Translations:Benutzer:Arian/Klett-Mini-Test/805/en

What gives clay its structure-forming quality are the clay minerals themselves; they crystallize hexagonally in gossamer-thin platelets with a surface extension of less than 0.002 mm. They cleave to such submicroscopic thinness of crystal faces that one can address these as the materialized idea of the "plane" — which, following the crystal-forming forces of the cosmos, develops the crystal lattice in surface-spanning fashion out of substance and delimits itself into the hexagonal form. The clay minerals owe the high dynamic of binding and releasing substances to their expandable interlayers — but above all to this very double-sidedness of their surfaces, which in serial arrangement extend as if into the boundless. The surface extension of 1 g of swellable *Montmorillonite*, for instance, amounts to 800 m². In the rhythmic swinging back and forth between crystalline form and the aqueous-substantial