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Cycles
Rock Cycles

Even rocks have a cycle. Rocks are continually circulating in the mantle just below the crust of the earth. They are sometimes thrust up into the crust due to convection currents. Imagine really thick jam slowly cooking in a big pot on a stove. The jam is thick, and when it reaches a high temperature, convection currents circulate through it. Occasionally big bubbles of steam erupt from the jam and splash onto the top of the stove. This is how rocks get thrust up onto the top of the crust from the boiling mantle below. Rocks can also reach the surface when they are spit out by volcanoes.

Once on the surface of the earth, rocks cool down. Over time, they are broken up or worn down by weather, and the fragments are carried back to the ocean by way of wind, rain, and the flow of rivers and streams. All of these small pieces of rock collect as sediment at the bottom of seas and oceans. The sediment slowly solidifies into rock and is sometimes drawn back down in to the mantle at subduction zones or reaches the surface again as sea levels change or plates collide.

Sample some of the following activities to learn more about rocks and their cycles.


Places To Go | People To See | Things To Do | Teacher Resources | Bibliography

Places To Go

The following are places to go (some real and some virtual) to find out about rocks and their cycles.

Discover How Rocks are Formed
Go to the center of the earth to discover how sedimentary, metamorphic and igneous rocks are formed.

Rock CollectingGrand Canyon Explorer
Virtually visit the Grand Canyon. The layer's of the earth's crust are plainly visible there.

Devils Tower National Monument
Visit Devil's Tower in Wyoming. The tower is a big hunk of igneous rock. It was formed by magma solidifying in a vertical tube that was once the heart of a volcano.

Ayers Rock
Visit famous Ayers Rock in Australia. It is a sacred place to the aboriginal people, and it is made of limestone which is a sedimentary rock.

Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and Museum
Visit the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. (heh heh heh)

Mount Rushmore
Visit Mount Rushmore. It's made from granite which is igneous rock.

Washington Monument
Climb to the top of the Washington Monument. The exterior is made of white marble which is a metamorphic rock. Marble is formed when limestone is put under extreme pressure and heat. The interior of the monument is granite which is an igneous rock.

Great Pyramid of Khufu
Visit the Great Pyramid in Egypt. It's made from limestone which is a sedimentary rock.

Easter Island
Stroll along the beaches of Easter Island. Those big, mysterious statues are made of volcanic tuff which is an igneous rock.

Great Sphinx
Visit the Great Sphinx in Egypt. It's made from limestone which is a sedimentary rock.

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People To See

Geologist Ask a Geologist
Geologists are rock experts. Ask them anything.

James Hutton
Meet James Hutton. He was from Scotland. He is considered to be the father of modern geology.

William Steig
Get to know Sylvester the donkey. By a set of strange circumstances, he turned into a rock. (It may have been an igneous rock). Read all about his adventures in William Steig's Sylvester and the Magic Pebble which won a Caldecott Medal in 1970.

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Things To Do

SoilSoil Biological Communities
Discover the geological processes and cycles necessary to make dirt. It's important to understand soil processes and how they contribute to the health of our planet. It takes a long time to make good dirt. Five tons of topsoil spread over an acre is only as thick as a dime. The basic ingredients of soil are decaying plants and animals (organic matter) and fragments of rock. The tiny gaps between the decaying material are filled with air, water, bacteria, fungi, and tiny plants. Soil is home to many kinds of creatures. More animals live in soil than in any other environment on earth.

Sands of the World
Learn all about sand.

Food in Children's Literature and "Stone Soup"
Make some stone soup.

RockThe Rock Cycle
Think about the differences between a rock and a mineral. Then view photos of minerals at The Mineral Gallery (http://mineral.galleries.com/) and The Mineral and Gemstone Kingdom (http://www.minerals.net/) and photos of rocks at Igneous Rocks (http://www.env.duke.edu/eos/geo41/rks.htm).

The Rock Cycle
Check out this diagram of the rock cycle to understand how rocks form.

What's the Hardness of Your Mineral
Testing the hardness of a mineral can help you identify what it is. See how to use your fingernail, a penny, a nail, or a piece of glass to check the hardness of minerals. You can also identify minerals by doing a streak test or by doing a cleavage test or acid test. Learn more about the hardness of minerals and about the Mohs scale where talc is rated as a 1 and diamond is a 10.

Rock Group Definitions
View a photo of each kind of rock.

Sedimentary RockSedimentary Rock
Sediment is turned into sedimentary rock by two processes. First, the particles are compressed and squeezed together. This makes the particles interlock tightly. Then, water seeping through the sediment deposits tiny crystals of mineral between the particles which cements them together to form a solid mass. Learn more about these processes.

Metamorphic Rock Pancakes
A metamorphic rock is formed when a previously existing rock has been changed by great heat or great pressure. Use the recipe from this website and make metamorphic rock pancakes.

MineralsMineral Identification
All the different rocks in the world are made up of minerals. A mineral is simply a chemical that forms naturally in the earth. There are several thousand different kinds of minerals--but only about 30 of them are very common. Some rocks contain just one kind of mineral, and other rocks contain many kinds of minerals. It all depends on how the rock was formed.

Utah State Library
Check out Utah's official state rock.

Coal
Learn more about Utah's official rock.

Desert Environment & Geology : Rocks, Gems & Minerals
Learn about the rocks and minerals that are in the Great Basin Desert which is in part of Utah. Utah has a lot of topaz.

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Teacher Resources

Hotlists from UEN provide internet sites to visit to find out more about specific topics--in this case, the rock cycle! (You can learn how to use this WWW Activities tool created by UEN for Utah educators).

Virtual Field Trips are teacher and student-created tours of curricular topics. (You can learn how to use this UEN Virtual Field Trip tool created by UEN for Utah educators).

Lesson Plan/Webquests/

Activities


Bibliography

  • Burton, Jane. The Nature and Science of Rocks. Milwaukee, WI : Gareth Stevens Pub., 1998.
  • Challoner, Jack. Rocks and Minerals. Milwaukee, WI : Gareth Stevens, 1999.
  • Curtis, Neil.. Rocks and Minerals. New York : Oxford University Press, 1998.
  • Kittinger, Jo S. A Look at Rocks : From Coal to Kimberlite. New York : Franklin Watts, c1997.
  • Morris, Neil. Rocks and Minerals. New York, N.Y. : Crabtree Pub. Co., c1998.
  • Snedden, Robert. Rocks and Soils. Austin, Tex. : Raintree Steck-Vaughn, 1998.
  • Staedter, Tracy. Rocks and Minerals. Pleasantville, N.Y. : Reader's Digest Children's Books, c1999.
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