The Wonderful World of Exciting Rocks and Marvellous Minerals

Sunday, 28 April 2013

Tigers eye

This is a Tigers eye gemstone:

It is obviously called tigers eye because it has the pattern of one.

You can use it in jewellery like in this charm:

Saturday, 20 April 2013

Links

These are a few links to try out.

http://www.onegeology.org/eXtra/kid
http://oedb.org/articles/online-education-resources-geology-for-kids.htmls/home.html

http://www.discoveringfossils.co.uk/

Tuesday, 9 April 2013

fossils:

Jurasic period fossils ( 205 million years ago) and cretaceous period ( 145 million years ago), are shown on this map.

jurassic: amonites, bivales, cool airs.

cretaceous: amonites, belamites, ferns.

Thursday, 4 April 2013

You can get Rock Tumblers. They are round pots that spin around on a tumbler.
Rock Tumblers are basically gemstone makers. If you do the course for about a month it will work perfectly.
These are very fine makers so they will cost around £80.
You can get them from Ebay and Amazon.
You can put any stone into it but beware if you put a small stone in it, it may well disappear through the course. It will smoothen the edges and round them as well as making it into the shape of a gem and making it as soft as a feather.
Here are the instructions.

1. First find some nice stones from your garden. They could have a pattern or have cute, bright colours it is all up to you and what type of stone you want.

2.Next put your Rock tumbler somewhere, where you can't here it because it might be quite noisy.

3. Then open the lid of the tumbler and fill it up 3 quarters with the stones.

4. After that put a table spoon of 1st course grit and water in the tumbler and leave it going round for 2-3 weeks.

5. When it has been left for 2-3 weeks, take the lid of and see how they have done the grit should have gone and then put a table spoon of 2nd course grit and wait for another 2-3 weeks.The grits are different.

6. Now do the same but with t`he last grit, 3rd course grit.

7. Finally after another 2-3 weeks waiting for the 3rd course grit to work, the stone should be gemstone looking!

I hope you enjoy making your own gemstones for your collection!

Thursday, 7 March 2013

Types of rock

Some minerals are very rare and pretty — we call these gemstones and they are used to make jewellery. Can you name any gemstones?

What is the most famous gemstone? Is it a Crystall or a diamond? The answer does not only look beautiful in jewellery but they are also used in drills and saws for cutting.There are three main groups of rocks — these are sedimentary, igneous and metamorphic.

Trilobites!

Trilobites are one of the oldest animals that first lived on the Earth. They lived in the Cambrian Period and early Ordovician seas. A prolonged decline then set in before they finally became extinct in the Permian Period, about 250 million years ago.

Trilobites were arthropods—like crustaceans, spiders and insects. They are divided into three parts from head to tail (head, thorax and tail) and from side-to-side (the central axis and two lateral lobes). Hence their name 'trilobite'.