Box of rocks: Beginner's guide to South African Geology, by Nick Norman

Box of rocks: Beginner's guide to South African Geology, by Nick Norman. Penguin Random House South Africa. Imprint: Struik Nature. Cape Town, South Africa 2015. ISBN 9781775841753 / ISBN 978-1-77584-175-3

Box of rocks: Beginner's guide to South African Geology, by Nick Norman. Penguin Random House South Africa. Imprint: Struik Nature. Cape Town, South Africa 2015. ISBN 9781775841753 / ISBN 978-1-77584-175-3

Mainly made for young readers, Box of rocks, Nick Norman's guide for beginners in terms of South African Geology, gives an easy access to a complex science by well illustrated, self-explaining and easy-to-understand geological examples and great photos.

Nick Norman  

Sandstone

Sandstone varies from almost white to brown, but is usually cream, beige or pale grey. It is laid down in layers called 'beds7 that may range from a few centimetres to over a metre thick.These beds may look similar or may differ in colour or grain size. Sandstone can have a rough (sandpapery) feel, but very old sandstone may be smooth to the touch. Water and, less commonly, air transports sand to a place where it settles. As sand accumulates, the weight of the overlying sand packs the grains tightly together, until they are cemented to one another, usually with silica, forming layers of hard sandstone. The layers of sandstone are clearly separated by what geologists called 'bedding planes'.They may come to lie at different angles. "Cross-bedding" describes the bedding Layers that are at a different angle to the top and bottom of the bed.

The common minerals in sandstone

Many sandstones consist almost entirely of grains of quartz (the hardest common rock-forming mineral). Sand derived from granite may form sandstone that is rich in feldspar. Some of the sandstone near the coast in the Eastern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal consists mostly of seashell fragments.The fragments are cemented together with a flour of very finely ground shell fragments.

Uses of sandstone

Sandstone is mainly used in the building industry. In the eastern Free State around Ficksburg and Ladybrand the sandstone is soft and easily worked, so you will see plenty of local sandstone monuments and buildings. The sandstone around Oudtshoorn and Mossel Bay is even softer than that in the Free State and was widely used for building in the past. Although the mountains in the Cape consist mostly of sandstone, it is particularly hard, so it is less useful.

Where to see sandstone

The sandstone that makes up the Cape mountains runs all the way from Vanrhynsdorp near the west coast to Port Elizabeth on the east coast. There is lots of sandstone to be seen in cuttings in and around Cape Town. At Meiringspoort near Prince Albert there is magnificent folded sandstone. There is another sandstone Table Mountain' between Durban and Pietermartizburg, in KwaZulu-Natal, and sandstone caps many flat-topped hills in the Valley of a Thousand Hills. Road cuttings in the Karoo often show pale brown to cream sandstone beds.There are also good examples of sandstone in the Waterberg mountains of Namibia. [...]

This is an excerpt from Box of rocks: Beginner's guide to South African Geology, by Nick Norman.

Title: Box of rocks
Subtitle: Beginner's guide to South African Geology
Author: Nick Norman
Publisher: Penguin Random House South Africa
Imprint: Struik Nature
Cape Town, South Africa 2015
ISBN 9781775841753 / ISBN 978-1-77584-175-3
Softcover, 21 x 28 cm, 48 pages, 100 photographs, 40 illustrations

Norman, Nick im Namibiana-Buchangebot

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