Quarry

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A quarry is a type of open-pit mine from which rock or minerals are extracted. Quarries are generally used for extracting building materials, such as dimension stone. Quarries are usually shallower than other types of open-pit mines.

A quarry is often mistaken for other types of open-pit or open-cast mines such as borrow or gravel pits.

Types of rock extracted from quarries include:

• Cinder
• China Clay
• Coquina
• Construction aggregate
• Granite
• Gritstone
• Gypsum a mineral
• Limestone
• Marble
• Sandstone
• Slate

Quarries in level areas often have special engineering problems for drainage. The Coquina Quarry is excavated to more than sixty feet (18 meters) below sea level. To reduce surface leakage a moat, lined with clay, was constructed around the entire quarry. Ground water that seeps into the pit is pumped up into the moat.

Many quarries fill with water to become ponds or small lakes after abandonment for mining purposes. Others have become landfills.

Construction aggregate quarry near Adelaide, South Australia	Coquina Quarry sixty feet below sea level, Conway, South Carolina	A dimension stone quarry.	A small cinder quarry.
An abandoned limestone quarry.	Former quarry in Kraków, Poland	Portland Stone quarry on the Isle of Portland, England.	Basalt quarry on the Holyoke Range of Massachusetts.

[edit] See also

• Clay pit
• Collecting fossils
• Gravel pit
• Kouloura
• List of minerals
• List of rock types
• List of stones
• Mountaintop removal mining

[edit] External links

• See How Rock Is Quarried

v • d • e Mining techniques Surface Open-pit · Quarrying · Strip · Placer · Mountaintop removal Sub-surface Drift · Slope · Shaft · Hard rock · Borehole · Room and pillar · Longwall · Retreat

In the Middle Ages the Arena di Verona was used as a quarry for other buildings.

Quarrying is taking rock from the ground or hills,Either by digging with machines or by breaking up the rock with explosives. Limestone rock is used in the manufacture of iron and steel, in making agricultural land more fertile by reducing acidity and it is used more than any other stone in motorways,roads and ,in the UK and Europe, as a large fraction of all concrete.Technologicaly It will play a big part in future efforts to reduce sulphur emissions from industry and will very likely play some role in controlling how an where carbon dioxide is stored(if it ever is). Disadvantages are that the quarrying is very noisy with lots of dust and large numbers of heavy lorries travelling constantly through the country on roads never built for such traffic and through viilages and small rural towns.In addition the look of the country can be spoiled when quite large hills are quarried away.