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    Explore Rocks and Minerals!: 20 Great Projects, Activities, Experiements
    Explore Rocks and Minerals!: 20 Great Projects, Activities, Experiements
    Explore Rocks and Minerals!: 20 Great Projects, Activities, Experiements
    Ebook168 pages1 hour

    Explore Rocks and Minerals!: 20 Great Projects, Activities, Experiements

    By Cynthia Light Brown, Nick Brown and Bryan Stone

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    About this ebook

    Explore Rocks and Minerals! offers kids ages 6–9 a fascinating introduction to geology. It investigates the geological forces that create and transform rocks, outlining the life cycle of igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic rocks, and what they can tell us about the earth. It also explores fossils, and how they come to exist and are discovered.

    Explore Rocks and Minerals! includes 20 hands-on activities to bring learning to life. Kids create their own crystals, sculpt edible models of the planet, and bake volcanic meringue cookies. These easy-to- follow activities require minimal adult supervision and use common household products. By combining an interactive component with jokes, fun facts, and cartoons, Explore Rocks and Minerals! provides a fun, accessible introduction to geology.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherNomad Press
    Release dateJan 7, 2014
    ISBN9781619300989
    Explore Rocks and Minerals!: 20 Great Projects, Activities, Experiements

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      Book preview

      Explore Rocks and Minerals! - Cynthia Light Brown

      ROCKS ARE EVERYWHERE

      Did you know that ROCKS and MINERALS are part of your life, every second of every minute of every day? Sound surprising?

      Here are some ways and places to find rocks and minerals:

      Electricity runs through copper and aluminum wires

      Cars use steel, which is made from iron

      Houses use nails, bricks, and plaster, which all come from rocks

      Salt for seasoning food is a mineral

      Plants grow in soil, which forms from rocks

      Your bones are made mostly of a mineral called apatite

      Earth itself is one big ball of rocks

      You stand on rocks, you consume rocks, and your home is built from rocks and powered by rocks. You even have rocks in the form of minerals inside you!

      Those are some pretty good reasons to learn more about rocks and minerals. But the best reason of all is that rocks and minerals are fascinating. Rocks can slowly form over millions and millions of years, or be blasted from a volcano in an instant.

      Rocks are like puzzles that can tell us about the earth’s history. Right where you’re standing, there may have once been an ocean. Maybe there was a volcano, or even a huge mountain chain as big as the HIMALAYAS. The rocks can give you clues about the past.

      In this book, you’ll learn all about minerals. You’ll discover the different types of rocks and fossils, and how they form. You’ll also learn more about the forces at work on our home planet, Earth. You’ll get to explore all of these ideas with fun projects and activities.

      Rocks and minerals are all around you, and each one has a story to tell. So get ready to rock and learn!

      ROCKS: solid natural substances that are made up of minerals.

      MINERALS: naturally occurring solids that almost always have a crystalline structure. Rocks are made of minerals.

      HIMALAYAS: a mountain chain between India and Tibet. It contains the world’s highest mountain, Mount Everest, which is 29,029 feet (8,848 meters) above sea level.

      THE EARTH

      You touch it every day. You’ve spent your entire life on it. It’s your home. We all live on a giant ball called planet Earth. But we only see what’s on the very outside of the earth. The rest—the inside of the ball—is quite different. Even the outside shell of the earth where we live behaves differently than you might imagine!

      No one has traveled to the center of the earth, but we know some things about what’s inside. We know that there are layers that have different kinds of rocks. The three major layers are the CRUST on the outside, the MANTLE in the middle, and the CORE at the center. These layers probably formed as the earth itself was forming.

      We also know that it gets hotter towards the center, and there is a lot more PRESSURE. This makes sense because pressure increases when there is a greater force pushing on something.

      If you lie down on the floor and two friends lie on top of you, you will feel pressure from their weight. You will also feel hotter after a little bit, because pressure makes temperatures increase. The same is true for rocks closer to the center of the earth. They feel a LOT more pressure because of the weight of the rocks on them. They also have higher temperatures because of that pressure.

      If you could travel to the center of the earth, what would you see?

      CRUST: the thin, hard, outer layer of the earth.

      MANTLE: the middle layer of the earth. Some areas of the mantle have melted rocks. It is soft enough that the rocks flow very slowly.

      CORE: the center layer of the earth composed of iron and nickel. It has two parts: a solid inner core, and a liquid outer core.

      PRESSURE: the force applied to something.

      CONTINENTAL CRUST: the part of the earth’s crust that forms the continents.

      OCEANIC CRUST: the earth’s crust under the oceans.

      START AT THE CRUST

      In your imaginary trip, you would start at the crust, which is the thin, hard outer layer of the earth. If you were standing on a continent, you would have to tunnel through crust anywhere from 16 to 56 miles thick (25 to 90 kilometers). That may sound like a lot, but compared to the rest of the earth, it isn’t.

      The rocks would look a lot like those on the surface. However, you might feel a bit warm, because they’re about twice as hot as boiling water.

      If you traveled to the center of the earth as fast as a car on the highway—55 miles per hour (89 kilometers per hour)—here’s how long it would take to go through the layers:

      Crust One hour

      Mantle 32 more hours, or 33 hours total

      Core 38 more hours, or 71 hours total

      What’s in Our Basement?

      Very old rocks! The earth’s CONTINENTAL CRUST has a basement, just like many houses do. The continents have very old rocks at their center, and geologists call them basement rocks. In most places, these old rocks are covered by younger rocks, but in some places they’re exposed on the surface. The oldest rock found is over four billion years old! The crust under the oceans is about 20 times younger—less than 200 million years old. OCEANIC CRUST keeps getting recycled because of something called plate tectonics. You’ll learn more about plate tectonics later in this chapter.

      MANTLE IN THE MIDDLE

      At the base of the crust, things would start to change. Better make sure you have some heat protection! The mantle is much hotter than the crust—about 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit (1,600 degrees Celsius) or more.

      The rocks would start to look darker and they would be heavier. But they would also

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