What is a slate? Detailed answer

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What is a slate? Detailed answer

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What is a slate?

Millions of years ago, particles of fine-grained clay settled to the bottom of lakes and inland seas, forming soft silt. Then it hardened, turning into shale. At that time, constant movements took place in the earth's crust, as a result of which folds appeared on the layers of shale, covered with other rocks.

The pressure of the upper layers on those layers was so significant that it compressed them into a material known to us as slate. Clay particles settled to the bottom of lakes and seas in uniform layers, which continued to be preserved even after the shale had turned into slate. Thanks to this, today we can divide it into thin wide plates.

As a rule, slate has a dark gray and black color, although it can be red, green or light gray. The predominantly black color is explained by the fact that the living organisms that existed in the original silt, dying, decomposed, forming inclusions in the clay layers in the form of fine crumbs of coal dust.

Slate can only be found in those areas of the globe where rock-forming pressure and shifts in the earth's crust have had an active impact on ancient shale layers.

Slate is widely used by man. Its main area of application is construction, where it serves as a roofing material for the roofs of houses and buildings of all kinds.

Author: Likum A.

Random interesting fact from the Great Encyclopedia:

How does an egg develop?

What could be easier than an egg? But his birth is a rather complicated thing. In the belly of a bird, the egg yolk is first formed. It is formed inside a special organ called the ovary.

Once the yolk has formed, it moves into the oviduct. This is where the protein is made. Further, the egg, or rather part of it, moves to the lower end of the oviduct, where a leathery membrane and shell are formed. The egg is now ready to be laid. The shell is quite hard, but has pores. As the liquid content of the egg gradually evaporates through the pores, air enters to supply oxygen to the developing embryo.

The embryo is the part from which the body of the chicken will develop. Inside the shell is a leathery sheath that forms an airy rind at the blunt end of the egg.

It also contains a protein called albumin. It is a tasteless and odorless liquid, jelly-like in appearance, mostly consisting of water. White strands can be seen in the protein. Their purpose is to keep the yolk in the center of the egg, like in a hammock, and keep it from being hit. The yolk itself is round in shape: it is food for the embryo, which is located in a small cavity on its surface. The embryo of a fresh chicken egg is clearly visible if you carefully examine the yolk. And the germ in the eggs of other birds is so small that it is visible only under a microscope.

The size of the egg does not always depend on the size of the bird itself. It depends on the amount of food needed to feed the developing embryo until it hatches from the egg. Birds born blind and helpless hatch from small eggs that didn't have enough food to fully develop until they were born, when they could take care of themselves.

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All U.S. vehicles will be switched from gasoline to gas 10.02.2012

The presidents of the United States cannot decide in any way which way cars will develop and what fuel will replace motor gasoline.

George W. Bush was a supporter of fuel cells, but then changed his mind in favor of bioethanol. Barack Obama initially bet on biofuels and electric vehicles, but said this week that scientists should come up with new ways to convert vehicles to natural gas. Apparently, he wants to find a way to use the record for the last 10 years, natural gas production, the price of which in the US has already fallen to less than $100 per thousand cubic meters. For comparison, in Europe the wholesale price of gas is kept at the level of 280 dollars, and in Russia - 120 dollars.

The gas is attractive because it can be used in conventional internal combustion engines. However, unlike gasoline, liquefied gas requires an expensive heavy tank, which reduces the range of the car and scares car owners. The US Department of Energy Research Agency (ARPA-E) will soon initiate a competition to develop a low-cost way to turn natural gas into liquid fuels with high energy density. It is possible that this will be a technology for converting natural gas into synthetic gasoline, which will not even require reworking cars, but will significantly reduce the cost of fuel.

Also, the US government plans to reduce dependence on oil by encouraging the production of medium and heavy trucks that run on natural gas or other alternative fuels. For this, the relevant road infrastructure will be deployed and new car models will be developed, as well as municipal buses and trucks converted to gas. At the same time, it is planned to find new ways to convert and store natural gas.

Unlike fuel cell, biofuel and battery vehicles, natural gas vehicles are already being sold in large numbers around the world. If American scientists manage to find a way to cheaply and safely store natural gas in a car tank, we will have a boom in gas vehicles, which, however, will once again push high-tech electric vehicles into the distant future.

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