I collect elephants, I’d take pictures of some of the ones that made it across the country but… I just turned my light off and got into bed and I’m not getting back out. But anyway I have a little stone box with two elephants carved into to the top of it.
The box is made out of soapstone, a metamorphic rock. I think it’s one of my favorite rocks. It’s most predominante elements are magnesium and iron so you’d think it would be really hard, but it’s not at all. On the hardness scale (which goes from 1 - 10, 1 generally being classified or compared to talc and 10 being compared to a diamond or gold.) I believe it is around a 3. When you touch it… even non polished soapstone even feels really really soft, like soap! Sort of like talc, only talc has a greasy feel almost.
It can also abosorb a lot of heat, so it is used around fireplaces a lot and if you go to a pot shop they’ll likely have soapstone pipes.
Actually talc and soapstone commonly form together. In the Mid-Atlantic region there were/are talc-rich soapstone deposits which in some areas got up to be about 90% talc forming in really thin layers. And the petrofabrics of the soapstone were really similar to srrounding schist which would suggest the soapstone formed prior to the Taconic metamorphic event of the area. In the particular area that I’m talking about the Mg of the rock was around 50-80% where the Fe was…20-50% (although it might be 25 - 50, or 20 - 55 %…I don’t remember)
Ah, what the hell, I was going to do a post on cute elephants and it went all geology on me. Pfft, whatever, moral of the post - elephants are awesome and are probably plotting to take over the world.
