Final answer:
A story of the rock cycle starting as basalt, which breaks down into sandstone, metamorphoses into quartzite, and with further tectonic activity, partially melts and forms granite. Each stage involves processes like cooling, weathering, deposition, heat, and pressure, illustrating the dynamic earth system.
Step-by-step explanation:
Story of a Rock Cycle
Once upon a time, deep underneath the Earth's surface, heat and pressure melted rocks to form magma. When the magma erupted onto the surface through a volcanic vent, it cooled rapidly to become basalt, an extrusive igneous rock. Over millions of years, this basalt experienced intense weathering and erosion, breaking down into small particles that were transported by rivers and deposited along a shoreline, gradually layering to form sandstone, a type of clastic sedimentary rock.
In due course, the Earth's plates shifted, causing the sandstone to be buried beneath other layers. Combined with the heat from the Earth's interior and immense pressure from the overlying layers, the sandstone underwent metamorphosis and recrystallized to form quartzite, a hard metamorphic rock. As the tectonic plates continued their eternal dance, more time passed, and parts of the quartzite along with other rock were subducted into the mantle undergoing partial melting. This contributed to the generation of new magma, which, as it slowly cooled beneath the surface, crystallized into a coarse textured, intrusive igneous rock called granite.
The cycle could begin anew if the granite reaches the surface through uplift and gets exposed to weathering and erosion, restarting the rock's adventurous journey through the rock cycle.