The term clay has no single and universally accepted definition. Clays occur as rock-forming materials and in soils, and may constitute an entire member of a rock formation or amount to no more than a small fraction filling cracks or acting as a cement between larger particles. Clays are characterized primarily by their small particle size, which usually is taken as less than 2 μm. Coarse, medium, and fine clays have size ranges about 2–0.5, 0.5–0.2, and below 0.2 μm, respectively. The effective size is determined by the rate of settling in water or by direct electron-microscope measurements. On this basis, any material ground to less than 2-μm particle size becomes a clay.
In ceramic practice, emphasis is placed also on the plastic properties developed when clays are suitably crushed and mixed with water. Most, but not all, clays are composed of platy particles, (Fig. 1) with a large ratio of surface area to mass (ranging from about 10 m2/g to several hundred m2/g). Water absorbed on...
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Cross references
Crystallography: Morphological; Electron Microscopy (Transmission); Fire Clays; Isomorphism; Mica Group; Mineral Industries; Order—Disorder; Phyllosilicates; Polysomatism; Portland Cement Mineralogy; Soil Mineralogy; Rock-Forming Minerals
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Brindley, G.W. (1981). Clays, clay minerals . In: Mineralogy. Encyclopedia of Earth Science. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/0-387-30720-6_23
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