Iâve come across a historical footnote on the English language and I thought everyone would get a kick out of it. Up until about 2 hundred years ago, there was a 27th letter in the English language. This letter is still in common use today and I would bet that you have used it recently. But this letter is no longer considered a letter; it is now regarded either an abbreviation or punctuation. Iâm talking about the (&) ampersand.
Gneiss is a medium to coarse-grained, irregularly banded rock with only poorly developed cleavage. The light and dark bands (gneissic banding) are alternations of felsic vs. mafic layers. Slate is a product of low grade metamorphism (not terribly great burial temperatures and pressures are required).
In some cases gneisses are produced by higher grade metamorphism than schists. Low-grade metamorphic rocks tend to be fine-grained (the newly formed metamorphic mineral grains that is). High-grade metamorphic rocks tend to be coarse-grained. But grain size is also dependent on the grain size of the protolith.on-foliated metamorphic rocks include quartzite, which is metamorphosed sandstone in which the quartz grains have recrystallized into a very solid interlocking network, and marble, which is metamorphosed limestone composed of recrystallized and interlocking calcite or dolomite crystals.