I got a rock
May. 4th, 2007 10:25 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
astroaztecMy elder daughter's science class has been doing geology. Last week she asked to borrow a hammer to take to class. They had already performed the homework assignment of bringing a rock to class. Friday was ``break open the rocks'' day. I asked her whether the classroom had enough safety goggles. She said they did. I think her rock was the ubiquitous coastal shale.
Over the weekend I was sifting through another box from my dad's residence. I found the box labelled ``Rocks''. I pulled it aside to present to her. We opened it together -- a total surprise for her, but also for me.
My grandmother was a school teacher. One of the things that the state of Illinois did was to create mineralogical sampler containing one of each type of rock in the state. I remembered this box of rocks, but it had been half a lifetime since I had seen it or its contents. Most rocks are uninteresting. Some of them were powder placed in vials. One vial contained petroleum. The last rock is an obvious fossil of a fern. Each one is hand painted and numbered, and there is a set of index cards, one for each sample. My daughter was not impressed, but I kept looking.
One rock was clearly different from the rest. Instead of sitting nicely on the tissue paper in its little cardboard cubby it was a huge pile of debris. It had pushed on the sides of its cubby and deformed them well into the space originally occupied by its neighbors. It had also burned a hole through the inner layer of the cardboard box, and darkened the next layers of cardboard. A rock that grew.
I found the numbers on the neighboring rocks. It seemed most likely that the rock was pyrite, fools gold. Right, quick trip to wikipedia, sulfuric acid, of course. I remember the original lump of crystals, but it's nothing like that now. Most samples of pyrite are handled so much that the oxide layers get rubbed off, and nobody notices how much smaller it gets over decades. This is what happens if a lump of pyrite is left undisturbed for decades.
I took the rocks back to my daughter and presented her with the mystery and its solution. Her interest was piqued. Then I mentioned the rock next to the plant fossil, labelled animal fossil, for I had understood what it was. My grandmother, my father, and I had all pondered over that rock trying to find the fossil and never succeeding. I mentioned this to my daughter and she immediately told me the whole thing was the fossil. I said ``See how much smarter you are than any of the rest of us.''
This week we took the box of rocks in to her classroom. I'm waiting to hear the story when my daughter presents it.
Over the weekend I was sifting through another box from my dad's residence. I found the box labelled ``Rocks''. I pulled it aside to present to her. We opened it together -- a total surprise for her, but also for me.
My grandmother was a school teacher. One of the things that the state of Illinois did was to create mineralogical sampler containing one of each type of rock in the state. I remembered this box of rocks, but it had been half a lifetime since I had seen it or its contents. Most rocks are uninteresting. Some of them were powder placed in vials. One vial contained petroleum. The last rock is an obvious fossil of a fern. Each one is hand painted and numbered, and there is a set of index cards, one for each sample. My daughter was not impressed, but I kept looking.
One rock was clearly different from the rest. Instead of sitting nicely on the tissue paper in its little cardboard cubby it was a huge pile of debris. It had pushed on the sides of its cubby and deformed them well into the space originally occupied by its neighbors. It had also burned a hole through the inner layer of the cardboard box, and darkened the next layers of cardboard. A rock that grew.
I found the numbers on the neighboring rocks. It seemed most likely that the rock was pyrite, fools gold. Right, quick trip to wikipedia, sulfuric acid, of course. I remember the original lump of crystals, but it's nothing like that now. Most samples of pyrite are handled so much that the oxide layers get rubbed off, and nobody notices how much smaller it gets over decades. This is what happens if a lump of pyrite is left undisturbed for decades.
I took the rocks back to my daughter and presented her with the mystery and its solution. Her interest was piqued. Then I mentioned the rock next to the plant fossil, labelled animal fossil, for I had understood what it was. My grandmother, my father, and I had all pondered over that rock trying to find the fossil and never succeeding. I mentioned this to my daughter and she immediately told me the whole thing was the fossil. I said ``See how much smarter you are than any of the rest of us.''
This week we took the box of rocks in to her classroom. I'm waiting to hear the story when my daughter presents it.
