My neighbor's kid asked if all the rocks in our yard came from a volcano, and it made me realize how many people think geology is just about lava.

I explained that our local gravel is mostly sedimentary, formed from an ancient riverbed over millions of years, and his mind was totally blown.

3 comments

3 Comments

leer124d ago

But what if the lava story is the better one to get people hooked? Like, sure @grant.lee is right about the exact depth, but telling a kid a rock was once liquid fire is way cooler than talking about sediment pressure. Sometimes the simple, epic story is the best tool to spark that first bit of interest.

val_sullivan429d ago

That part about the kid's mind being blown is so real. My friend's niece saw a chunk of granite and called it a boring gray rock. He took her to a spot where you could see the different colored crystals, told her it was like a puzzle that cooled a mile underground. She spent the whole afternoon looking for the pink bits. It's wild how just pointing out the story in a stone changes everything.

grant.lee29d ago

Granite doesn't actually cool a full mile underground. That's way too deep. The big crystals form in magma chambers much closer to the surface, maybe just a few thousand feet down. The real story is still cool though, it's about slow cooling giving those crystals time to grow big.