Quick Clay
Quick clay, also known as Leda Clay in Canada, is a unique form of highly sensitive clay, with the tendency to change from a relatively stiff condition to a liquid mass when it is disturbed. Undisturbed quick clay resembles a water-saturated gel. When a block of clay is held in the hand and struck, however, it instantly turns into a flowing ooze, a process known as spontaneous liquefaction. Quick clay behaves this way because, although it is solid, it has a very high water content, up to 80%. The clay retains a solid structure despite the high water content, because surface tension holds water-coated flakes of clay together in a delicate structure. When the structure is broken by a shock, it reverts to a fluid state.
Quick clay is only found in the northern countries such as Russia, Canada, Alaska in the U.S., Norway, Sweden, and Finland, which were glaciated during the Pleistocene epoch.
Quick clay has been the underlying cause of many deadly landslides. In Canada alone, it has been associated with more than 250 mapped landslides. Some of these are ancient, and may have been triggered by earthquakes.
Read more about this topic: Soil Liquefaction
Famous quotes containing the words quick and/or clay:
“Not marble nor the gilded monuments
Of princes shall outlive this powerful rime;
But you shall shine more bright in these contents
Than unswept stone, besmeared with sluttish time.
When wasteful war shall statues overturn,
And broils root out the work of masonry,
Nor Mars his sword nor war’s quick fire shall burn
The living record of your memory.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“When Nature was shaping him, clay was not granted
For making so full-sized a man as she wanted,
So, to fill out her model, a little she spared
From some finer-grained stuff for a woman prepared,
And she could not have hit a more excellent plan
For making him fully and perfectly man.”
—James Russell Lowell (1819–1891)