CLAY DEFINITION CLARIFICATION: I tried to get this across in the video, but I've been seeing many comments that indicate I didn't do a great job, so I just wanted to say here that CLAY IS BOTH A SIZE AND A COMPOSITION! I state at the beginning of the video that it is defined by size, but if you KEEP watching, I then go on to discuss the fact that only certain compositions of material exist at that size, and these are secondary, layered aluminosilicates, which are what geologists define as 'clay minerals'. However, there are also oxides that can sometimes be clay-sized and are sometimes called pelagic clays becuase they form on the seafloor (in the pelagic zone), but they are not considered 'clay minerals' because they are not aluminosiliates. Why do we make this distinction? Because aluminosilicates have a very specific platy structure and this causes them to behave differently than materials that aren't platy (like certain oxides). But don't worry, I talk ALL about clay structures in the follow up video to this one! ;) Also, I see lots of angry comments because I used fractions & metric, so I just want to say I only did that because the reference I was using did that and I thought it was hilarious haha! So please don't be mad at me, I would never do that for real, but the point here is the actual value doesn't matter, it is just VERY small lol ;) Lastly, I had a typo in the end-screen. Pretend it says Mineralogy Playlist rather than Planetary Science Playlist ;) Thanks! haha
Excellent information I learned a lot. I bet you could choose the best clay to make bricks!!!, I always wanted to make my own bricks. Not to mention you know where the gold, silver, copper, iron, etc is hiding.
@@GEOGIRL I wish I could claim originality with that, but I saw that with accompanying photo in a geology text many years ago. I would attribute if I could remember where In saw it. I have had some summer work testing the engineering properties of soils, and a little clay can go a long way as far as affecting those properties. Where I worked had problems with expansive clay made up of bentonite.
Good idea to do a soil science series. Dirt is way cooler than it gets credit for. My son found the orange iron oxide clay layer beneath our garden and figured out how to make little bricks dried in the sun. They're surprisingly hard and sturdy so he built a little border out of them.
Has he tried firing them? Takes more than a kitchen oven. Perhaps a local school or craftsman? Most teachers and artisans melt to hear honest curiosity. Good luck!
Soil and dirt are not the same concept. Soil has organic material in it, and is made of structures of clay, silt and sand, created by that organic material, called aggregates. The meaning of dirt is fully associated with being unclean, not the source and recycling system of all life.
@@SirAlanClive Thank you for the compliment. This is an educational channel after all, so accuracy and etymology are important. I liked out host's definition of dirt as being "soil displaced". I do not know if this comes from a scientific definition but it is a poetic interpretation.
@@geraldfrost4710 See a channel called primitive technology... guy builds everything using primitive tools... makes his own bricks and pots.. fired with wood... and buildings too... and even harvests iron ore and creates metal stuff with it. Very cool channel! cheers! here's his latest video: ua-cam.com/video/Gqhxe_pL6Ws/v-deo.html
This compelled me to finally look up what pottery clay consists of and how it's classified. There's a lot I don't know but have always wondered at. Totally playing catch up here. The soil at my dad's house in Illinois is heavy with clay and I've always wondered at it's origin and how it is classified as clay verses silt, soil, & sand. I was born and raised in the Pacific being a half island boy so U.S. geology was never really a prominent interest for me until now. I heard tell that everything East of the Mississippi River is buried under several feet of eroded Appalachian mountains where it hasn't been scraped to bedrock by glaciers, forcing me to wonder how big those mountains really got and where it all went. All very intriguing, and for me, a mystery to uncover. Sand and lava has been my forte`. Cuts your feet and gets up in your shorts so it has a way of remaining imminent.
And all those sandy beaches in the coastal plain and Florida beaches. The Appalachian mountains were as high as the Alps, or higher during their uplift.
@@alexander.Rainforest1987 the Appalachians at their peak were on par or greater than the current Himalayas. They are also older than bones which is so weird to think about.
I always thought the soils had much more than 4% organic material. I was thinking 10 to 15%, for topsoil, unless it was just landscape material.......Oh well. I live in an area that is covered in soils brought down from Canada by the Glaciers.
Well I think it definitely varies, that's a great point! There are regions where the organic layer (the O horizon) is MUCH thicker! And then there are regions where it's much thinner, like where I live in the desert ;) Edit: I should mention too, I think (because the organic layer is the top layer), this percentage would depend heavily on how deep you go when determining relative percent of each of these components. I think this 4% estimate was made going all the way down to the bedrock below all the soil layers (way passed the top soil), so it is a pretty high percentage considering soils can go extremely deep (~50+ ft or 15+ m deep).
Cool, I never would have thought I would be interested in a video about silt and clay but you are engaging as always. In the American South where I’m from there are people who actually seek out clay to eat. I understand that white clay is a particularly prized delicacy though I’ve never partaken myself. Good to know that this practice was condoned by an actual scientist 😂.
There are some bad chemicals in SOME clays. Most of the chemistry is benign, and passes straight through. Some of the chemicals are needed by our bodies; because of the small size (better absorption) they are used in dietary supplements. Like eating mushrooms in the wild: (insert metaphor here).
Actually there's a good chance you've eaten clay if you've ever had a really creamy rich milkshake, at least according to one of my university geology professors: he asserted that many fast-food restaurants add Bentonite clay to make milkshakes thicker and creamier.
I just discovered this channel 2 weeks ago and I love it. I need to check out your video on soil. By the way, I grew up on a farm on the Valparaiso moraine in Northwest Indiana. Due to glaciation moraine soils are all mixed up. It is possible to have multiple soil types in one small field. Yeah I'm weird, I love dirt, or more accurately soil.
Thank you for a fantastic video again! We are making the finishing touches to our geopark in the middle of Sweden that will be opened in June next year. Two weeks ago we were put on the IUGS list of the first 100 geological heritage sites in the world. It is fantastic to see you present all the topics that are represented in our park. I wish you lived a little closer so that we could have you here with us to get people enthusiastic about earth science. Looking forward to your next video!
Wow! What a flood of facts … I love it! I’m basically clueless about soils, which is why this presentation is so cool to me. Most of what I learned about clay in the 80s, had to do with deposition in deltas and such. Adios Amigo :)
Now I know why the soil here in Cagayan de Oro City Mindanao Philippines is red, and so is the soil in the tropical north of Australia! Also "Down in the west Texas town of El Paso, there lives an amazing Geo Girl"!
@@GEOGIRL always a very telling thing, the type of dirty jokes that amuse people. Soil making you laugh, because its in bags, I doubt i will visit a garden center again without that joke repeating in my head. & i like that.
Clay might be the most important substance there is: I've read that it could have catalyzed the early chemistry of life itself. It also served as a very important tool for recording the first writing, and then there's its use for holding water/liquids and food. Almost forgot to mention its use in construction. Like I speculated, it may be the most important substance, at least to mankind.
Indeed. Anthropologists and archaeologists have discovered clay pottery shards in almost every known habitat of ancient civilization. As one of the pre-historic techs, it was one of the first materials that could be manipulated to serve multiple uses. Artisans still make beautifully crafted pottery to this day!
I respectfully disagree. I would argue water is much more important especially for life chemistry. The fact that fluid chemistry is much faster and easier to control than solid state or gasious chemistry (respectively) and water is one of the few substances liquid over such a large relative temperature makes it much more vital (not to mention it's polar nature and ability to be protonated and/or deprotonated). I will grant you the mastery of clay is a hallmark of many civilization but there are no civilizations that have existed without water. Regardless, I'd be interested to see the source that claims clay's importance in life chemistry.
@@Margoth195 Definitely water is an absolute given, and maybe the most important molecule we know of related to our version of life. It'll be interesting to see what life we may be able to simulate and constrain in other solvents such as liquid CH4. Just punch in something like 'Organic synthesis clay catalysts,' and I'm sure you'll find tons of info. There's even new research into types of catalysts involving kinetic energy over direct chemical reactions (think firing molecules at a wall with shapes on it that cleave or form bonds). We're still noobs. Much to learn.
@@lettybastien4624 Life evolved on Earth way before it needed oxygen, but I'm sure glad it made the switch, allowing energetic creatures like us to contemplate such.
Check out this video about hydrocarbon formation: ua-cam.com/video/1bDvnDAHDCo/v-deo.html Let me know if you want anymore like that video and what specific topics in petroleum geology you'd like me to cover ;) Thanks!
Hey Rachel, whodathunk I'd spend 18 minutes listening to your review of MUD? LOL! This is really interesting though and it pertains to a couple of things that are of interest, one is building with Rammed Earth and the other is Permaculture. With RE, you want to avoid some clays (though others are of great benefit) and with Permaculture the type of soil you have will greatly effect the types of plants you can grow. Looking forward to your next installment :)
Them: "Why are you eating dirt?" Me: "just checking if it's clay or silt based, I learned it in a video on UA-cam" Them: "OK, but why are you using a spoon?"
Well done. You explained this well. It's a surprisingly complicated topic even though it's just clay lol. Especially when you get into different forms of it, like Kaolinite.
Well done! Quite interesting. I'll never view that bag of potting "soil" the same way again. Example, "You are dirt, do you hear me, you bag of soil!!"
Clay. Broca's area, or the Broca area is a region in the frontal lobe of the dominant hemisphere, usually the left, of the brain with functions linked to speech production. 2/8/2021 and I lived again.
OMG, is that picture of the shale cliff in Ohio? I think I have been kayaking there!!! Specifically, the Grand River in the counties just eas of Cleveland
A much less invasive way to tell the size of the particles in your sample is to rub it between your fingers. If you can feel individual grains like sugar then the sample has sand in it. If it feels floury it has plenty of silt in it. If you wet it and it feels sticky or slimy, it has clay in it. This can be confirmed by rolling it in a ball after wetting. If it will not hold a shape at all, it is mostly sand. If it can be formed into a ball, but cracks when it is squeezed, then it is predominantly silt. If it forms a ball that deforms but does not crack when squeezed, it is predominantly clay. There is also a similar test called a ribbon test. Ultimately, you can about 2/3 fill a clear, straight-sided jar with it, fill with water with a few spoonfuls of baking soda or laundry powder. Shake very thoroughly until all the particles are separated, then sit it somewhere. The sand is heaviest so settles out within a few minutes, after an hour most of the silt has settled on top of it. After a day or several days, the clay has settled out as well. You can tell when it has finished if the water on top is clear. Any organic material will be floating in the water. The baking soda or whatever alkaline compound you use helps to get the clay out of suspension in the water. Because of it's nanometre size, clay particles have a slight electrical charge on their surface, which - added with the sheer tiny-ness, means it can be suspended by water molecules for a long time. It is also the reason why it is incredibly important in giving soils its fertility - along with the soil biology. The different size particles are often different colours, so you can see the layers of each quite easily. If your jar has straight sides you can then measure the proportions of sand, silt and clay in your sample reasonably accurately, and determine how close it is to being a loam - ideal for growing plants. Loam has roughly equal proportions of the three size grades. The best soil for most food crops is a silty loam, in other words has a slightly higher proportion of silt than the bigger and smaller grades. This soil will have the best water and nutrient retention capacity, while still being free-draining.
You nutty geologist ! Actually I remember this grain size stuff from schooldays. That was over 5 years ago now, as I am now 64. Thanks for the interesting video !
Hi , bravos! ...I've drifted into metiorite s , I need good pictures and more specific reference materials , you do planetary science ? Too ? Also ?...is there a laser that will reliably excite a peridot stuck in a pallisite metiorite?. What thick book , should I look for?
I'm going to give this channel a shot. Had a rock collection as a kid (that some idiot sold) but I'll hang out. Super wonky but I'll just have to pay attention. Great presentation!
Sorry, but you're too attractive. However, I did manage to learn a bit about clay. I liked your graphics and that you seemed to have the knowledge on tap. Excellent presentation.
"Clay is a type of fine-grained natural soil material containing clay minerals[1] (hydrous aluminium phyllosilicates, e.g. kaolin, Al2Si2O5(OH)4)." So it is both fine-grain and mineral composition.
Deposits build up from the settlements, (sediments) either in moving water columns or at the bottoms of larger water columns which move slowly, such as the bottoms of seas or ocean areas, and most clays are laid from this process, millions of years ago, when that area was near or under oceanside We are talking about BULK clay formations, not simply migratory bio, but layer specific anaerobic bacters, which only lives within a specific area below the silt and muds, nearest the surface of the bottom of the body of water.
I’m curious, is everything that is classified as classified by Geology as clay (maybe let’s call it G-Clay), the same as what is called clay in Ceramics, that is, material from the ground that is combined with water to shape pots and things and then fired to turn into a permanent object (maybe let’s call it C-clay)? Is all G-clay, C-clay? Is all C-clay, G-clay?
Yep, I think the general aluminosilicate composition of ceramic clay is the same as geological clay :) So C-clay is G-clay and vice versa! haha (PS: I don't know much about ceramics, I just googled it so I hope this is correct hahaha)
I always wanted to know what the difference in formation is between different colors of lava rock, pumice, basalt or obsidian, since they all come from lava what makes them different
Fascinating and informative. I live where there is an above-average amount of rain year-round, the soil is acidic (pH 5.5 - 6.0), and mostly heavy orange clay with rocks mixed in. Not ideal for growing useful plants but manageable.
Yesterday I bought my mother a pottery wheel for Christmas, clay must be on our minds. Lol. Thank you for the post. love the videos. Ps. The sound on your videos sound much better.
Im about to taste test every rock and patch of dirt in a 10 radius and you can’t stop me!… you know considering I literally drunk mud water yesterday during a downpour just because i was curious and didn’t want to miss the change to drank fresh mud water I probably will end up doing that
Great video! Thank you for making this 😊 I don't know if you'd be interested in making a video about this, but I thought I'd ask... Here in Scotland, we have archaeological structures called "vitrified forts", which are iron age and early mediaeval hill forts in which the stones of the walls have partially melted, forming glassy conglomerations. It is believed that these were created deliberately by the Picts (the native people of Scotland at the time), but experimental archaeology has failed, time and time again, to replicate what we see on the ground. I was hoping you could make a video about what physical conditions are needed to cause this vitrification, and I would be incredibly appreciative if you could consider whether any natural processes could cause this - specifically large-scale forest fires, leading to firestorm conditions, which is what I believe is the most likely explanation for these vitrification events. Thank you for considering this, even if you choose not to pursue this.
Wow, that is so cool! I have a feeling that if experimental archaeology has failed to replicate and explain the process then I'll probably have a hard time doing so haha, but I will look into it and give it a shot! Thanks for the suggestion ;)
@@GEOGIRL Thank you for considering this - these forts are something most people haven't heard of, even here in Scotland - so please don't feel any need to justify not doing a video on this, I have no expectations. That said, the issue with the experimental archaeology was that the hot air rising from the fire would draw air inside the wall, thereby cooling the internal stones, which meant that it was impossible to generate the required heat. Because of this, the only way the Picts could have generated the required temperatures would have been to build structures, such as turf walls, surrounding the fort to trap the heat... I just don't see them going to that much effort, to gather tons and tons of turf, carry them from miles around up to the top of a hill, then build a wall around these forts, just to melt a bunch of stones... Especially when the evidence shows that a number of these forts were reused after the walls melted... It just seems implausible to me... My view is that if there was a massive forest fire, this would provide a natural explanation for what we see, but I don't have the scientific chops to be able to prove it myself 😢
Fascinating! Perhaps the forts were initially used as lime or pottery kilns? After so much effort to erect them, why not do something productive first? To test this hypothesis I would look for remains of underground aeration shafts.
I'm an amateur geologist that has picked up pottery as a new hobby in the last few months. I'm very interested to see where this series goes! I'd like to see some discussion of how different clay types are used in pottery.
Have you seen Atomic Shrimp's recent videos? He cooked stew in pots he made from local clay dug out of the ground during building work at his friend's house.
@@charleslambert3368 No I haven't. I have pottery-grade soil in my yard, I dug out a chunk and made a couple pots out of it. I don't have a kiln though, and the studio where I'm taking classes won't fire wild clay.
Getting into “wild clay” which involves prospecting useful ingredients of clay bodies for pottery, building and maintaining good relationships with the people plants and critters of that land, and lots of experimenting to make clay bodies and glazes. This is golden! Thank you! So glad to have found this channel. Learning so much.
I hated geology in school... mostly my teacher's fault since she couldn't have made her classes any more academically boring. But you, I can watch you all day!
I agree, the teachers have always been the ones that either make or break a class for me. I am glad you find my lectures interesting despite your precious experience though! :)
I remember being struck by how corrosion, which I spent way to much time fighting in the Navy was an electrical circuit phenomenon. I can't help noting that while watching this geology topic involve ions below the surface, and making soils!
Wow, has the metric system not fully caught on for geology? Dividing millimeters into 16ths is bizarre. My dad got caught between imperial and metric measurements. He used to tell me to cut a piece of wood at 1 meter, 2 feet, 3 inches and four of those little bastards.
Haha yea, for some reason the book I was using gave them in fractions rather than decimal or just lowering it to microns, which I thought was hilarious so I used the crazy fractions LOL!
Wow, I never knew I was as ignorant of soils and clays until I watched this. I was seriously ignorant. What causes rocks to break down in environments without water? Like completely without water like the moon? There seems to be a serious layer of dust/silt/some very fine particles of something on the surface. Was that just dust created by impacts from astroids on the lunar surface?
Well water chemically breaks them down by dissolution (or partial dissolution) but physical processes like wind, impacts, and just plain old gravity can do a number on rocks too, even without water around! It just takes way longer when there's no water, but the moon and other rocky planets have had billions of years for erosion to occurr so they've had all the time they need ;)
Hmmm..... The hydrologists are not with you on this one. Rock flour can exist in size range of clay but it does not act like clay. Clay is typically considered to be soils that are small but also are flat and look like a stack of microscope slides under magnification, this gives clays very low transmissibility despite having large porosity. Size analysis was developed as a easy lab method to classify things they we experienced, It does relatively poor job at it.
Well, that's correct, but I think the size discrimination also still stands because the grains that are physically (and chemically) able to exist at such small sizes are aluminosilicates, which I discussed in the video and all aluminosilicates are platy, giving them low permeability and large porosity (as I discuss in my permeability & porosity video ;)) So I think we are saying the same thing because the tiny size of clay only allows platy minerals (aluminosilicates) to get to that size. Rock flour, like loess, is silt size, I think silt is the smallest grains can get with only physical weathering. It requires chemical weathering and aluminosilicate formation to make clay sized grains. Now, when it comes to the oxides, I agree, I think these (since they are not all platy), are not technically classified as clay minerals, especially by sedimentologists and hydrogeologists, even if they are technically clay-sized and called 'pelagic clays' by marine geochemists (like myself haha). Anyway, I agree completely with what you are saying, and think we are just saying it in a different way. I actually discuss the platy structure of clay minerals in the follow up video to this one which should be coming out soon, so I hope you'll check it out. Thanks for the comment! Pointing out their platy structure is super important! ;D
One of the reasons i chose a masters in geology was because I love the idea of using all 5 senses to experience the world. I don't lick rocks often anymore, but I still love that I get to be messy
I remember learning that Montmorillonite and Kaolinite formed at or close to the surface primarily as a result of the weathering of feldspar, mica and amphibole in the presence of water, wind and temperature fluctuations. I've hiked in the hills in Southern California and have seen the weathering process up close. Cliffs made up primarily of feldspar start deteriorating and flaking off and a soft, dirt-like substance replaces them.
Absolutely! I discuss monmorillonite and kaolinite in detail in the next video on clays (clay composition and structure), I can't wait for that one I am a sucker for geochemistry :D But in any case, you are absolutely right those phases form from feldspars, micas, and amphiboles. Have you ever seen when a rock has been weathered in a way that it looks like an onion peeling, those are my favorite! -> see pic of what I mean: media.istockphoto.com/photos/rock-macro-onion-skin-weathering-weathered-stone-texture-picture-id502456826?k=6&m=502456826&s=170667a&w=0&h=l5F_vvgTbXTs9nQ98OiUpS__B9LBxgYG-p9a_QDPEQU=
@@GEOGIRL I love geology in my old age. I studied mathematics when I was a young man, but had a broad education in the sciences - chemistry, physics, astronomy, biology, zoology, genetics, botany, etc. I must say that I appreciate the work that you do in preparing these videos and the pleasant manner in which you present them.
As a science nerd and potter i cannot wait for more videos in this series. I would like to know more about the clays formed from various types of basalt since i live on the edge of a volcano which erupted some andesite and later a more maffic dark coloured basalt, and i use clays deposited locally from the erosion of the volcano.
Well I actually have an entire geomicrobiology playlist where I discuss plenty of microbes that not only eat rocks but also produce rock! They are soooo cool to me, but seems as though nobody liked that playlist as much as I did, so now I don't focus as much on that stuff :( But if you are interested, here's the link to thta playlist! ua-cam.com/video/FdhmxDMgGQQ/v-deo.html
Thas was very interesting. :) I played a lot of Dwarf Fortress and learned a ton of new words (lots of names for stones and soil material) whithout really knowing what they ment. You probably don't know the game, but soil, minerals, stone, and metals play a huge role in it (of course, it is a game about dwarves ;-)). The game world is procedural generated with accurate geology, climate, biomes and so on. Soil layers with sand, loam, silt, and clay are nice to have in the game for growing plants and making glass and pottery. It is nice to have a better understanding of these materials now. It never occured to me, that they are basicallly the same material only with different grain sizes.
A lot of clay here in Phoenix, I managed to make pottery from the sticky mud in the yard. I mixed the soil in water, let it settle, then poured out the water, and the clay settled from that.
I'm in southern New Brunswick, Canada, and there is some nice clay in the creek valley down the road. I got my first small field gathered batch completed this summer. From what I've read, it will do well to season it. I'll try working it after a year. I look forward to gathering more substantial amounts next summer. I'd like to have a good bank of clay by the time my garden is set well enough to afford me the time to make a little kiln.
Depends what you think of as 'sedimentation' ;) Clay/mud cracks form when wet, muddy sediment dries up & contracts. This sediment has technically already been deposited/formed in place (so if we think of this as sedimentation, then the answer is after), but in order to get preserved as hard mudstone in the rock record, these crack-containing layers of rock must eventually be overalain with other deposits, which causes them to eventually be buried deep enough to compact and lithify into mudstone. If we think of this as the 'sedimentation' process, then technically they form before sedimentation. But this process sometimes ruins the crack structures, it is only when they are filled with fluids that precipitate other minerals in the cracks or just filled with overlying sediment that they are preserved because these sediments/minerals allow the crack structures to be maintaind throughout burial and compaction. I hope that makes sense ;)
Haha I know right! Honestly, I just couldn't think of anything better for the intro lol, but I am totally an adult that loves to play in the mud! (And even lick it from time to time) ;)
Five star presentation, just fantastic and all the slides can be read on a fone screen, thank you. So when clay is fired in a kiln, it always changes color, and some is better than others. There is really pretty stoneware from asia that is a deep chocolate brown
Came for the cute thumbnail, stayed for the excellent discussion. You have a natural gift for sharing (potentially dry) information with enough charisma to make it palatable -- even interesting! Earned a sub.
Another great video,,very deep,,,way over my head,,,I see why physics is one of the easiest scientists to study. I worked with clay at the Wedgwood factory for 8 years ,,in the slip House,, I thought that we probably used more clay than any one else but I found out the ceramics industry is just a small user,,,,glossy paper uses a lot more. My finger nails were allways shiny.
In Vermont, the glaciers left behind clay concretions and sand concretions. They are usually rounded or formed into smooth irregular shapes. In Putney/Dummerston,VT near the Rt. 91 turnoff fron Rt 5, the clay concretions are sometimes bicolored compound shapes of brown and grey. In Plainfield, VT there is a sand pit where the concretions are up to a foot in diameter, and you would need to scrub behind your ears after collecting there.
CLAY DEFINITION CLARIFICATION: I tried to get this across in the video, but I've been seeing many comments that indicate I didn't do a great job, so I just wanted to say here that CLAY IS BOTH A SIZE AND A COMPOSITION! I state at the beginning of the video that it is defined by size, but if you KEEP watching, I then go on to discuss the fact that only certain compositions of material exist at that size, and these are secondary, layered aluminosilicates, which are what geologists define as 'clay minerals'. However, there are also oxides that can sometimes be clay-sized and are sometimes called pelagic clays becuase they form on the seafloor (in the pelagic zone), but they are not considered 'clay minerals' because they are not aluminosiliates. Why do we make this distinction? Because aluminosilicates have a very specific platy structure and this causes them to behave differently than materials that aren't platy (like certain oxides). But don't worry, I talk ALL about clay structures in the follow up video to this one! ;)
Also, I see lots of angry comments because I used fractions & metric, so I just want to say I only did that because the reference I was using did that and I thought it was hilarious haha! So please don't be mad at me, I would never do that for real, but the point here is the actual value doesn't matter, it is just VERY small lol ;)
Lastly, I had a typo in the end-screen. Pretend it says Mineralogy Playlist rather than Planetary Science Playlist ;) Thanks! haha
You also used "loose" for "lose" about 60% of the way through, of course you pronounced it right.
@@davidniemi6553 Haha oops, good catch, at least the point still came across! ;)
I play around with a tractor on a small farm & I noticed patches of extremely sticky natural clay. I wonder how it is formed.
Excellent information I learned a lot. I bet you could choose the best clay to make bricks!!!, I always wanted to make my own bricks. Not to mention you know where the gold, silver, copper, iron, etc is hiding.
You had the camera pointed in the right direction, that has to count for something!
In order to field test for clay, one must have a taste for knowledge.
Hahaha exactly! ;)
@@GEOGIRL I wish I could claim originality with that, but I saw that with accompanying photo in a geology text many years ago. I would attribute if I could remember where In saw it.
I have had some summer work testing the engineering properties of soils, and a little clay can go a long way as far as affecting those properties.
Where I worked had problems with expansive clay made up of bentonite.
@@andywomack3414 naaaw that's such an honest admission! You can claim it by virtue of time by now surely lol
And no fear of contamination by urban or agricultural pollutants. Or squirrel poop.
I knew an adam womack in fort worth Texas any relation?
Good idea to do a soil science series. Dirt is way cooler than it gets credit for. My son found the orange iron oxide clay layer beneath our garden and figured out how to make little bricks dried in the sun. They're surprisingly hard and sturdy so he built a little border out of them.
Wow what a bright kid! Who needs TV when there's clay outside! That's awesome ;D
Has he tried firing them? Takes more than a kitchen oven. Perhaps a local school or craftsman? Most teachers and artisans melt to hear honest curiosity.
Good luck!
Soil and dirt are not the same concept. Soil has organic material in it, and is made of structures of clay, silt and sand, created by that organic material, called aggregates. The meaning of dirt is fully associated with being unclean, not the source and recycling system of all life.
@@SirAlanClive Thank you for the compliment. This is an educational channel after all, so accuracy and etymology are important. I liked out host's definition of dirt as being "soil displaced". I do not know if this comes from a scientific definition but it is a poetic interpretation.
@@geraldfrost4710 See a channel called primitive technology... guy builds everything using primitive tools... makes his own bricks and pots.. fired with wood... and buildings too... and even harvests iron ore and creates metal stuff with it. Very cool channel! cheers! here's his latest video: ua-cam.com/video/Gqhxe_pL6Ws/v-deo.html
The basics of clays has never been explained to me like this. You make it sound so logical and understandable. Thx.
So glad to hear that :D Thank you!
This compelled me to finally look up what pottery clay consists of and how it's classified. There's a lot I don't know but have always wondered at. Totally playing catch up here. The soil at my dad's house in Illinois is heavy with clay and I've always wondered at it's origin and how it is classified as clay verses silt, soil, & sand. I was born and raised in the Pacific being a half island boy so U.S. geology was never really a prominent interest for me until now. I heard tell that everything East of the Mississippi River is buried under several feet of eroded Appalachian mountains where it hasn't been scraped to bedrock by glaciers, forcing me to wonder how big those mountains really got and where it all went. All very intriguing, and for me, a mystery to uncover. Sand and lava has been my forte`. Cuts your feet and gets up in your shorts so it has a way of remaining imminent.
To the Sea, My friend…
to the open arms of the se-a
And all those sandy beaches in the coastal plain and Florida beaches. The Appalachian mountains were as high as the Alps, or higher during their uplift.
@@alexander.Rainforest1987 the Appalachians at their peak were on par or greater than the current Himalayas. They are also older than bones which is so weird to think about.
I always thought the soils had much more than 4% organic material. I was thinking 10 to 15%, for topsoil, unless it was just landscape material.......Oh well.
I live in an area that is covered in soils brought down from Canada by the Glaciers.
Well I think it definitely varies, that's a great point! There are regions where the organic layer (the O horizon) is MUCH thicker! And then there are regions where it's much thinner, like where I live in the desert ;)
Edit: I should mention too, I think (because the organic layer is the top layer), this percentage would depend heavily on how deep you go when determining relative percent of each of these components. I think this 4% estimate was made going all the way down to the bedrock below all the soil layers (way passed the top soil), so it is a pretty high percentage considering soils can go extremely deep (~50+ ft or 15+ m deep).
Cool, I never would have thought I would be interested in a video about silt and clay but you are engaging as always. In the American South where I’m from there are people who actually seek out clay to eat. I understand that white clay is a particularly prized delicacy though I’ve never partaken myself. Good to know that this practice was condoned by an actual scientist 😂.
Hahaha Yes, go for it! 😂😂
There are some bad chemicals in SOME clays. Most of the chemistry is benign, and passes straight through. Some of the chemicals are needed by our bodies; because of the small size (better absorption) they are used in dietary supplements.
Like eating mushrooms in the wild: (insert metaphor here).
Actually there's a good chance you've eaten clay if you've ever had a really creamy rich milkshake, at least according to one of my university geology professors: he asserted that many fast-food restaurants add Bentonite clay to make milkshakes thicker and creamier.
The people who crave and eat clay are generally suffering from Pica, and eating the clay just makes the condition worse. It is a form of anemia.
I just discovered this channel 2 weeks ago and I love it. I need to check out your video on soil. By the way, I grew up on a farm on the Valparaiso moraine in Northwest Indiana. Due to glaciation moraine soils are all mixed up. It is possible to have multiple soil types in one small field. Yeah I'm weird, I love dirt, or more accurately soil.
“Did you chew it?”
Is a sentence that every geologist has heard from a person that is 100% serious
Thank you for a fantastic video again! We are making the finishing touches to our geopark in the middle of Sweden that will be opened in June next year. Two weeks ago we were put on the IUGS list of the first 100 geological heritage sites in the world. It is fantastic to see you present all the topics that are represented in our park. I wish you lived a little closer so that we could have you here with us to get people enthusiastic about earth science. Looking forward to your next video!
Congratulations a brand new Geopark for Sweden is fantastic for the people there. 😊✨
Wow! What a flood of facts … I love it! I’m basically clueless about soils, which is why this presentation is so cool to me. Most of what I learned about clay in the 80s, had to do with deposition in deltas and such.
Adios Amigo :)
Now I know why the soil here in Cagayan de Oro City Mindanao Philippines is red, and so is the soil in the tropical north of Australia! Also "Down in the west Texas town of El Paso, there lives an amazing Geo Girl"!
Not many people have the gift to make dirt sound so fascinating.
Ahh yay! This makes me happy! ;D Dirt is AWESOME!
@@GEOGIRL always a very telling thing, the type of dirty jokes that amuse people.
Soil making you laugh, because its in bags, I doubt i will visit a garden center again without that joke repeating in my head. & i like that.
Avoid " lick n' taste rock testing " in areas that dog-walkers frequent.
I love clay. we have been packing in clay to our bike jumps for years. just gotta cover it for erosion.
Clay might be the most important substance there is:
I've read that it could have catalyzed the early chemistry of life itself.
It also served as a very important tool for recording the first writing, and then there's its use for holding water/liquids and food.
Almost forgot to mention its use in construction.
Like I speculated, it may be the most important substance, at least to mankind.
Indeed. Anthropologists and archaeologists have discovered clay pottery shards in almost every known habitat of ancient civilization. As one of the pre-historic techs, it was one of the first materials that could be manipulated to serve multiple uses. Artisans still make beautifully crafted pottery to this day!
I respectfully disagree. I would argue water is much more important especially for life chemistry. The fact that fluid chemistry is much faster and easier to control than solid state or gasious chemistry (respectively) and water is one of the few substances liquid over such a large relative temperature makes it much more vital (not to mention it's polar nature and ability to be protonated and/or deprotonated). I will grant you the mastery of clay is a hallmark of many civilization but there are no civilizations that have existed without water. Regardless, I'd be interested to see the source that claims clay's importance in life chemistry.
Oxygen for the Win!
@@Margoth195 Definitely water is an absolute given, and maybe the most important molecule we know of related to our version of life.
It'll be interesting to see what life we may be able to simulate and constrain in other solvents such as liquid CH4.
Just punch in something like 'Organic synthesis clay catalysts,' and I'm sure you'll find tons of info.
There's even new research into types of catalysts involving kinetic energy over direct chemical reactions (think firing molecules at a wall with shapes on it that cleave or form bonds).
We're still noobs. Much to learn.
@@lettybastien4624 Life evolved on Earth way before it needed oxygen, but I'm sure glad it made the switch, allowing energetic creatures like us to contemplate such.
Geo girl so nice also beautiful face and good voice.i am request to you make geology petroleum subject videos from Afghanistan
Check out this video about hydrocarbon formation: ua-cam.com/video/1bDvnDAHDCo/v-deo.html
Let me know if you want anymore like that video and what specific topics in petroleum geology you'd like me to cover ;) Thanks!
Hey Rachel, whodathunk I'd spend 18 minutes listening to your review of MUD? LOL! This is really interesting though and it pertains to a couple of things that are of interest, one is building with Rammed Earth and the other is Permaculture. With RE, you want to avoid some clays (though others are of great benefit) and with Permaculture the type of soil you have will greatly effect the types of plants you can grow. Looking forward to your next installment :)
Greetings from Ecuador, well arti-clay-ted... eh whatever haha
😂😂😂
Hahaha Love that! Thank you ;)
Thanks for the interesting soil intro. Just one cue in addition: DIRT is defined as Soil in a wrong place 🤭...
Them: "Why are you eating dirt?"
Me: "just checking if it's clay or silt based, I learned it in a video on UA-cam"
Them: "OK, but why are you using a spoon?"
😂😂
would it be impossible to make a "clay" pot out of silt, like if you were in the wilderness and you made a kiln and all you have is silt?
I had a text book in college with a picture of a person nibbling a bit of sediment. The caption began "Geologist hungry for knowledge..." 😂
LOL that's hilarious!
Well done. You explained this well. It's a surprisingly complicated topic even though it's just clay lol. Especially when you get into different forms of it, like Kaolinite.
This was the geology lesson that my formation as gardener was missing. Bookmarking it. Thanks.
Too much quartz in Florida for clays I guess. Also, no volcanic activity for feldspars to weather out. We're pretty much sandbars here. :D
Well done! Quite interesting. I'll never view that bag of potting "soil" the same way again. Example, "You are dirt, do you hear me, you bag of soil!!"
Clay. Broca's area, or the Broca area is a region in the frontal lobe of the dominant hemisphere, usually the left, of the brain with functions linked to speech production. 2/8/2021 and I lived again.
OMG, is that picture of the shale cliff in Ohio? I think I have been kayaking there!!! Specifically, the Grand River in the counties just eas of Cleveland
A much less invasive way to tell the size of the particles in your sample is to rub it between your fingers. If you can feel individual grains like sugar then the sample has sand in it. If it feels floury it has plenty of silt in it. If you wet it and it feels sticky or slimy, it has clay in it. This can be confirmed by rolling it in a ball after wetting. If it will not hold a shape at all, it is mostly sand. If it can be formed into a ball, but cracks when it is squeezed, then it is predominantly silt. If it forms a ball that deforms but does not crack when squeezed, it is predominantly clay. There is also a similar test called a ribbon test. Ultimately, you can about 2/3 fill a clear, straight-sided jar with it, fill with water with a few spoonfuls of baking soda or laundry powder. Shake very thoroughly until all the particles are separated, then sit it somewhere. The sand is heaviest so settles out within a few minutes, after an hour most of the silt has settled on top of it. After a day or several days, the clay has settled out as well. You can tell when it has finished if the water on top is clear. Any organic material will be floating in the water. The baking soda or whatever alkaline compound you use helps to get the clay out of suspension in the water. Because of it's nanometre size, clay particles have a slight electrical charge on their surface, which - added with the sheer tiny-ness, means it can be suspended by water molecules for a long time. It is also the reason why it is incredibly important in giving soils its fertility - along with the soil biology.
The different size particles are often different colours, so you can see the layers of each quite easily. If your jar has straight sides you can then measure the proportions of sand, silt and clay in your sample reasonably accurately, and determine how close it is to being a loam - ideal for growing plants. Loam has roughly equal proportions of the three size grades. The best soil for most food crops is a silty loam, in other words has a slightly higher proportion of silt than the bigger and smaller grades. This soil will have the best water and nutrient retention capacity, while still being free-draining.
You nutty geologist ! Actually I remember this grain size stuff from schooldays. That was over 5 years ago now, as I am now 64. Thanks for the interesting video !
Hi , bravos! ...I've drifted into metiorite s , I need good pictures and more specific reference materials , you do planetary science ? Too ? Also ?...is there a laser that will reliably excite a peridot stuck in a pallisite metiorite?. What thick book , should I look for?
I'm going to give this channel a shot. Had a rock collection as a kid (that some idiot sold) but I'll hang out. Super wonky but I'll just have to pay attention. Great presentation!
Sorry, but you're too attractive. However, I did manage to learn a bit about clay. I liked your graphics and that you seemed to have the knowledge on tap. Excellent presentation.
"Clay is a type of fine-grained natural soil material containing clay minerals[1] (hydrous aluminium phyllosilicates, e.g. kaolin, Al2Si2O5(OH)4)." So it is both fine-grain and mineral composition.
I have watched several videos and read several books on this topic and your explanation is the best that I have come across. Great job, well done. 🙂
Oh my gosh, I feel so honored that you think mine is that good, thank you so much for the kind comment! :D
Lick the rock!? I’m glad your not a biologist.
But seriously, great info. Thanks.
Deposits build up from the settlements, (sediments) either in moving water columns or at the bottoms of larger water columns which move slowly, such as the bottoms of seas or ocean areas, and most clays are laid from this process, millions of years ago, when that area was near or under oceanside We are talking about BULK clay formations, not simply migratory bio, but layer specific anaerobic bacters, which only lives within a specific area below the silt and muds, nearest the surface of the bottom of the body of water.
This video has me missing the giant glacial boulders of my grandpa's house in Guernsey County, Ohio.
Geo girl so nice also beautiful face and good voice.i am request to you make geology petroleum subject videos from Afghanistan
so your saying that size matters?
Nice. didn't even take you 2 minutes to re-affirm the stereotype that geologists are rock-lickers and dirt-eaters ^^D
I’m curious, is everything that is classified as classified by Geology as clay (maybe let’s call it G-Clay), the same as what is called clay in Ceramics, that is, material from the ground that is combined with water to shape pots and things and then fired to turn into a permanent object (maybe let’s call it C-clay)? Is all G-clay, C-clay? Is all C-clay, G-clay?
Yep, I think the general aluminosilicate composition of ceramic clay is the same as geological clay :) So C-clay is G-clay and vice versa! haha
(PS: I don't know much about ceramics, I just googled it so I hope this is correct hahaha)
@@GEOGIRL Thanks for the response!
totally unfluffy & straight to some serious facts. (new subscriber)
Thank you! Glad you like my to the point lecture style ;)
I always wanted to know what the difference in formation is between different colors of lava rock, pumice, basalt or obsidian, since they all come from lava what makes them different
i done licked the ground 8 times already just since watching this video 3 weeks ago.
Fascinating and informative. I live where there is an above-average amount of rain year-round, the soil is acidic (pH 5.5 - 6.0), and mostly heavy orange clay with rocks mixed in. Not ideal for growing useful plants but manageable.
@@TheBirdBrothers No, northern Virginia, which is consistently pretty wet year-round, and wetter than a number of places people think of as rainy.
Yesterday I bought my mother a pottery wheel for Christmas, clay must be on our minds. Lol. Thank you for the post. love the videos.
Ps. The sound on your videos sound much better.
Oh how nice! Now you can tell her all about clay minerals when you give it to her! haha ;)
You lost my 3 year old at 7 minutes, but I found it super fascinating. 😂
Most naturally occurring clay has larger size grains mixed in so you'll still get the gritty feel in your mouth...
Awe, the weeds are following us humans trying to make the soil useful for us ❤
To clay or not to clay? That is the question! 😅🤣 Awesome vid again!
Omg I got my "Ask me about geology" cap! Woo hoo! It's so nice! I love it so much! 😍
Im about to taste test every rock and patch of dirt in a 10 radius and you can’t stop me!… you know considering I literally drunk mud water yesterday during a downpour just because i was curious and didn’t want to miss the change to drank fresh mud water I probably will end up doing that
Great video! Thank you for making this 😊 I don't know if you'd be interested in making a video about this, but I thought I'd ask... Here in Scotland, we have archaeological structures called "vitrified forts", which are iron age and early mediaeval hill forts in which the stones of the walls have partially melted, forming glassy conglomerations. It is believed that these were created deliberately by the Picts (the native people of Scotland at the time), but experimental archaeology has failed, time and time again, to replicate what we see on the ground. I was hoping you could make a video about what physical conditions are needed to cause this vitrification, and I would be incredibly appreciative if you could consider whether any natural processes could cause this - specifically large-scale forest fires, leading to firestorm conditions, which is what I believe is the most likely explanation for these vitrification events. Thank you for considering this, even if you choose not to pursue this.
Wow, that is so cool! I have a feeling that if experimental archaeology has failed to replicate and explain the process then I'll probably have a hard time doing so haha, but I will look into it and give it a shot! Thanks for the suggestion ;)
@@GEOGIRL Thank you for considering this - these forts are something most people haven't heard of, even here in Scotland - so please don't feel any need to justify not doing a video on this, I have no expectations. That said, the issue with the experimental archaeology was that the hot air rising from the fire would draw air inside the wall, thereby cooling the internal stones, which meant that it was impossible to generate the required heat. Because of this, the only way the Picts could have generated the required temperatures would have been to build structures, such as turf walls, surrounding the fort to trap the heat... I just don't see them going to that much effort, to gather tons and tons of turf, carry them from miles around up to the top of a hill, then build a wall around these forts, just to melt a bunch of stones... Especially when the evidence shows that a number of these forts were reused after the walls melted... It just seems implausible to me... My view is that if there was a massive forest fire, this would provide a natural explanation for what we see, but I don't have the scientific chops to be able to prove it myself 😢
Fascinating! Perhaps the forts were initially used as lime or pottery kilns? After so much effort to erect them, why not do something productive first? To test this hypothesis I would look for remains of underground aeration shafts.
It is unsurprising that experimental archaeologists couldn't yet reproduce it: The art of fire is lost.
I'm sure it won't kill you so taste it unless you are at a chemical plant. Love your advice
Ohhhhhh so that’s why my daughter loved taste testing dirt as a baby, she was testing if the texture was clay 🤪
Who would have thought clay could be so interesting?
I know right! :D
loving it ! going to go arround putting everything in my mouth from now on !!🤤😂
Haha, yes, feed that microbiome! ;)
Great video, thank you. So glad I found your UA-cam site
Dontcha put it in your mouth. Unless it’s ok to eat. Like a muffin or a beet.
Lol I love licking rocks. That was very funny. Lol
"Clay is a size" and soil versus dirt so feeds my inner pedant. Thank you!
Can confirm, geologists really do "taste" rocks 😁
Blah, blah, blah...you are super pretty! great video too : )
If clay is so fine, how come it not just turning into dust?
Is dust clay?
I'm an amateur geologist that has picked up pottery as a new hobby in the last few months. I'm very interested to see where this series goes! I'd like to see some discussion of how different clay types are used in pottery.
Have you seen Atomic Shrimp's recent videos? He cooked stew in pots he made from local clay dug out of the ground during building work at his friend's house.
@@charleslambert3368 No I haven't. I have pottery-grade soil in my yard, I dug out a chunk and made a couple pots out of it. I don't have a kiln though, and the studio where I'm taking classes won't fire wild clay.
Getting into “wild clay” which involves prospecting useful ingredients of clay bodies for pottery, building and maintaining good relationships with the people plants and critters of that land, and lots of experimenting to make clay bodies and glazes. This is golden! Thank you! So glad to have found this channel. Learning so much.
I hated geology in school... mostly my teacher's fault since she couldn't have made her classes any more academically boring. But you, I can watch you all day!
I agree, the teachers have always been the ones that either make or break a class for me. I am glad you find my lectures interesting despite your precious experience though! :)
I remember being struck by how corrosion, which I spent way to much time fighting in the Navy was an electrical circuit phenomenon. I can't help noting that while watching this geology topic involve ions below the surface, and making soils!
I've been discouraged a lot lately and searching for direction in my life. This video is quite helpful! Thank you!
now I know why the wicked witch of the west melted by the water Dorothy threw on her!😉
Wow, has the metric system not fully caught on for geology? Dividing millimeters into 16ths is bizarre.
My dad got caught between imperial and metric measurements. He used to tell me to cut a piece of wood at 1 meter, 2 feet, 3 inches and four of those little bastards.
Haha yea, for some reason the book I was using gave them in fractions rather than decimal or just lowering it to microns, which I thought was hilarious so I used the crazy fractions LOL!
Wow, I never knew I was as ignorant of soils and clays until I watched this. I was seriously ignorant.
What causes rocks to break down in environments without water? Like completely without water like the moon? There seems to be a serious layer of dust/silt/some very fine particles of something on the surface. Was that just dust created by impacts from astroids on the lunar surface?
Well water chemically breaks them down by dissolution (or partial dissolution) but physical processes like wind, impacts, and just plain old gravity can do a number on rocks too, even without water around! It just takes way longer when there's no water, but the moon and other rocky planets have had billions of years for erosion to occurr so they've had all the time they need ;)
Hmmm..... The hydrologists are not with you on this one. Rock flour can exist in size range of clay but it does not act like clay. Clay is typically considered to be soils that are small but also are flat and look like a stack of microscope slides under magnification, this gives clays very low transmissibility despite having large porosity. Size analysis was developed as a easy lab method to classify things they we experienced, It does relatively poor job at it.
Well, that's correct, but I think the size discrimination also still stands because the grains that are physically (and chemically) able to exist at such small sizes are aluminosilicates, which I discussed in the video and all aluminosilicates are platy, giving them low permeability and large porosity (as I discuss in my permeability & porosity video ;)) So I think we are saying the same thing because the tiny size of clay only allows platy minerals (aluminosilicates) to get to that size. Rock flour, like loess, is silt size, I think silt is the smallest grains can get with only physical weathering. It requires chemical weathering and aluminosilicate formation to make clay sized grains.
Now, when it comes to the oxides, I agree, I think these (since they are not all platy), are not technically classified as clay minerals, especially by sedimentologists and hydrogeologists, even if they are technically clay-sized and called 'pelagic clays' by marine geochemists (like myself haha).
Anyway, I agree completely with what you are saying, and think we are just saying it in a different way. I actually discuss the platy structure of clay minerals in the follow up video to this one which should be coming out soon, so I hope you'll check it out. Thanks for the comment! Pointing out their platy structure is super important! ;D
One of the reasons i chose a masters in geology was because I love the idea of using all 5 senses to experience the world. I don't lick rocks often anymore, but I still love that I get to be messy
Couldn't agree more! ;D
2:00 it is 100% impossible to be a geologist and not lick rocks.
thank you for the little clarification on soil versus dirt, nice
I remember learning that Montmorillonite and Kaolinite formed at or close to the surface primarily as a result of the weathering of feldspar, mica and amphibole in the presence of water, wind and temperature fluctuations. I've hiked in the hills in Southern California and have seen the weathering process up close. Cliffs made up primarily of feldspar start deteriorating and flaking off and a soft, dirt-like substance replaces them.
Absolutely! I discuss monmorillonite and kaolinite in detail in the next video on clays (clay composition and structure), I can't wait for that one I am a sucker for geochemistry :D But in any case, you are absolutely right those phases form from feldspars, micas, and amphiboles. Have you ever seen when a rock has been weathered in a way that it looks like an onion peeling, those are my favorite! -> see pic of what I mean: media.istockphoto.com/photos/rock-macro-onion-skin-weathering-weathered-stone-texture-picture-id502456826?k=6&m=502456826&s=170667a&w=0&h=l5F_vvgTbXTs9nQ98OiUpS__B9LBxgYG-p9a_QDPEQU=
@@GEOGIRL I love geology in my old age. I studied mathematics when I was a young man, but had a broad education in the sciences - chemistry, physics, astronomy, biology, zoology, genetics, botany, etc. I must say that I appreciate the work that you do in preparing these videos and the pleasant manner in which you present them.
@@GEOGIRL I picked one of those up once -- or I should say I picked most of it up; the outer layers spalled off the moment I grabbed it.
As a science nerd and potter i cannot wait for more videos in this series. I would like to know more about the clays formed from various types of basalt since i live on the edge of a volcano which erupted some andesite and later a more maffic dark coloured basalt, and i use clays deposited locally from the erosion of the volcano.
WOW! Is it crazy that I am super interested in this?
I know right! I thought it would be a boring topic to cover, but then it turned out to be so interesting! ;D
Points lost for saying "There are microbes that eat rock." and moving on. I have so many questions. Deserves a vid and a new sub.
Well I actually have an entire geomicrobiology playlist where I discuss plenty of microbes that not only eat rocks but also produce rock! They are soooo cool to me, but seems as though nobody liked that playlist as much as I did, so now I don't focus as much on that stuff :( But if you are interested, here's the link to thta playlist! ua-cam.com/video/FdhmxDMgGQQ/v-deo.html
I like Monday now that I'm retired from work. I've met bentonite clay and the meeting was slippery.
So glad to hear that! ;D
Thas was very interesting. :)
I played a lot of Dwarf Fortress and learned a ton of new words (lots of names for stones and soil material) whithout really knowing what they ment.
You probably don't know the game, but soil, minerals, stone, and metals play a huge role in it (of course, it is a game about dwarves ;-)). The game world is procedural generated with accurate geology, climate, biomes and so on.
Soil layers with sand, loam, silt, and clay are nice to have in the game for growing plants and making glass and pottery.
It is nice to have a better understanding of these materials now. It never occured to me, that they are basicallly the same material only with different grain sizes.
Geologists taste their samples confirmed.
Would you be able to get along with Sheldon Cooper?
I love how they use fractions on millimeters!
A lot of clay here in Phoenix, I managed to make pottery from the sticky mud in the yard. I mixed the soil in water, let it settle, then poured out the water, and the clay settled from that.
I'm in southern New Brunswick, Canada, and there is some nice clay in the creek valley down the road.
I got my first small field gathered batch completed this summer.
From what I've read, it will do well to season it.
I'll try working it after a year.
I look forward to gathering more substantial amounts next summer.
I'd like to have a good bank of clay by the time my garden is set well enough to afford me the time to make a little kiln.
Very interesting and well delivered video.
Thank you for sharing.
Inspired to go around my city and lick the varieties of ground around, worst case scenario will come out with an enhanced immune system
Yes, you're just strengthening your microbiome ;)
Clay cracks: Are they formed during sedimentation to form rocks or after sedimentation?
Depends what you think of as 'sedimentation' ;) Clay/mud cracks form when wet, muddy sediment dries up & contracts. This sediment has technically already been deposited/formed in place (so if we think of this as sedimentation, then the answer is after), but in order to get preserved as hard mudstone in the rock record, these crack-containing layers of rock must eventually be overalain with other deposits, which causes them to eventually be buried deep enough to compact and lithify into mudstone. If we think of this as the 'sedimentation' process, then technically they form before sedimentation. But this process sometimes ruins the crack structures, it is only when they are filled with fluids that precipitate other minerals in the cracks or just filled with overlying sediment that they are preserved because these sediments/minerals allow the crack structures to be maintaind throughout burial and compaction. I hope that makes sense ;)
Fantastic clays and where to find them.
off to find the delicious earth chocolate stashes
Geology is like the only science where you’re encouraged to LICK IT
Hahaha true ;)
Geo girl: As kids we play in the mud.
Adult me on the weekend: Duhrt!
Haha I know right! Honestly, I just couldn't think of anything better for the intro lol, but I am totally an adult that loves to play in the mud! (And even lick it from time to time) ;)
Five star presentation, just fantastic and all the slides can be read on a fone screen, thank you. So when clay is fired in a kiln, it always changes color, and some is better than others. There is really pretty stoneware from asia that is a deep chocolate brown
Came for the cute thumbnail, stayed for the excellent discussion. You have a natural gift for sharing (potentially dry) information with enough charisma to make it palatable -- even interesting!
Earned a sub.
Another great video,,very deep,,,way over my head,,,I see why physics is one of the easiest scientists to study. I worked with clay at the Wedgwood factory for 8 years ,,in the slip House,, I thought that we probably used more clay than any one else but I found out the ceramics industry is just a small user,,,,glossy paper uses a lot more. My finger nails were allways shiny.
It's so funny you say that because I study biogeochemistry but still think that physics is SO HARD! hahaha
Interesting, I need to research glossy paper manufacturing now 😊
@@barbaradurfee645 yea,,It's one of the reasons glossy paper won't burn to well.
In Vermont, the glaciers left behind clay concretions and sand concretions. They are usually rounded or formed into smooth irregular shapes. In Putney/Dummerston,VT near the Rt. 91 turnoff fron Rt 5, the clay concretions are sometimes bicolored compound shapes of brown and grey. In Plainfield, VT there is a sand pit where the concretions are up to a foot in diameter, and you would need to scrub behind your ears after collecting there.
So, size does matter... I knew it!