Quick Clay
Quick clay, also known as Leda Clay in Canada, is a unique form of highly sensitive clay, with the tendency to change from a relatively stiff condition to a liquid mass when it is disturbed. Undisturbed quick clay resembles a water-saturated gel. When a block of clay is held in the hand and struck, however, it instantly turns into a flowing ooze, a process known as spontaneous liquefaction. Quick clay behaves this way because, although it is solid, it has a very high water content, up to 80%. The clay retains a solid structure despite the high water content, because surface tension holds water-coated flakes of clay together in a delicate structure. When the structure is broken by a shock, it reverts to a fluid state.
Quick clay is only found in the northern countries such as Russia, Canada, Alaska in the U.S., Norway, Sweden, and Finland, which were glaciated during the Pleistocene epoch.
Quick clay has been the underlying cause of many deadly landslides. In Canada alone, it has been associated with more than 250 mapped landslides. Some of these are ancient, and may have been triggered by earthquakes.
Read more about this topic: Soil Liquefaction
Famous quotes containing the words quick and/or clay:
“Men of genius are not quick judges of character. Deep thinking and high imagining blunt that trivial instinct by which you and I size people up.”
—Max Beerbohm (1872–1956)
“Protoplasm, simple or nucleated, is the formal basis of all life. It is the clay of the potter: which, bake it and paint it as he will, remains clay, separated by artifice, and not by nature from the commonest brick or sun-dried clod.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895)