Granite Rocks (mostly)

Rode along w/ my friend, Nancy, to pick out granite slabs that will be used for her new kitchen counter tops. The salesperson took us into the slab room. Enough to make any rock hound drool. Row upon row of about 9 ft by 6 ft hanging slabs of polished rock. Nancy had already picked out a small sample rock from a local store. However, there can be quite a bit of variation in the actual slabs used. The slabs turned out to be a bit darker than her sample but she liked the contrast and the deal was done. We took a little time to view the rest of the slab room. Many of the slabs didn't look like granite to me but I figured I must be mistaken. We came to one beautiful piece that was clearly a conglomerate and I asked the salesperson how filler was applied to make the surface smooth. I then pointed to an awesome dark blue slab w/ iridescence and told Nancy it looked just like Labradorite. The salesperson said I must know something about geology to recognize that stone. She explained that the commercial definition of "granite" was any rock hard enough to take a polish and capable of being slabbed for architectural uses while the geological definition of granite was much more exclusive. What a relief, I wasn't mistaken - I won't take granite for granted again.