Questions 1. You are standing in a mountain stream bed with the highest mountain area behind you. While you were on...
1. You are standing in a mountain stream bed with the highest mountain area behind you. While you were on top of this mountain (let us call it Mt. Lafayette in the White Mountains of New Hampshire!) which is located in a humid climate region, that there was a light-colored phaneretic plutonic igneous rock you think was the Conway Granite or at least some kind of granite under your feet. You even noted that there were some pockets of grus (look it up!) along the path where the granite was weathering away in place. Now, you may be wondering where the question is...here it is! Q) If the sediment in the river under your feet or lower down the slope were to be "turned into stone" which type of clastic sedimentary rock would you predict it to become? Explain your reasoning. Most of what you need to answer this is in this virtual lab.
2. You are really wiped out from that climb so you decide to go to a nice cool beach! Name a beach that you have visited and tell me what kind of clastic sedimentary rock you would expect to find formed there a couple of million years from now if the beach sands kept being deposited and then compacted and cemented. Which one of the three common sandstones would you expect and why?
3. You caught a bit of a chill at the beach and decide to fly to a warm desert region. As you take off your Tevas or sneakers and feel the warm sand between your toes, you wonder why is this sand so different than one of the areas you just visited. Is the desert sand closer in composition and in the degree of rounding and sorting as the river sand or the beach sand and why?
4. What type of sandstone would you expect the desert sand dune sand to "turn into" when lithified?