I was watching a program about the Giants Causeway in Ireland. I find it hard to believe that
this was caused by volcanic activity as all of the stones are almost identical. Beleive it or not i dont believe the myth about the giant either.
I just wondered if anyone had any other interesting ideas on how they were formed??
It's absolutely natural and is called columnar jointing. It appears all over the world where volcanic rock has been uniformly cooled. You can
re-create the effect by mixing cornflour and water in equal proportion and leaving it to dry out - you will be left with mostly perfectly hexagonal
fissures.
Here is an example of columnar jointing at the Grand Canyon -
Interesting to note that columnar jointing is responsible for the 'fork-scraped' appearance of the 'Devil's Tower' in Wyoming, used in Close
Encounters of the Third Kind.