No, marble is not permeable.
In the article that follows, you’ll learn more about permeability, and why it is that marble is not considered permeable.
Is Marble Permeable? (EXPLAINED)
Introduction
When you think of marble, you might think of the toys that you had as a child.
Many people had a bag of marbles that they would play games with along with their friends. Marbles are going out of fashion as a childhood toy these days, but many people have been around long enough to remember when they were a big deal.
This might be the memory that you cling to when you look at what marble is and why it is important in your life, but that is far from the only thing that it should be recognized for.
What we want to look at today is marble as a rock, its characteristics, its permeability, and its uses in our world.
What Is Permeability?
Before we dive into the characteristics of marble itself, maybe it is a good idea to dwell on the concept of permeability is, to begin with.
When people say something is permeable, what do they mean?
The term can be boiled down to meaning the ability of gases or liquids to pass through a particular substance.
Take an everyday item like a t-shirt as an example.
A t-shirt is made from cotton and a few other materials in most cases.
Therefore, it is highly permeable as various gases and liquids can pass through it without any problem at all.
This fact is not surprising to anyone who has ever worn a t-shirt before, but the point is that the t-shirt has characteristics that make it easier for gases and liquids to pass through it.
What about various rocks?
If a rock does not permit gases and liquids to pass through it very effectively, then it is considered to have low or no permeability.
The exact opposite is true as well.
Rocks that have high permeability have the ability to have gases and liquids pass through them with ease.
So, how does marble stack up?
Marble is considered to be nonpermeable, meaning that it does not allow any liquids or gases to pass through it.
What Is Marble?
We have now touched on the fact that marble is nonpermeable, but what exactly is marble and why is it important?
Marble is an incredibly dense material that is nonpermeable and very pretty to look at. It has the perfect combination of characteristics to make it highly valuable for a lot of human applications.
Not only does it stand out for being very nice to look at, but the dense material is great for many constructive purposes as well.
The fact that it doesn’t allow liquids and gases to pass through it is ideal as well, since this means that it is very strong and able to withstand a lot of potential damage that could occur to it if it was subjected to the elements.
This is why marble turns up in a lot of places that you might not think about such as:
- iPhones
- Eyeglass frames
- Pharmaceutical drugs
- Cow feed (powdered marble is sometimes mixed in)
The list goes on and on. The point is that human beings have found many great uses for marble over the years, and they continue to look for ever more ways to extract value from this particular type of mineral.
We see that it can be used for many of the things that we need to have in our daily lives, and we also like to look at it from a beauty perspective, so why wouldn’t we use it?
Additional Interesting Facts About Marble
There are some other things about marble that you might want to know about.
For example, did you know that the ancient Egyptians loved to use marble in the construction of the pyramids? It is true!
They would cut large slabs of marble out and apply them to the pyramids for support purposes, but also because the marble is so nice to look at.
Some highly respected and honored ancient Egyptians were buried in tombs that were made, at least in part, from marble.
The belief was that the marble was so beautiful that it ought to be used to honor those who were pillars of their community and had provided many services to the people at that time.
Many of the great artistic sculptures that we have long admired are made from marble, but there is a key fact that people have gotten wrong about them for many years.
People long believed that the artists from centuries ago used white marble in their work because it was so beautiful to look at.
However, that is actually not the case.
They used marble of many different colors in the sculptures that they produced, but the colors have faded with time to leave only the white sculptures that many of us admire to this day.
It is a common misconception that the white look was what these ancient artists intended, but this has been proven wrong.
There are many interesting ways that marble plays a role in our lives even if we don’t notice it all the time.
It is important that we at least recognize that there are plenty of people who have benefited from the fact that marble is around, and we should try to recognize how it shows up in our own existence.
From those beautiful countertops that you just had to have to the works of art that you admire in a museum, marble is playing a big role in the world.
You’ll learn more here:
- Is Clay Permeable?
- Is Marble Permeable?
- Is Mudstone Permeable?
- Is Granite Permeable?
- Is Slate Permeable?
- Is Basalt Permeable?
- Is Coal Permeable?
- Is Sand Permeable?
- Is Gravel Permeable?
