Rock salt
Rock made of halite
Common
Rock made of halite, laid down when salt water dries up, in beds that can be hundreds of metres thick. Mined at Hallstatt since prehistory and at Wieliczka from the thirteenth century until 1996.
Rock
- Kind of rock
- Chemical sedimentary rock
- Rock family
- Salt beds
- Texture
- crystalline
- Also contains
- Sylvite, Gypsum, Anhydrite
- Deposits
- Evaporite deposit
- Shapes the land into
- Salt Flat
- How it forms
- Enclosed lakes and restricted seas in dry climates evaporate faster than they are fed, and the salts crystallise in order.
- Uses
- Table salt since prehistory (Hallstatt gave its name to an Iron Age culture), and de-icing roads.
Crystallography
- Habits
- Massive, Granular
Physical properties
- Luster
- Vitreous
- Colors
- colorless, white, gray, pink, blue
- Transparency
- Translucent, Opaque
Geology
- Origins
- Sedimentary
- Geography
- Poland (Wieliczka), Austria (Hallstatt), USA (Michigan Basin), Canada (Ontario)
Classification
- Rarity
- Common
- Gem quality
- No
Sources
- Halite. Wikipedia.
- Evaporite. Wikipedia.
- Wieliczka Salt Mine. Wikipedia.
- Hallstatt. Wikipedia.
- C. R. Hallsworth, R. W. O’B. Knox, BGS Rock Classification Scheme, Volume 3: Classification of sediments and sedimentary rocks (Research Report RR 99-03). British Geological Survey, 1999.
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