Virtual Rock Kit

Answers to follow-up questions

Which of these rocks would be good for:

Making a statue – all except mudstone (too soft) – it would be difficult to make a statue from some because they are so hard, eg. Granite, metaquartzite
Building a dam – all except mudstone (too soft), conglomerate (too variable), slate (too easily broken in one direction)
Making a fireplace – anything that is attractive – except mudstone (too soft)
Solid foundations – all of them – but the tougher the rock, the better the foundations

Which of the rocks would be best for:

Storing water within it – sandstone, limestone, conglomerate
Storing oil or gas within it – sandstone, limestone, conglomerate
Showing that sedimentary rocks are made of lots of fragments – the fragments are most clear in coarser-grained rocks, conglomerate, sandstone, limestone
Showing that igneous rocks have interlocking crystals – the crystals are clearest in the coarsest rocks, granite and gabbro
Showing that metamorphic rocks often have aligned minerals – slate, schist, gneiss
Some rocks contain traces of past life – fossiliferous limestone

Which rocks (2 or more) would best show:

Sedimentary rocks ranging from coarse to fine – conglomerate to sandstone to mudstone
The difference between igneous rocks that formed by slow cooling and fast-cooled igneous rocks – coarse rocks (slow cooling – granite, gabbro) through medium grained rocks (microgranite) to fine-grained rocks (basalt, rhyolite)
Metamorphic rocks that often don’t have aligned minerals – marble or quartzite. This is either because the rock was formed by thermal metamorphism, when there was little pressure to cause mineral alignment, or because the minerals don’t easily show alignment – as the calcite in many marbles and the quartz in many quartzites.
The metamorphic rocks that show a sequence of increasing metamorphism from an initial mudstone sedimentary rock – mudstone to slate to schist to gneiss.