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OCTOBER 1, 2017
AHMED AMER MOHAMED RASHAD
Section: 1
Rock cycle
A continuous process by which rocks are created, changed from one form to another,
destroyed, and then formed again.
Rock cycle
Under certain conditions, rocks of the upper mantle and lower crust melt, forming a hot
liquid called magma. An igneous rock forms when magma solidifies.
Rocks of all kinds decompose, or weather, at the Earths surface. Weathering breaks
rocks into smaller fragments such as gravel, sand, and clay. At the same time, rainwater
may dissolve some of the rock. Streams, wind, glaciers, and gravity then erode the
weathered particles, carry them downhill, and deposit them at lower elevations. All such
particles, formed by weathering and then eroded, transported, and deposited in layers, are
called sediment. The sand on a beach and mud on a mud flat are examples of sediment
that accumulated by these processes.
A sedimentary rock forms when sediment becomes cemented or compacted into solid rock.
When the beach sand is cemented, it becomes sandstone; the mud becomes shale.
A metamorphic rock forms when any pre-existing rock is altered by heating, increased
pressure, or tectonic deformation.
Sedimentary Rocks
Types of sedimentary rocks:
Sedimentary rocks are broadly divided into four categories:
I. Clastic sedimentary rocks are composed of fragments of weathered rocks, called
clasts, that have been transported, deposited, and cemented together. Clastic
rocks make up more than 85 percent of all sedimentary rocks. This category
includes conglomerate, breccia, sandstone, claystone, shale, mudstone and
siltstone.
II. Organic sedimentary rocks consist of the remains of plants or animals. Coal is an
organic sedimentary rock made up of decomposed and compacted plant remains.
III. Chemical sedimentary rocks form by direct precipitation of minerals from solution.
Rock salt, for example, forms when salt precipitates from evaporating seawater or
saline lake water.
2- Breccia:
Breccia and conglomerate are very similar rocks. They are both clastic
sedimentary rocks composed of particles larger than two millimetres in
diameter. The difference is in the shape of the large particles. In breccia the
large particles are angular in shape, but in conglomerate the particles are
rounded. This reveals a difference in how far the particles were transported.
Near the outcrop where the fragments were produced by mechanical
weathering, the shape is angular. However, during transport by water away
from the outcrop, the sharp points and edges of those angular fragments are
rounded. The rounded particles would form a conglomerate.
Breccia
Conglomerate
3- Sandstone:
The word sandstone refers to any clastic sedimentary
rock comprising primarily sand-sized grains.
The pore spaces in shale are so tiny that the gas has difficulty moving through
the shale and into the well. Drillers discovered that they could increase the
permeability of the shale by pumping water down the well under pressure that
was high enough to fracture the shale. These fractures liberated some of the
gas from the pore spaces and allowed that gas to flow to the well. This
technique is known as "hydraulic fracturing".
Drillers also learned how to drill down to the level of the shale and turn the
well 90 degrees to drill horizontally through the shale rock unit. This produced
a well with a very long "pay zone" through the reservoir rock (see illustration).
This method is known as "horizontal drilling."
II. Organic sedimentary rocks:
Organic sedimentary rocks, such as chert and coal, form by lithification of the remains
of plants and animals.
Chert:
Chert is made up of the remains of tiny marine organisms that make their skeletons
of silica rather than calcium carbonate. When these organisms die, their silica
skeletons fall to the bottom, dissolve, recrystallize, and might become part of a
chert nodule or chert layer.
In contrast, some nodular chert appears to form by precipitation from silica rich
ground water, most often in limestone. Chert formed in this way could be
considered a chemical sedimentary rock.
Coal:
When plants die, their remains usually decompose by reaction with oxygen.
However, in warm swamps and in other environments where plant growth is
rapid, dead plants accumulate so rapidly that the oxygen is used up long before
the decay process is complete (the rate of plant debris accumulation must be
greater than the rate of decay). The undecayed or partially decayed plant remains
form peat. As peat is buried and compacted by overlying sediments, it converts
to coal, a hard, black, combustible rock.
Coal is a combustible rock and, along with oil and natural gas, it is one of the
three most important fossil fuels. Coal has a wide range of uses; the most
important use is for the generation of electricity.
coal
III. Chemical sedimentary rocks:
Chemical sedimentary rocks are formed when conditions favor a chemical reaction or
process that causes chemicals dissolved in water to precipitate, creating a layer of
sediment.
When water in a salty sea or lake evaporates, for example, it may leave behind salt
(rock salt) and gypsum deposits.
Seawater is so nearly saturated in calcium carbonate that calcium carbonate minerals
can precipitate under the proper conditions. As waves and currents roll tiny shell
fragments back and forth on the sea bottom, calcium carbonate precipitates in concentric
layers on the fragments. This process produces nearly perfect spheres called oliths. In
turn, oliths may become cemented together to form olitic limestone. Limestone of this
type is a chemical sedimentary rock. However, most limestone is bioclastic
Chalk Coquina
Dolomite:
Dolomite, also known as "dolostone" and "dolomite
rock," is a sedimentary rock composed primarily of the
mineral dolomite, CaMg(CO3)2. Dolomite is found in
sedimentary basins worldwide. It is thought to form by
the post depositional alteration limestone by
magnesium-rich groundwater. Dolomite
References:
1- Introduction to Physical Geology - Thompson and Turk.
2- www.geology.com.