Marble Gravestones Weathering

How to clean marble headstones.

Marble gravestones weathering.

One project is using gravestones to better understand how the elements particularly acid rain are weathering rocks around. Headstones are subjected to weath. Nevertheless for some families marble is still the stone of choice because of its natural beauty. Weathering processes on headstones and monuments alison tymon march 2012 weathering is defined as the breakdown of rock in situ that is without being moved.

The four factors are. Are barely legible because acid rain created by factory pollution has dissolved a lot of the calcite in the limestone and marble gravestones. Marble tombstones aren t as popular today as granite or bronze gravestones because marble is highly vulnerable to stains and damage. Gravestones and monuments are generally custom fabricated out of large stones.

To a geologist a gravestone can offer information other rocks can t. But for the most part quartzite is harder and denser since it is made of quartz is much more resistant to chemical physical weathering. Material the gravestone is made from environment the gravestone is in process by which the gravestone is weathered form of the weathering on the gravestone. Following the idea that marble gravestones would weather mainly by dissolution it is thought that weathering loss would be linear.

Weathering processes depend upon the pres ence of water the temperature the mineral composition of the rock and its chemical com position. Gravestones made from sandstone are easier to carve than a harder material but this also means they often exhibit poor weathering resilience resulting in lamination or exfoliation causing large portions of the stone to fall off blistering of the stone surface discolouration due to soot or a reaction between sulphur dioxide and calcium. The form of weathering observed on gravestones is a product of four interconnected factors and how they vary both spatially and temporally i e in space and time. Marble gravestones for example are expected or rather assumed to decay mainly by dissolution by acidic rainfall remembering that natural rainfall is slightly acidic anyway being a weak carbonic acid with a ph of 5 6.

Some materials are unfading meaning they will hold their basic color even after many years of exterior use. It is customary to associated particular types of gravestones or environments with particular weathering processes. Physical weathering is the toll put on rocks by. Quartzite also has a pattern similar to marble which is why many choose marble over granite even though marble doesn t last as long.