Don’t Take it For Granite - Geology of Countertops

Dr. Jesse Reimink: [00:00:00] Welcome to Planet Geo, the podcast where we talk about our amazing planet, how it works, and why it matters to you.

Chris Bolhuis: It's going on. Doc

Dr. Jesse Reimink: So, Chris, it's gotta be cold over there, huh?

Chris Bolhuis: Why?

Dr. Jesse Reimink: got, you got your beanie pulled in, you got your headphones over your beanie.

Chris Bolhuis: Mm-hmm.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: I mean, is it cold in your basement today or what's going on?

Chris Bolhuis: Well, so, ah, it's a weird day. It's really gloomy outside and that just, that affects the way I feel. And then for those of you that don't know, I'm, I, I coach cross country as a part of my day job, and, it was cold outside. It was windy and cold and gray and blustery. So I came home, ate dinner, and then I gotta meet with you and I just, I'd never really warmed up. I'm still like cold, so I put, I got my slippers on, I got my, my hoodie on, my hat [00:01:00] on. I

Dr. Jesse Reimink: got your slippers, huh? It's slippery season

Chris Bolhuis: I do

Dr. Jesse Reimink: That's great. I haven't won my slippers yet this year. I gotta bust them out pretty soon though.

Chris Bolhuis: Yeah. Yeah. So I don't know. I just haven't warmed up.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: So, Chris,

Dr. Jesse Reimink: I think today we can get you warmed up and maybe even riled up a little bit

Chris Bolhuis: I think so. Yeah. What are we doing,

Dr. Jesse Reimink: We're gonna talk about countertops, which is, it's very cool. But if you know a geologist, if you're listening to this and you know, a geologist, there's no better way to get a geologist riled up than to tell them about all the cool granite countertops you saw that are not actually granite, right? That don't fit into the exact definition of what we used as granite in ge.

Chris Bolhuis: Yeah, I've had actually students correct me on, well, no, I have a black granite countertop. And I'm like, Well, no, it's not. It's actually gabbro or it's, uh, you know, Labradorite or something like this. And they're, No, it's black granite. that's what they told us.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: me, man. And then that's a, that's a way to get an immediate B on their exam, not an [00:02:00] A right.

Chris Bolhuis: Yeah. First of all, don't ever correct me and right.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: correct Chris.

Chris Bolhuis: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we're gonna talk today about all things granite and not granite countertops. So we're gonna talk about rock and not rock and composites and I don't know, it's this, this is a cool episode. I'm

Dr. Jesse Reimink: You know, it's very confusing. The Industrial naming scheme is extremely confusing because we have countertops that are called granite. All of them are called granite. Basically if it's a natural rock, it's called granite, maybe marble. You also have things that are called quartz, which are, they have quarts in them, but they're synthetic. Then you have things that are called engineered stone, which is a confusing word until you think about it. And it's actually just rock. That's it's actual rock, but it's man-made rock. Uh, and then we have all the other countertop types, so we're gonna kind of work through those in general. Right. Chris?

Chris Bolhuis: Yeah, but they also have the names that [00:03:00] apply to Real Rock, and it's like they're naming carpet, not a rock.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: I mean, there's some incredibly cool names. Blue Fantasy is a granite name

Chris Bolhuis: Costa Asda is

Dr. Jesse Reimink: beautiful. It's beautiful.

Chris Bolhuis: Well, I don't know

Dr. Jesse Reimink: let's just say those are not the scientific names for the rock, so the, not the, the actual geology names for the rocks.

Chris Bolhuis: I just wanna say, so we're gonna go through some of the countertop types, but we also are gonna take this as an opportunity cuz that's what we do to talk about the way the rocks actually formed as well. So we're gonna talk about the geology behind the rock

Dr. Jesse Reimink: That's exactly right, and we're gonna do this in a couple different passes. Basically, the high level summary is if it's called granite, if you're contractor or if the Home Depot. Call it granite. It's a real rock, and it's probably not actually granite like [00:04:00] Chris, if you and I were out in the field and we were trying to identify this rock and understand its origins and where it came from and how it formed, it's not a granite, but it is a real rock. And so we're gonna work through the real rock names. We're gonna go into short descriptions about what they are. The other thing is if the contractor, the Home Depot person calls it quarts, it's probably got quarts in it, but it's The Rock itself is a synthetic. Amalgam of crushed up pieces of real rocks with some resin, and it's made to look colored and beautiful and it's really nice. It's really solid. It has all the great textures and behaviors of rock, but it's not so that's just a general rule. Granted is not granted in quartz. Is not quartz, but they can

Chris Bolhuis: Well, Hold on. I I, If it's granite, like you said, it's real rock and it can be granite. But if it's not overall light colored, like kind of pink or this kind of sammy orange color to white, with black speckles all mixed in it, then it's not granite. It's a rock, a real rock. But it's something else [00:05:00] other than granite.

Chris Bolhuis: And so, Well, let's start, Jesse. Talking about granite countertops, the way the one, the only ones that should be called granite.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: can I, uh, I'm gonna side, side note here, should it, should we talk about the market right now and just kinda. Put that high

Chris Bolhuis: yeah. Good idea. Good idea. Yeah,

Dr. Jesse Reimink: So maybe I'll interrupt and I'll just say Okay. Before we actually, before I'll just say something like that and take us

Chris Bolhuis: me hit it. I'll, I'll say that. I'll say, let's talk about granite countertops, and then you interrupt me right away and say, Well, before we do that, let's

Dr. Jesse Reimink: Yeah. Okay. Cool. Sounds good. Yep. Let me just move this up here a minute. I'm gonna move this up here. Yep. Okay. Go ahead.

Chris Bolhuis: Okay. All right. So Jesse, let's start talking about granite

Dr. Jesse Reimink: let me interrupt there, Chris, real quick before we get to the names, which I'm excited to talk about too, I can see you, you're pumped up about this. Let's just level set with the size of the market here, cuz this is a big market. I was shocked by the numbers here. So countertops, [00:06:00] this is just in the US right now.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: Countertops are predicted by 2026 to be 1.1 billion square feet. That's a number, much like age of the Earth. That doesn't really mean anything to me. Like I can't picture what that is, but it's basically 400,000 homes completely covered with countertop. So I, you know, I don't know how many homes of countertop that is, like of actual countertop size, but this is 400,000 homes on average, 2,500 square foot.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: That are completely full of countertop material like chalk, full wall to wall. This is a huge, huge market. And that's everything but about a fifth. But about a quarter of that is natural stone, what we would call granite and the rock types that we're gonna mostly go through and identify here. So this is a big, big, big in.

Chris Bolhuis: That is huge. I do wanna also say, and I'm a little ashamed to say this, to admit it out loud, as many rocks as [00:07:00] I have at my house, I have two rock fireplaces that are gorgeous with specimens I've collected all over the country. I don't have any granite

Dr. Jesse Reimink: Is that right? I was trying to think of this when we were talking about this script and when we were talking about this. You don't, Okay, well bomb.

Chris Bolhuis: Yeah, it's something that I really want, but I only wanna do this once, so I want to get it right when I do it. And just like life crops up and like, Oh, well I don't have $3,000 anymore. You know, so, or whatever. It's gonna cost me to put granite countertops in, so I really, really want it. I just have other things that have like jumped the priority list. So I'm a little

Dr. Jesse Reimink: Yeah, it's the geologist dream. Like if you ever go to a geologist house and they just get their house redone and they had the money to do it up really well, they've got incredible countertops. One of my PhD supervisors built this new house. I was kind of in the middle of my PhD, built the new house we went over there this countertop, Chris is incredible. It's a ka garnet shift. [00:08:00] Big blue blades of kyanite in it in red garnets. It's unbelievably beautiful. And tells a great story too, cuz in all the geologists we'll go over there for Christmas and you know, they're making like amazing salmon on this like wood plank, beautiful dinner. And all the geologists are like hovering around the countertop studying the countertop, right? Classic. So the, I'll just round this out real quick and then let's get to the rocks. The industry is a big industry, 90 billion. So that 1.1 billion square feet ends up being around $90 billion for just countertops alone, which is a huge, huge market. , So, alright, Chris, let's get into the rock names. Where should we start here?

Chris Bolhuis: Well, there's only one place to start, Jesse. We gotta talk about granite countertops in the proper sense of the word. So let's start when we talk about each one. Let's talk about the geology of granite. Okay. Because we have to, This is

Dr. Jesse Reimink: Let's talk about the geology and then let's talk about, you know, how to kind of generally identify it. So if you are in your house with granite countertops, you don't know what it is, granite countertops, [00:09:00] you don't know what it is, or you're going over to your aunt and uncles and they have granite countertops. We're gonna help you identify these really briefly. So we're gonna go through each rock type, what it is geologically, and then what it kind of generally looks like. And just to preface this, there's a lot. Weird ones that we won't cover. We're just kind of covering the most common, the five or six most common here, right?

Chris Bolhuis: That's right. So Granite, the rock itself is an intrusive igneous rock that forms really deep inside the earth. We're talking miles deep. So it comes from magma that never made its way to the surface. It maybe approached several miles before it got to the surface. Then it began to cool slowly, and with igneous rocks, the general rule is the slower they cool, the bigger the minerals get. And so, Granite is gonna be made up of mostly light colored minerals like quartz and Feld spa. And so it's gonna be like grayish white and the [00:10:00] Feld Spa can give it these, these kind of really pretty pink colors or orange colors, and then more white colors. And then it's gonna have some darker minerals like biotite and horn blend that are kind of sprinkled in to give it these black flex throughout. And all of the minerals are gonna be smaller than the width of your pink. With this kind of rock.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: Yeah, that's a really important point there, that most of the grains are gonna be kind of smaller than your pinky fingernail. Right. You know, roughly. they might be around that size, because this brings us to the next rock, which is Pegmatite and Pegmatite. We've talked about this before, but Pegmatites are the really, really coarse grained ones. So if you have big grains, big crystals that are one big white block in there, in a pink block, and a big block of biotech, this is probably a pegmatite. Pegmatites are basically the same minerals as granites, more or less, except they have really big grain sizes. The grains are huge, and these things form, they're [00:11:00] usually associated with granite bodies, these intrusive bodies of magma that cool deep beneath the earth, but pegmatites form from the late stage fluids. So they form after most of the magma has cooled already, and they form from this kind of really fluid rich stuff so the grains can grow really big really quick, because the elements that make them up, the sodium and aluminum and silica that make up PPAR can all diffuse through that fluid really, really quickly. So the grains grow really big, really quick in a pegmatite. That's P E G M A T I T E Pegmatite, and that's, they look kind of similar. The grains are just much, much bigger in a pegmatite countertop.

Chris Bolhuis: And they are spectacular. It's one of my favorite kind of rock types. And Jesse, you and I have collected a lot of pegmatite in our past. They're beautiful rocks they make gorgeous countertops. I also wanna say before we move on to the other kind of rock types, that it's a common. [00:12:00] Type of countertop to be igneous and very dark, colored to black. Um, with flex of other minerals in it. Like you can get a, you know, a, an intrusive, like a ga that is coarse grained where the grains are all smaller than your pinky. And then it'll have disseminated like copper flex in the, that are naturally. They're not added later or anything like that. It's actually part of the real rock. So those are what they often call or refer to as black granite or dark granite in the industry. But they're not, they're not granite at all. They're actual different igneous rock types like GA or patic ga. And then one of my personal favorites too is, and I'm gonna test you on this cuz you don't know, I'm asking you this question, Labradorite. So what is that mineral and what does it look like in a countertop?

Dr. Jesse Reimink: Laboratory, right is a felts bar. It's a type of felts bar. It's a sodium and calcium rich felts bar that, well, it's more calcium [00:13:00] than sodium, but it's on what we call a solid solution where sodium and calcium are substituting for one another in the crystal structure. And this is one that it, irridesces, it's a kind of. Deep, deep, deep, dark black and blue, but it IESs and along certain what are called cleavage plains within the mineral. When the light hits a certain plane, that is natural part of the crystal structure. It causes, the light to kind of give off this iridescent structure. And they're stunningly beautiful. So the rock will look black with big grains, and every once in a while you'll catch these glimpse of this kind of shimmering purple blue surface

Chris Bolhuis: it's, it's kinda like the feathers of a peacock, you know, it we're, when you're looking at those minerals that are in the counter, it irid, deses or shines these different colors depending on the angle that you're looking at it. So the colors are constantly changing in this, and it's a, it's a, it's a highly sought after kind of countertop. It's rather expensive and it's often referred to as black granite, but it's not, it's a [00:14:00] patic, , labradorite.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: That's right. And it's labradorite, it's basically made just of one mineral. So Chris, let. Move on to Marble. Marble. I think most people know this term marble. it's a metamorphoses limestone. So you take limestone, which has calcite. It's mostly the mineral calcite. It makes up limestone, the rock, if you metamorphoses that, it gets heated up. It gets squished, the minerals, the cal set grains rec crystallize, and they form. What is called marble. This is now a metamorphic rock. It's really white. Most people know what marble, tile looks like maybe, or at least you've seen it in pictures. Uh, this, it's a really white rock. Sometimes it has these really nice, beautiful black streaks running through it. And sometimes it can . Look like kind of grains that, that you've got a big white patch and a big kind of creamy colored patch and another sort of a darker tanish patch. Marble is really soft, so it's less often used [00:15:00] for countertops. It's more often used for tile work, but you can find marble countertops to it.

Chris Bolhuis: I would myself, I would never have a countertop outta marble because I just couldn't be trusted. I would beat it up too bad. It's a

Chris Bolhuis: really,

Dr. Jesse Reimink: you could not be trusted. You'd be spilling

Chris Bolhuis: soft.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: all over that. Yeah. Countertop

Chris Bolhuis: would, I, oh, I'd be staying the heck out of it cuz they're very porous too, so it would not be good in the bull heist household. But, um, one thing I want to emphasize is that what you said, it's metamorphoses limestone. Limestone is a rather crappy looking rock. There's really nothing pretty about limestone. And then, You know, heat it, you put it under pressure and the cal site crystals that make up the limestone re crystallize, they grow into beautiful Cal site that is all interlocking with each other. And that's what marble is. And like you said too, that it has these like intricate veins that cut across it, which give it that marbleized texture, which is, it's absolutely gorgeous. It just [00:16:00] doesn't really make for a great countertop, I don't think.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: Chris. I agree completely. Limestone's not a great looking rock. Marble is a very, very good looking rock. So we're gonna move on now and continue in the theme of a metamorphic rock. So something that has been altered and changed by heat and pressure. The minerals have actually changed composition from whatever they were before and we're gonna move into shift or Nice these are two of the rock names that are the funniest in the geology undergrad world, SCH and NICE S C H I S T and nice g n e i s S. Those are two different

Chris Bolhuis: All right, l real quick, what's your favorite old man dad Geo joke with sch and nice or shift or Nice.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: Am I wearing? Am I, Let me see. Am I wearing my geology? No. So my wife tests I was looking at my shirt, my under my t-shirt, what I'm wearing under here. Cuz every year my wife has, she knows I don't really love geology puns. Like I kind of really don't like them. And so every year for my birthday, she doesn't get me a birthday [00:17:00] gift. She gets me a geology, pun t-shirt, and, I know you think she's hilarious. She thinks she's hilarious. I do not think she's hilarious, but I, I have one that says, uh, something about, you know, geologists make the nice shift or something like that, or geologists shift is nice and that, that's a shirt she bought me, which is okay, but it's in the basket of bad buns. I think

Chris Bolhuis: It is, uh, the students always like to, they always like the dumb shift one. that's the, the common one. Okay. But what I really like is I saw it at a geology picnic, okay. And yes, everybody, those things actually exist. , they're,

Dr. Jesse Reimink: they're very exciting. The conversation is just stunningly engaging

Chris Bolhuis: I was watching though one of these people that I am associated with walking around with a all black shirt with white lettering on the front over the chest. All it said was, Nice [00:18:00] shirt That's great. I like it. It just makes

Dr. Jesse Reimink: You loved it. I know. Uh, you're simple. You're, you're, I doing here?

Chris Bolhuis: I mean everybody, you, you need to know that shirt is a, is a, you know, kind of rock that forms in certain settings. It's a, you know, silica rich rock that forms in the bottom of the ocean. And so

Dr. Jesse Reimink: Chris. Chris. Chris, I'm gonna cut you off. This doesn't make it better. This just doesn't make the, who cares?

Chris Bolhuis: Well, alright.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: Uh, it's not better. It's not better. Anyway, so shift and nice. These are metamorphic rocks and they. Have a really distinctive pattern to them. Like the main feature of this in a countertop is that they're gonna be banded shift will not be banded light and dark, but it will definitely have structure to it and, and this is a hard thing to kind of get across. It'll have lines of material in it. Like you'll be able to see light and dark bits and you'll be able to see all the minerals are kind of aligned in a certain direction. They're all [00:19:00] pointing in one direction. That'll be rare in most. Countertop types. Is that

Chris Bolhuis: Yeah. Could I interject here? The reason that happens is because metamorphic rocks are subjected to intense heat, which makes the rock soft. They're also subjected to a lot of times differential pressure, like the kind of pressure you get if you put something in a vice. Okay, so if you, if you were to put clay, let's say in a vice, because clay is soft, so it's behaving like this really hot, soft rock, put it in a vice and squeeze the vice, the clay is gonna flow perpendicular to the direction of the vice. So then any minerals that are in that rock then, or in that material, that clay are gonna line up in the direction of. And so this can give us that pattern that you're talking about with metamorphic rocks, and it can give us this toothpaste kind of look to the rock that you look at it and you're like, Whoa, this rock was flowing [00:20:00] as it was forming. You know, it's, it's really obvious.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: a great description, Chris. If so, if your countertop looks like it has been squeezed in a tectonic plate sized device, it's probably shift or nice a metamorphic rock that was deformed. It has this flow structure to it. A couple other definitive patterns here are, if there's a. Big, deep or not even big. If there's deep purple little garnets in it or big garnets, it's probably a shift or a nice if there's light and dark banding and it looks like the light banding has kind of wormed its way through the dark banding. It's probably a nice, and the difference between shift and nice here is that the nice is what we call higher grade metamorphic rock. It has been metamorphose, it has been squeezed to hotter temperatures and higher pressures so that the light colored mineral. Start to melt out and they kind of coalesce together and form these light bands and they kind of all get together and they start to flow in one direction. So that's a nice and a shift is just all the minerals are kind of aligned in [00:21:00] one direction.

Chris Bolhuis: Yeah, let's keeping in the theme of metamorphic rocks. Let's do that. There is another one that I personally love. It's, and we talked about it in our last episode, I think it's called Tite. Tite is named because the texture of the rock resembles the skin of a snake. So it has this kind of serpentine look to it. You know, I love it because I love the deep green that it typically shows. It's just my favorite color. and It also has this kind of greasy, kind of soapy feel to it, or slippery. It's often described as, and this, it forms by metamorphism of ultra mantle material like Pite. And we did talk about this in our last episode, so it's

Dr. Jesse Reimink: In the way it'll, it is beautiful, and the way you can kind of identify it is it has a various shades of light and dark green, and some of it'll be really, really dark, like almost black. And then some of it will be really, really light, like a really kind of a [00:22:00] tan color. And usually you'll have veins of the light colored stuff going through the dark colored bits, or at least that's what it'll look like. And this is an alteration texture. So the serpentine is the alteration mineral of the prototype of the Alvin and the Pide. So those light layers are the altered bits of the dark pieces, but it is a metamorphic rock. And Chris, we're gonna move into two more rock types here, and both of these are metamorphose. Sedimentary rocks. So they're very much like marble. They were primarily a sedimentary rock. Now they're metamorphoses. The first one is a conglomerate. These are rare countertops. They're very obvious because it's basically a bunch of big round pieces of stuff. A mish mash of big round chunks that are all cobbled together. Usually they're touching one another, It's usually green. It can be light red, uh, it can be pinkish, it can be white and a conglomerate. It just looks like a stream bed, usually an ancient stream bed, because that's what it is. [00:23:00] It's a big stream bed that the cobbles. We're laying there. It got filled in with sand, got buried, formed a rock, but conglomerate just in itself. Chris, you and I love conglomerates. We've collected a bunch of them, but conglomerate, if it's not metamorphose, is a really crumbly, crappy rock. You wouldn't wanna make a countertop out of it. So these conglomerates, countertops are usually metamorphose, and this metamorphism, as you described, can squeeze them. Device, squeeze the rock in a vice and stretch things. And sometimes you will see these conglomerates, the little blocks in there, the little pieces, the cobbles of other rocks. Those can be stretched and made into an oblong shape. And we would call that a stretch pebble conglomerate. And

Chris Bolhuis: One. One of my favorite rocks right there. I'm, Ugh. Do you remember us collecting it?

Dr. Jesse Reimink: Yes. I.

Chris Bolhuis: Come on, I'm putting you to the test right now.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: We have collected a couple time, a couple of them haven't we? But I think we're in upstate New York or [00:24:00] Vermont. I'm not sure

Chris Bolhuis: We were in Vermont when we collected the stretch public conglomerate. I, this stuff is amazing. So it's the same reason, right? Put this rock in a vice, make it soft by heating it up, squeeze the vice down, and the pebbles all line up and they get, they get soft too. And so they, they become really oval and stretched out, and they're all lined up in the same direction. It's a beautiful rock. This is, Like this would be the top one of the top of my list for a countertop. , it's amazing stuff.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: I agree.

Chris Bolhuis: Yep.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: It is just such a beautiful

Chris Bolhuis: All right. One more. Let's talk about quartzite countertops, which is not to be confused with quarts countertops. It's metamorphic.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: unquote, courts.

Chris Bolhuis: It's also metamorph. Due to heat and pressure, just like all the . Other metamorphic rocks we've discussed, but the quartz grains that make up the quartz. Used to be in a quartz sandstone, so [00:25:00] imagine like a beach, like a lake Michigan beach or a Florida beach, whatever, where it's 90% or even higher of just sand size little quartz grains. Okay? That's a sandstone that gets ified and and compacted and cemented, and you have this sedimentary rock. Then it has to get subjected to heat and pressure, which causes the grains to kind of. While they get soft, sometimes they grow a little larger and they stick together and it becomes this really, really well put together metamorphic rock that is now called quartzite. It resembles sandstone. Sometimes it has even the same structures that the sandstone had, like ripple marks and mud cracks and things like that. But it is way better put together. Than it was as a, sedimentary rock sandstone. So it can be really pretty blonde colored, reddish colored, kind of purple colored pink, as [00:26:00] is a common one too. I'm a big fan of, quartzite it also tends to have these dark colored veins that run through it, which also gives it that marginalized kind of texture. But, It's way better than marble because it's so much more durable. It's way harder than Marble is.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: Yeah. Chris, this leads us into a really good point that I think we should end all of our rock descriptions on here is that all of these rocks we've listed are either metamorphic rocks or igneous rocks. And the reason that you only get countertops out of metamorphic or igneous rocks is because the process of metamorphism in the process of being igneous, Means that all the grains are interlocking, all the grains have rec crystallized and grown together, which makes them, it's just a well put together rock. It's hard to break cuz you don't want a countertop that is crumbling and chipping things off. And when we talked last episode about how you're pie, right? You know, in your, in your wall, Jenny was vacuuming and [00:27:00] it kind of started to crumble, right? You can't have that with a countertop. So

Chris Bolhuis: have to go back.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: What's that? you, have an update for us on the pie.

Chris Bolhuis: I, I do. I accused Jenny after we stopped recording, I accused her of knocking it with the, with the vacuum and not telling me . I, I caught some hell for that. Uh, she, that did not happen.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: Okay.

Chris Bolhuis: just fell off

Dr. Jesse Reimink: We We could set the record straight. That didn't happen. No, it was just weathering. It was just weathering in your basement. But you can't have us in a countertop. We have to have really well put together rocks. In order to make them into countertop material, So the only rocks you're gonna see are metamorphic or igneous in your countertops.

Chris Bolhuis: We want hard minerals, low porosity, and low permeability. That's what you're looking for in a countertop, and it's gotta be obviously gorgeous that you're good to go.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: Yeah. Oh yeah. You gotta put a pretty one in your counter. So this leads us really nicely into courts, quote unquote courts. You touched on it, Chris, that quartzite the rock, the metamorphic rock Metamorphose. Sandstone [00:28:00] has a lot of quarts in it and so it's really durable and it's also really stain proof actually, which is why when we make synthetic materials for countertops out of natural stuff, you use quarts. A lot of this is courts we actually just renovated. The kitchen here, in our house in Pennsylvania, and we got a nice, beautiful light gray quarts countertop in the kitchen. It's beautiful, It's stain resistant. It's really hard. It's really solid. It's gonna last for decades and it's not actually all quarts and it's not natural. There might be some quarts in there, but this is a synthetic thing. It's basically crushed up bits of. And courts in there that are held together with a resin and given a little coloration to it. So it's a synthetic thing. The quote unquote, courts countertops are synthetic.

Chris Bolhuis: I think the name is very misleading. I think a lot of people think the wrong thing about a quarts countertop. They think that it is a natural thing because everybody knows about quarts the mineral. But it's, it's [00:29:00] not actually, it's like you said, it's synthetic. It's, it's manmade. About 90% of the material that make up a quartz countertop it's all waste. It's crushed granite, it's got marble in it. It's got natural stone or recycled materials. It even has ceramics, glass, and mirrors in. the remaining 10% of it is this binding Reimink that you mentioned earlier. This kind of, this thing that just sticks it all together. And that's an interesting thing too, is that there's a very big like discrepancy in. Price of quarts countertops. They can be inexpensive and they can actually be quite expensive. And it really depends upon the amount of resin that's used. The cheaper quarts countertops has a higher amount of resin in it, and the more expensive has a less resin in it. And that's important because if you set a hot. Pan on a quartz countertop that has a lot of resin in it. It will kind of like, it'll melt that resin and cause it [00:30:00] to become cloudy and it will discolor that part of the countertop. So you have to be careful with it.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: Yeah, this is an important part about the stability of quarts and courts and real quarts in countertops is quarts is a really hard mineral. It's got a hardness of seven on Moe's hardness scale. It's durable to really high temperatures, has a high melting point on its own. , pure quarts has a melting temperature of about 1600 degrees centigrade, whereas the natural granite countertops, if you take a granite and try and melt it, it'll melt at about 700, 750 degrees centigrade, uh, up to about 1200 degrees. So much lower than quartz. And so this is the value in having a court's countertop if it's not a lot of resin in there. so it's really cool and you can dye that resin to make it basically whatever color you want, which makes 'em really.

Chris Bolhuis: Yeah, they can be absolutely beautiful. The other thing about 'em that a lot of people like about quartz countertops because of what they're made of. They're very green. No rock was qued for the purpose of making a [00:31:00] countertop that's called a quartz countertop. It's all waste material that's then repurposed to make this. So that's a really appealing thing of it too. And I'm kind of a little conflicted with this because at some point I'm gonna get a, you know, countertop and what do I wanna do, you know? I don't know yet. Fortunately, I

Chris Bolhuis: don't have to decide yet.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: Yeah, it's a tough one. Um, so the last type here that's worth mentioning is something called engineered stone, which is synthetic rock. And a lot of this is actually marble and. It's pretty easy now in a laboratory setting to actually make marble to take a bunch of Cal site, give it a little coloration, heat it up to high enough temperatures to form it into a marble and squish it a little bit and give it that deformation fabric, and then let it cool and cut it up into countertop pieces. This is mostly used at the moment for things like tiling and flooring and paneling because. Easier to make and cheaper to make than sort of mining it. [00:32:00] And it's not a great countertop material as we've already talked about. You, can have really nice marble countertops. Some people love them, but also some people don't like them so much. So you can also make this quart as we're talking about the, the quarts could be kind of an engineered stone as well. Um, so you can get a variety of rock types that are rock types. They're engineered stone pieces. That's just worth mentioning here at the

Chris Bolhuis: so well, before we wrap this up though, I do want to talk about something that you and I got to see when we were in upstate New York and we went to the Gore Mountain. All right. This was spectacular stuff. It had these, you know, metamorphic garnets that were in this, I don't know, what do you, what would you call it? Like a meta gabo? I guess that's the best way to

Dr. Jesse Reimink: Yeah, it's an amfi light. Um, it's a sort of metamorphoses ga light. Yep.

Chris Bolhuis: so it was mostly black colored, extremely core screened, but it had been metamorphoses and it had these huge, beautiful, deep red almondine garnets [00:33:00] in it. It was just amazing stuff.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: I mean, huge. Chris, you say that they're like softball size. They're little volleyball size. They're huge, like

Chris Bolhuis: of a baby's head. They're amazing, Yeah. So anyway, we got to, They were mining this though to make countertops out of it, so we got to see this. So let's talk a little bit about how they do this. It's really kind of fascinating, don't you think? Like how they

Dr. Jesse Reimink: Oh, it's totally fascinating. Yeah, I saw this as well. Um, in my undergrad, we went to Sweden to map some high grade nices, uh, in Sweden. And we went to one of these quarries, one of these stone quarries where they were actually actively cutting at the time. And there's many ways to. Do this. In Sweden, what they were doing was they would drill down, drill a hole straight down into a rock, and then drill a hole sideways, go to the bottom of that little drill hole, drill one in sideways and intersect. So you have two holes, one going down and one going in, and they intersect within the rock and then they'd strap this. Plastic. It's kind of a thick plastic rope [00:34:00] that has diamond bits in it. So that's like kind of plastic with every maybe 10 inches, has a little diamond en crusted metal chunk in it. And then they'd get this thing going through a saw and they'd just pull. So they'd put tension on that rope, get it spinning. Get it going around a gear, house and get that, like pulling the rope through it right in just a loop, like a chain going through there. And then just put tension on it and pull it out and it would cut. That diamond rope would cut straight out of the rock. And you could do this a couple times and then cut out a big block and then take that big block and you put it in your front end loader. Bring it. The saw place, and then they have these huge saws that'll cut it into the slabs, the thickness of countertop, and then you can take that in with like, you know, jet cutting machines. You can, cut out your pattern of the actual countertop you want. I mean, it's a really incredible process to watch. Really crazy. But Gore Mountain, Did they have these slabs laying [00:35:00] around? Is that right? Am I remembering

Chris Bolhuis: They had.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: the slabs. I don't remember seeing them, you know, in action,

Chris Bolhuis: No, they weren't in action cuz we were there on a Sunday and you know, remember we went there and the owner pulled up and we were like, Oh, oh, we're in trouble, . And he took us down into the heart of the mind. It was awesome. That was

Dr. Jesse Reimink: great.

Chris Bolhuis: guy in the planet.

Chris Bolhuis: remember he is like, take

Dr. Jesse Reimink: Yeah. Yeah. He's like, whatever guys, go for it. We're like, Oh my

Chris Bolhuis: It took about 4,000 pounds of rocks out of that thing. So anyway, I don't know how they did it. I Know they had a lot of these drill holes and it, the geometry of 'em was very similar to what you just described. So I think they did the same kind of thing. Um, I don't

Dr. Jesse Reimink: Okay. They're.

Chris Bolhuis: like absolutely

Dr. Jesse Reimink: slabs, I mean giant slabs. so then, you know, I don't know if any, maybe people have seen this, but you can get a, a sort of a polisher too. And I actually bought one of these, uh, a couple years. A countertop, rotary polisher that just has diamond pads that you put on it and you kind of polish [00:36:00] it, uh, with a, with water around and you just do a wet polish on it and it polishes up really nicely. So you can kind of hand polish these things, after the fact. So that's kind of how those get made, which is always something that I've just find fascinating. I don't know, it's totally cool to watch these things going and watch them mining this stuff. So, um,

Chris Bolhuis: is very cool.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: yeah. So I, I don't know. Chris, what do you think?

Chris Bolhuis: I think that's a wrap. I'm all excited about countertops now, though. I gotta tell you,

Dr. Jesse Reimink: Yeah. You're gonna

Chris Bolhuis: Jenny and I might have to have a talk. I don't know. Yeah, yeah. You know how I am.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: bounce some

Chris Bolhuis: be at, I'll probably be at the store tomorrow.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: Yeah.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: You, you're fairly impetuous sometimes

Chris Bolhuis: I

Dr. Jesse Reimink: Oh, that's great. Oh, that's so good. So, I mean, just, you know, things to keep in mind are that, uh, granite countertops, granite are not always.

Chris Bolhuis: Yeah, that's, That's right. Good. Good point, good point. The naming of this is very confusing. I stand by this. I think the naming is like somebody that knows nothing [00:37:00] about geology. They feel like they're naming carpet just by the color, and they try to describe it that way. And it really is misleading, um, calling all rock countertops granite, and no, they're not. And you know,

Dr. Jesse Reimink: so yeah, keep that in mind. But all countertops, all the natural ones are beautiful. I wouldn't turn any of them down really. They're just spectacularly stunning stone. So All right. Hey, you can follow us on all the social media. We're at Planet Geo Cast. Send us an email, planet geo cast gmail.com and visit our website, planet geo cast.com. There you can, I don't know, read about us, support us, follow us, all

Chris Bolhuis: Yeah.

Chris Bolhuis: And share Planet Geo with somebody, please. We really, really, really

Dr. Jesse Reimink: yeah,

Chris Bolhuis: that would help us out.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: absolutely. Perfect. Sweet. See you next.