To celebrate our anniversary, my boyfriend took me to see the Giant’s CauseWay in Northern Ireland. To me, it is a sight worth revisiting because it simply took my breath away. We were there in a group of tourists and from what our tour guide explained, those rocks fall under the category of igneous rocks but more specifically are called columnar jointing. These natural phenomenons occur when igneous rock cools, due to the sills and dikes that ‘inject’ magma under near the surface and accumulating in thickness, causing shrinkage fractures. This is so unique to me because these kinds of igneous rocks are different from most forms of different types of igneous rocks. Because the igneous rocks cools more rapidly, it creates a fine-grained texture, whereas other types of igneous rocks have a more course-grained textures. The Giant’s CauseWay has about 40,000 interlocking joints and are the results from an eruption fissure that happened a long time ago. Most of the joints that are erected are in a hexagonal shape but can vary in the number of sides from 4 - 8 sides. Although the Giant’s Causeway is in Northern Ireland, you can find columnar jointing almost anywhere in the world! In Canada, the US, South America, South Korea and even on Mars!
I think that for our next anniversary, I would want to travel again to see columnar jointing but maybe this time, I’d like to go somewhere different. I heard that there is a site in Vietnam called the Cliff of Stone Plates is something someone should visit at least once in their lifetime.
No comments:
Post a Comment