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Granite History
Granite Worktops / Granite History
The word granite comes from the Latin word “granum” whose significance is ‘grain’ because of its granular nature .Nevertheless, the Italian term of granite comes from the past participle of granite which means to granulate or make grainy.
Granite is a very hard, crystal-like, igneous rock whose basic structure is made up of feldspar, quartz, orthoclase or microcline together with one or more dark minerals. It has therefore a homogeneous texture. It is the most well-known plutonic rock of the Earth's surface, created after the cooling of magma (silicate melt) at depth.
It is possible that the huge granite bodies may have been created within earth’s crust when the new magma penetrated it when the igneous varieties of crustal rocks melted into. The evolutionary history of granite can be proven by looking at the chemistry of multiple layers of its large constituent crystals, especially zircon. Granite is formed only when the deep crustal rocks get recycled as mantle magma went up through them, instead of re-melting the ancient, shallower crust, as it was previously thought.
Granite is generally medium to coarse grained, and it sometimes contains certain particular crystals bigger than the groundmass forming a rock which is called porphyry. Granite can have different colours ranging from pink to dark grey or even black, but this varies according to their chemistry and mineralogy. Outcrops of granite usually form tors, rounded massifs, and terrains of rounded boulders which come out of flat, sandy soils. Granite sometimes can come to the surface in circular depressions around which there are ranges of hills, formed by the metamorphic aureole or hornfels.
Granite is almost in all cases massive, hard and tough, and this is the main reason for which it is used generally as a construction stone. The medium density of granite is 2.75 g•cm-3 with a range of 1.74 g•cm-3 to 2.80 g•cm-3. The term granite comes from the Latin granum, a grain, which has to do with the coarse-grained structure of these crystalline rocks. This is why the granite is used as a material in constructions where the granite tiled-shape and it has a widespread usage apart from the granite slabs for wall cladding, roofing, flooring, and some other types of interior and exterior applications and especially for counter tops, kitchen work tops and vanity units and is the most commonly used material for monuments and memorials. Granite has a special place among dimensional stones on account of its toughness, resistance to weathering, flexibility to take mirror polish, fascinating colours and textural patterns.
Although it is very well-known in the entire world , the areas with the most commercial granite quarries are situated in the Scandinavian Peninsula (mostly in Finland and Norway), Spain (mostly Galicia and Extremadura), Brazil, India and different countries in the South end of the African continent, namely Angola, Namibia, Zimbabwe and South Africa.
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