Rapakivi Granite

Rapakivi granite is a hornblende-biotite granite containing large rounded crystals of orthoclase mantled with oligoclase. The name has come to be used most frequently as a textural term where it implies plagioclase rims around orthoclase in plutonic rocks. Rapakivi is Finnish for "crumbly rock", because the different heat expansion coefficients of the component minerals make exposed rapakivi crumbly.

Rapakivi was first described by Finnish Jakob Sederholm in 1891. Since then, southern Finland's rapakivi granite intrusions have been the type locality of this type of granite.

Read more about Rapakivi Granite:  Occurrence, Formation, Morphology, Use As A Building Material

Famous quotes containing the word granite:

    Your wits can’t thicken in that soft moist air, on those white springy roads, in those misty rushes and brown bogs, on those hillsides of granite rocks and magenta heather. You’ve no such colours in the sky, no such lure in the distances, no such sadness in the evenings. Oh the dreaming! the dreaming! the torturing, heart-scalding, never satisfying dreaming, dreaming, dreaming, dreaming!
    George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)