The Adventures of a Rock
At the dawn of time, the Earth was a giant sphere filled with volcanic activity. One day, some lava cooled and formed a rock called granite. The granite was made up of 3 minerals known as quartz, biotite mica, and feldspar. The dominant mineral was feldspar. Feldspar‘s chemical composition was KAISi3O8. It contains 3 silicon atoms and 8 oxygen atoms, making it part of the silicate group. It was semi-hard and had a hardness of six on Moh’s hardness scale. Feldspar gave granite its pinkish color. One day the granite was broken into 3 bits. The biggest bit was Feldspar.
Feldspar just laid there and had nothing to do. So he waited, and waited, and waited, until one day he was no longer a solid. The wind had weathered him and now he had become sediment, floating around in the strong wind. Suddenly, he stopped floating and landed in a river. As he drifted slowly towards the bottom, he noticed that the riverbed was made up of similar pieces just like him. He settled and waited. He waited for a long time. Then one day he couldn’t see the water anymore. All he could see was more and more sediment. It also became very heavy. Soon, the pressure was too much and he was compacted. Minerals then seeped through the pores and glued him together. He became part of a sedimentary rock!
As the layers or sedimentary rock built up, he was pushed deep within the Earth. There he experienced intense heat and pressure. It was too much for him and the two forces changed him into a metamorphic rock. Well the adventure didn’t stop there. The metamorphic rock was strong and could now withstand the pressure but the heat was too much. He started to melt. He melted until he became a liquid known as magma. This magma was less dense than the surrounding layers of rock so it was pushed up out of a volcano. The volcano blew its top and out the magma came. Due to the fact that he had reached the Earth’s crust again, it was now called lava.
The lava cooled down due to the low temperatures and became an extrusive igneous rock. Feldspar was happy. He finally reached the surface of the Earth and could breathe fresh air again! He was also glad that he didn’t have to be pressed, melted, and blown out of a volcano anymore! But little did he know that it was about to happen all over again because he was soon weathered and eroded again and was deposited in a river. “Here we go again,” the sediment exclaimed.
This is the story of rocks. All go through the rock cycle which is the process by which rocks change. The Feldspar in the story is a silicate mineral contained in granite. Granite is mainly used for buildings, bridges, and other structures. It is a felsic coarse-grained intrusive igneous rock. I hope you now understand the role of the rock cycle and how it works. Feldspar had better get on with it because the cycle that he’s been through is never going to end!
