Sunday 22 October 2017

Steve's Nature Quiz #21

Nature isn't just about flowers and animals, it's about the soil and rocks and everything else that allows them to exist. This week we met up with Gypsum but which city is most associated with this rock?

a) Beijing
b) Sao Paolo
c) Paris

Gypsum, Chrysopigi. east Crete
Gypsum is used to make plaster, as used in artistic molds, construction and most famously for plaster casts when setting broken bones. Although plaster was probably first made by the Egyptians for architectural purposes and then taken up by the Greeks (gypsum is Greek for plaster) a large deposit was discovered near Montmartre, Paris in the 1600s and calcined gypsum (which involves heating it to a very high temperature and then grinding it to a fine white powder) has been known as Plaster-of-Paris ever since.

For more fascinating insights into the natural world follow the #CreteNature blog 
at
Labels: , , , , , , ,

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)

Recent Posts

  • Creatures of the Blue Lagoon
    Last week we finished our wander along the sands of Ferma Bay at a place where a ring of rocks form a sort of lagoon. This is a perfect...
  • Crete Nature Almanack 2018 – Early Spring
    Today, March 20 th , sees the arrival of the Spring Equinox in the northern hemisphere (or the Autumn Equinox in the southern) where the...
  • Descent Into The Milonas Valley
    Now that we’ve made it all the way up here we’ve got to get all the way back again but this time we’ll come down the Milonas (or Miller’s) ...
  • The End of Civilisation
    Blue-winged Grasshopper, Oedipoda caerulescens Here we are, back at the point where we regained the trail last week, and it looks a...
  • Remotest Cumbria
      With all the razzmatazz of Yuletide in full swing, it's nice to take some time out and look out over the fells, in a remote spot, mile...