Question: What is so fascinating in rocks?

Asked by anna to Jesse, Anna, Daniel, Denise, Rehemat on 17 Jun 2014. This question was also asked by popamatei.

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  1. Photo: Jesse DavenportJesse Davenport
    answered on 17 Jun 2014:

    Hi anna, that’s a great question! There are many fascinating things about rocks! I like that many of the rocks I have found are in cool places, like Iceland, Montana, Utah or Canada. I also love that I can take just one rock and do geochemical and petrologic analyses on it and piece together a story about how it and the rocks and region around formed throughout millions or even billions of years. That’s pretty amazing to me, that one little rock that you pick up while you are hiking and say “Hey, this is a pretty neat rock,” can hold all that information!

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  2. Photo: Anna RabittiAnna Rabitti
    answered on 24 Jun 2014:

    Hi Anna (and popamatei)!
    don’t know exactly what it is, maybe it is because mountains are just big big rocks, and mountains are so breathtaking! but also, rocks can have so many different shapes and colours and patterns, I found this very fascinating. When I was a kid a was very intrigued by geodes (and actually I am still!): outside they look like average stones, but what a treasure inside…

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  3. Photo: Daniel Lao DavilaDaniel Lao Davila
    answered on 24 Jun 2014:

    Hi Anna and Popamatei:
    Rocks are like books that you can read and learn about the history and processes of the Earth. And similar to books, if you read them more than once, you will most likely learn something new. Rocks are the witnesses of all the geologic processes. For example, we can look at rocks high up in the Alps and find marine fossils there. How can they be high in the mountains if there is no ocean? Well, the rock is telling us that they were formed in the ocean and that tectonic processes brought those rocks to their present location. We can look at places where there is coal, and deduce that there was a swamp at the time when the rock formed. We can look at a locality that contains shocked quartz (a deformed crystal of quartz) and along with other evidence suggest that a meteorite hit that area. We can look at the amounts of elements in isotopes of rocks to determine the ages of rocks. We can study the gases in ice cores deep within Antarctica to determine how different was climate when the gas was trapped in the ice compared to the climate today.
    There are so many things that we can learn from rocks and that is what makes the so fascinating!

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  4. Photo: Denise De GaetanoDenise De Gaetano
    answered on 25 Jun 2014:

    Hi Anna and Popamatei,

    I see rocks as tiny treasures full of history. Although a diamond can seem to be more precious than a standard a more common rock, they both have value inside them. Of course, the more colourful ones, are always more interesting! 🙂

    Do you find rocks interesting?

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Comments

  1. Photo: RehematRehemat
    commented on 18 Jun 2014:

    Take a look on my profile for a picture of a mineral called plagioclase in a thin sectioned igneous rock called a basalt! Thin sections are slices of rock about 10 micrometres thick.

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