How do you get slate?

Answer 1

The easiest way to identify slate is to break a sample. Slate will cleave very easily in one direction and form large sheets. It can often be popped off in thin layers with a chisel or a screwdriver. Shale is a similar stone, but will tend to break somewhat irregularly with ripples that cross between layers and it will be more fragile and prone to crumbling. Both have no significant grain to them, unlike other stones that break in sheets like sandstone. If you see mica or other minerals spread homogenously throughout the stone then it's not slate. Slate can be a variety of colors, most common a blueish gray, but also be greenish gray, rust brown, tan, or a purpley-brown. It may have impurities that leave colored spatters within it. Slate is very soft, and can readily be scored and polished with another stone. If mixed with a little water, the resulting slate dust will turn into clay, the sediment from which shale and slate are made.

Answer 2

If you mean in general, Slate is a regionally-metamorphosed mudstone; i.e, altered by pressure at low temperature. If also heated sufficiently it becomes Schist.

In the UK, the main sources are North-West Wales (especially around the town of Blaenau Ffestiniog), parts of the Lake District and parts of Scotland. I don't know about US sources but I am sure they exist (in, e.g. in parts of the Appalachians?)

Answer 3

In both cases the answer is quarrying or mining. Gravel tends to occur in pits, while slate tends to occur in shafts or veins. They are mined by human and machine labor.

Answer 4

Slate is formed when clay is squashed under extreme temperature and pressure under the Earth. You can't make it at home!

Answer 5

the ground