Stone

[sister_luck]

I've still got a few photographs left to show you.

This time the theme rocks. I used to dream of becoming a geologist when I was a pre-teen. I still like hunting for unusual stones, pebbles, crystals, fossils and have accumulated a modest collection over the years of thoroughly unspectacular findings which nonetheless mean a lot to me.



Instead of taking another useless paper-weight home, I decided to use photography as a substitute. Found on a beach in Cornwall.



Slate I believe. The same beach, but different angle.



Still stone, but not entirely nature's handiwork.

Comments

[candlelightfrot.livejournal.com]

#2 looks to be a chevron fold in interbedded siltstones and shales. Though if it has been heated enough the shales might be metamorphosed into a slate. Don't know what caused the fold. Though it is probably tectonic movements in association with the metamorphism.

BTW... I am a geologist by profession, well former profession.

Hey, thanks for that!

[sister-luck.livejournal.com]

There is quite a bit of slate in Cornwall, but I didn't get a closer look at this beach. I come from a region where slate shingles (is that the right word?) are used to cover the outside walls (especially those on the weather-side) of houses. Our slate seems to be a lot darker than what I saw on some Cornish roofs.

[candlelightfrot.livejournal.com]

You're most welcome...;~)

Yeah, slate was a fairly common shingling material over here, though mostly for roofs and it still is used (though it is much more expensive than the more common materials - asphalt shingles and cedar shakes). Talk about crazy somebody got the idea to even make fake slate shingles and cedar shakes out of aluminum. Slates come in different colors depending upon the mineralogy of the sediments making them up. I have seen shades of medium grey to jet black slate. Plus there is someplace out east in the US that had a reddish slate that ended up on some roofs.

You know that's such a nice chevron fold that I'm wondering where the first such fold was name. It could be you have photographed the type section where such folding got its name, since England is where much of geology got its start. Hmmm... dunno....