Chalk. Chalk is a soft, white, porous, sedimentary carbonate rock.
   It is a form of limestone composed of the mineral calcite and originally formed deep under the sea by the compression of microscopic plankton that had settled to the sea floor. Chalk is common throughout Western Europe, where deposits underlie parts of France, and steep cliffs are often seen where they meet the sea in places such as the Dover cliffs on the Kent coast of the English Channel.
   Chalk is mined for use in industry, such as for quicklime, bricks and builder's putty, and in agriculture, for raising pH in soils with high acidity. It is also used for blackboard chalk for writing and drawing on various types of surfaces, although these can also be manufactured from other carbonate-based minerals, or gypsum.
   Nitzana Chalk curves situated at Western Negev, Israel, are chalk deposits formed in the Mesozoic era's Tethys Ocean Open chalk pit, Seale, Surrey, UK Chalk is a fine-textured, earthy type of limestone distinguished by its light colour, softness, and high porosity. It is composed mostly of tiny fragments of the calcite shells or skeletons of plankton, such as foraminifera or coccolithophores.
   These fragments mostly take the form of calcite plates ranging from 0.5 to 4 microns in size, though about 10% to 25% of a typical chalk is composed of fragments that are 10 to 100 microns in size. The larger fragments in
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