Stones


 * What are stones?

**Rock or a piece of rock shaped or finished for a particular purpose, especially:  **How many kinds of stone do you know?
 * a.** A piece of rock that is used in construction: a coping stone; a paving stone. **b.** A gravestone or tombstone.**c.** A grindstone, millstone, or whetstone.**d.** A milestone or boundary.

**The kinds of stones that you can carve are Soapstone, Alabaster, Limestone, Marble, Granite.  **What characteristics do stones have?

****Why are stones used in construction? **

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Stones are materials commonly used in ancient constructions of monumental architecture. The different reasons for this were that stones were durable and easy to adapt to sculptural treatment, so when the Greeks used stones to build their constructions, they expected these to last along the years. There are also some difficulties when we talk about the use of stones. For example they're hard to transport and cut, they're weak when they're in tension, they're expenssive and also, they're unstable when they have loads pushing at angles.

There are different kinds of work of stones like rubble and ashlar masonry. The first one is the cheapest stonework and it consists in breaking any kind of stone and bounding them in mortar. The second one is the strongest stonework and this was the one used for the monumental constructions.

Even though nowadays stones have been replaced by other cheaper and easier to use materials for constructions, they're still used in the surfaces of the constructions beacuse of their expressive qualities, and people like to use it in its natural state .media type="file" key="stones.wav"