertop.
28:14
SPEAKER_00: They think that it is a natural thing because everybody knows about quartz, the mineral, but it's it's not actually.
28:21
SPEAKER_00: It's like you said, it's synthetic, it's it's man-made.
28:23
SPEAKER_00: About 90% of the material that make up a quartz countertop, it's all waste.
28:29
SPEAKER_00: It's crushed granite, it's got marble in it, it's got natural stone or recycled materials.
28:35
SPEAKER_00: It even has ceramics, glass, and mirrors in it.
28:39
SPEAKER_00: The remaining 10% of it is this binding resin that you mentioned earlier, this kind of this thing that just sticks it all together.
28:48
SPEAKER_00: And that's an interesting thing, too, is that there's a very big like discrepancy in price of quartz countertops.
28:56
SPEAKER_00: They can be inexpensive and they can actually be quite expensive.
28:59
SPEAKER_00: And it really depends upon the amount of resin that's used.
29:03
SPEAKER_00: The cheaper quartz countertops has a higher amount of resin in it, and the more expensive has a less resin in it.
29:10
SPEAKER_00: And that's important because if you set a hot pan on a quartz countertop that has a lot of resin in it, it will kind of like it'll melt that resin and cause it to become cloudy and it will discolor that part of the countertop.
29:24
SPEAKER_00: So you have to be careful with it.
29:25
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, this is an important part about the stability of quartz and quote unquote quartz and real quartz in countertops, is quartz is a really hard mineral.
29:34
SPEAKER_01: It's got a hardness of seven on Moe's hardness scale.
29:37
SPEAKER_01: It's durable to really high temperatures, has a high melting point on its own.
29:42
SPEAKER_01: Pure quartz has a melting temperature of about 1600 degrees centigrade, whereas the natural granite countertops, if you take a granite and try and melt it, it'll melt at about 700, 750 degrees centigrade, uh, up to about 1200 degrees.
29:55
SPEAKER_01: So much lower than quartz.
29:56
SPEAKER_01: And so this is the value in having a quartz countertop if it's not a lot of resin in there.
30:01
SPEAKER_01: So it's really cool, and you can dye that resin to make it basically whatever color you want, which makes them really pretty.
30:07
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, they can be absolutely beautiful.
30:09
SPEAKER_00: The other thing about them that a lot of people like about quartz countertops, because of what they're made of, they're very green.
30:17
SPEAKER_00: No rock was quarried for the purpose of making a countertop that's called a quartz countertop.
30:22
SPEAKER_00: It's all waste material that's then repurposed to make this.
30:27
SPEAKER_00: So that's a really appealing thing of it, too.
30:30
SPEAKER_00: And I'm I'm a little conflicted with this because at some point I'm gonna get a you know, countertop.
30:35
SPEAKER_00: And what do I want to do?
30:36
SPEAKER_00: You know, I don't know yet.
30:38
SPEAKER_00: Unfortunately, I don't have to decide yet.
30:40
SPEAKER_01: So yeah, it's a tough one.
30:41
SPEAKER_01: Um, so the last type here that's worth mentioning is something called engineered stone, which is synthetic rock.
30:48
SPEAKER_01: And a lot of this is actually marble, and it's pretty easy now in a laboratory setting to actually make marble, to take a bunch of calcite, give it a little coloration, heat it up to high enough temperatures to form it into a marble, and squish it a little bit and give it that deformation fabric, and then let it cool and cut it up into countertop pieces.
31:09
SPEAKER_01: This is mostly used at the moment for things like tiling and flooring and paneling because it's easier to make and cheaper to make than sort of mining it.
31:20
SPEAKER_01: And it's not a great countertop material, as we've already talked about.
31:23
SPEAKER_01: You can have really nice marble countertops.
31:25
SPEAKER_01: Some people love them, but also some people don't like them so much.
31:29
SPEAKER_01: So you can also make this quartz as we're talking about.
31:32
SPEAKER_01: The the quartz could be uh kind of an engineered stone as well.
31:36
SPEAKER_01: Um, so you can get a variety of rock types that are quote unquote rock types, they're engineered stone pieces.
31:43
SPEAKER_01: So that's just worth mentioning here at the end.
31:45
SPEAKER_00: So, well, before we uh wrap this up though, I do want to talk about something that you and I got to see when we were in upstate New York and we went to the Gore Mountain Mine.
31:53
SPEAKER_00: All right, this was spectacular stuff.
31:57
SPEAKER_00: It had these, you know, metamorphic garnets that were in this.
32:02
SPEAKER_00: I don't know, what do you what would you call it?
32:03
SPEAKER_00: Like a meta gabbro?
32:05
SPEAKER_00: I guess that's the best way to describe it, right?
32:07
SPEAKER_00: Like a it's an amphibolite.
32:08
SPEAKER_01: Um, it's a sort of metamorphosed gabbro amphibolite.
32:11
SPEAKER_01: Yep.
32:11
SPEAKER_00: So it was mostly black colored, extremely coarse grained, but it had been metamorphosed, and it had these huge, beautiful, deep red almondine garnets in it.
32:20
SPEAKER_00: It was just amazing stuff.
32:22
SPEAKER_01: I mean, huge, Chris.
32:23
SPEAKER_01: You say that they're like softball size or little volleyball size.
32:26
SPEAKER_01: They're just yeah, like a size of a baby's head.
32:28
SPEAKER_00: They're amazing.
32:28
SPEAKER_00: They're unbelievable.
32:29
SPEAKER_00: So anyway, beautiful.
32:31
SPEAKER_00: We got to what they were mining this though to make countertops out of it.
32:34
SPEAKER_00: So we got to see this.
32:35
SPEAKER_00: So let's talk a little bit about how they do this.
32:38
SPEAKER_00: It's really kind of fascinating, don't you think?
32:41
SPEAKER_00: Like how they actually cut this.
32:43
SPEAKER_01: Totally fascinating.
32:44
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I saw this as well in my undergrad.
32:47
SPEAKER_01: We went to Sweden to map some high grade gneisses uh in Sweden.
32:52
SPEAKER_01: And we went to one of these quarries, one of these stone quarries, where they were actually actively cutting at the time.
32:56
SPEAKER_01: And there's many ways to do this.
32:59
SPEAKER_01: In Sweden, what they were doing was they would drill down, do drill a hole straight down into a rock, and then drill a hole sideways, go to the bottom of that little drill hole, drill one in sideways and intersect.
33:10
SPEAKER_01: So you have two holes, one going down and one going in, and they intersect within the rock, and then they'd strap this plastic, it's kind of a thick plastic rope that has diamond bits in it, so that's like kind of plastic with every maybe 10 inches, has a little diamond encrusted metal chunk in it, and then they'd get this thing going through a saw and they'd just pull, so they'd put tension on that rope, get it spinning, get it going around a gear house, and get that like pulling the rope through it, right?
33:40
SPEAKER_01: And just a loop, like a chain going through there, and then just put tension on it and pull it out, and it would cut that diamond rope, it would cut straight out of the rock, and you could do this a couple times and then cut out a big block, and then take that big block and put it in your front end loader, bring it into the the saw place, and then they have these huge saws that'll cut it into the slabs, the thickness of countertop, and then you can take that in with like you know, jet cutting machines, you can cut out your pattern of the actual countertop you want.
34:12
SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's a really incredible process to watch, really crazy.
34:16
SPEAKER_01: But Gore Mountain, they did they have these slabs laying around?
34:20
SPEAKER_01: Yes, they did.
34:20
SPEAKER_01: You don't remember this?
34:21
SPEAKER_01: Am I remembering it?
34:22
SPEAKER_01: They had I remember the slabs, I don't remember seeing them, you know, in action.
34:25
SPEAKER_00: No, they weren't in action because we were there on a Sunday, and you know, remember we went there and the owner pulled up and we were like, uh-oh, we're in trouble.
34:34
SPEAKER_00: And he took us down into the heart of the mine.
34:36
SPEAKER_00: It was awesome.
34:37
SPEAKER_01: Yes, great.
34:38
SPEAKER_00: Nicest guy on the planet.
34:39
SPEAKER_00: Remember, he's like, take whatever you want, guys.
34:41
SPEAKER_00: Whatever, whatever you want to do.
34:43
SPEAKER_01: Whatever, guys, go for it.
34:44
SPEAKER_00: We're like, really?
34:45
SPEAKER_00: Oh my goodness, that's amazing.
34:47
SPEAKER_00: 4,000 pounds of rocks out of that thing.
34:49
SPEAKER_00: So anyway, I don't know how they did it.
34:52
SPEAKER_00: I know they had a lot of these drill holes.
34:55
SPEAKER_00: The geometry of them was very similar to what you just described.
34:57
SPEAKER_00: So I think they did the same kind of thing.
35:00
SPEAKER_00: Um, I don't know.
35:02
SPEAKER_00: The slabs were huge, they're just like absolutely enormous, huge slabs.
35:05
SPEAKER_01: I mean, giant slabs.
35:07
SPEAKER_01: So then, you know, I don't know if any maybe people have seen this, but you can get a sort of a polish or two.
35:12
SPEAKER_01: And I actually bought one of these uh a couple years ago, a countertop rotary polisher that just has diamond pads that you put on it and you kind of polish it uh with uh with water around and you just do a wet polish on it, and it polishes up really nicely, so you can kind of hand polish these things after the fact.
35:28
SPEAKER_01: So that's kind of how those get made, which is always something that I just find fascinating.
35:33
SPEAKER_01: I don't know, it's totally cool to watch these things going and watch them mining this stuff.
35:37
SPEAKER_01: So I agree.
35:38
SPEAKER_01: Um, it is very cool.
35:40
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so I I don't know, Chris.
35:42
SPEAKER_00: What do you think?
35:42
SPEAKER_00: I think that's a wrap.
35:43
SPEAKER_00: I'm all excited about countertops now, though.
35:45
SPEAKER_00: I gotta tell you.
35:46
SPEAKER_01: Uh yeah, are you gonna go to the house?
35:48
SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
35:49
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
35:49
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you know how I am.
35:51
SPEAKER_00: I'll probably be I'll probably be at the store tomorrow.
35:54
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I'm rather impulsive.
35:56
SPEAKER_01: You're fairly impetuous sometimes.
35:58
SPEAKER_01: I am.
35:59
SPEAKER_01: Oh, that's great.
36:00
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's so good.
36:02
SPEAKER_01: So, I mean, just you know, things to keep in mind are that uh granite countertops, quote unquote granite, are not always granite.
36:10
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's that's right.
36:11
SPEAKER_00: Important thing to take home.
36:13
SPEAKER_00: Good point.
36:13
SPEAKER_00: The naming of this is very confusing.
36:16
SPEAKER_00: I stand by this.
36:17
SPEAKER_00: I think the naming is like somebody that knows nothing about geology feel like they're naming carpet and just by the color, and they try to describe it that way, and it really is misleading.
36:28
SPEAKER_00: Um, calling all rock countertops granite, and no, they're not, and you know.
36:33
SPEAKER_01: So, yeah, keep that in mind.
36:34
SPEAKER_01: But all countertops, all the natural ones are beautiful.
36:37
SPEAKER_01: I wouldn't turn any of them down, really.
36:39
SPEAKER_01: They're just spectacularly stunning stone.
36:42
SPEAKER_01: So cool.
36:42
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36:45
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36:51
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37:00
SPEAKER_00: We really, really, really want that.
37:02
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37:02
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37:03
SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
37:04
SPEAKER_01: Perfect.
37:05
SPEAKER_01: Sweet.
37:06
SPEAKER_01: See you next week.