This fountain and monument was unveiled on 29th October 1881 to recognise the contribution of Sir William Collins (1817-1895), owner of the Collins publishing firm and Lord Provost of Glasgow
Granite
Granite is a common type of igneous rock that is granular in texture. Granites can be predominantly white, pink, or grey in colour, depending on their mineralogy. The word "granite" comes from the Latin granum, “grain”, in reference to the coarse-grained structure of such a rock. Granite has at approximately 20% quartz and up to 65% feldspar in its makeup, along with mica crystals.
Granite is formed through the cooling and solidification of molten rock called magma or lava. When the magma cools and solidifies, randomly arranged interlocking crystals form. The size of the crystals depends on how quickly the molten magma solidified. The more slowly the magma cools, the bigger the crystals are.
Occasionally, you will see shapes or impurities in granite that have a different colour and density than the surrounding rock.
Enclave is a piece of rock totally enclosed within, and differing in some way from the igneous rock in which it is found.
Xenolith is a piece of rock trapped in another type of rock. Most of the time, a xenolith is a rock embedded in magma while the magma was cooling.
Please send your answers to the following questions to me via the email or the message centre
Questions
- Explain which feature is covered in the picture
- What size and shape of the feature?
- Does the feature have a different texture to the granite?
- Take a photo with the monument, you don’t need to include your face, you could just take it with your caching name on a piece of paper