Skip to content

Quartzite

Posted under Geology

A brief description of the nature of quartzite

28 Sep
2006

Quartzite is a tough, hard, fine-grained metamorphic rock. If the quartzite is made of pure quartz it is white, but it may have yellowish or reddish colour if it contains iron minerals. If you use a magnifier you may be able to see the grains of sand from which it is made.

Quartzite breaks through the grains and not around them like sandstone. Don’t confuse quartzite with marble, which is much softer. Quartzite is very hard and will easily scratch glass.

Quartzite Copyrighted Image The Open University

How is it formed?
Quartzite is formed from the metamorphism of sandstone.

Get closer to geology

Rate and share this page:

You haven't rated. Average rating 4.3 out of 5, based on 3 ratings

Share this page:

.

More like this

Comments

Be the first to post a comment.

Login or Register to post comments

Article Information

Publication details
Wednesday, 27th September 2006
Thursday, 28th September 2006

Copyright information
• Body text - Copyright: The Open University
• Image 'Quartzite' - Copyright: The Open University

Article Feeds

If you enjoyed this, why not follow a feed to find out when we have new things like it? Choose an RSS feed from the list below. (Don't know what to do with RSS feeds?)
Remember, you can also make your own, personal feed by combining tags from around OpenLearn.

About OpenLearn

Hide

Explore

Try

Study

OU Courses

OpenLearn Now

Hide
The truth behind the torch Copyrighted Image London 2012

As the Olympic flame wings its way around the UK, the OU's Aarón Alzola Romero asks: just how immemorial is the Olympic torch relay?

Tag Clouds

Hide

My Cloud

Discover the latest about your passions - Sign In or Register and start a personal tag cloud.

What are Tag Clouds?
http://www.open.edu/openlearn/sites/all/themes/ole/flash/tagcloud.swf

Creative Commons License Except for third party materials and otherwise stated, content on this site is made available
under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Licence

/openlearn/sites/all/themes/ole/