• Question: how many different rocks are there on earth

    Asked by cheesecakegirl2 to Angus, Christian, Hannah, Laura, Simon on 24 Jun 2013. This question was also asked by 1dsuperfan.
    • Photo: Angus Ferraro

      Angus Ferraro answered on 24 Jun 2013:

      I’m going to leave this one to the others, who know a lot more about rocks than I do! Presumably it’s a lot. Perhaps there are some types of rock we just don’t know about yet?

    • Photo: Laura Roberts Artal

      Laura Roberts Artal answered on 24 Jun 2013:

      Angus is essentially right, there are an awful lot, I couldn’t even begin to think how many. To make things easier though, they are classified into 3 main types: Sedimentary, Igneous and Metamorphic., depending on how they are formed. This makes it easier to keep track of how many!

    • Photo: Hannah Bentham

      Hannah Bentham answered on 24 Jun 2013:

      There are a ridiculous number of rocks and the number is constantly increasing when we learn more about the detailed composition and how the rocks are formed.

      I couldn’t even give you a ball park figure of the number of rocks other than more than 100 and less than infinity!

    • Photo: Christian Maerz

      Christian Maerz answered on 25 Jun 2013:

      All the others are right, there are certainly several 100 types of rock! To name a few: Basalt, granite, mudstone, siltstone, sandstone, conglomerate, breccia, chert, gneiss, greenschist, bleuschist, whiteschist, shale, limestone, marl, diorite, picrite, phyllite, rhyolite…

    • Photo: Simon Holyoake

      Simon Holyoake answered on 25 Jun 2013:

      As the others have said, there are loads! I only know a few myself though

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