Hello and welcome to Science Thursday! Over the next four weeks, Miss Christa and Miss Rachel would like to invite you to join them as they bake rocks. Yes, you read that correctly. We're going to begin learning about geology - about different kinds of rocks and how they form - through baking.
In the book "A Rock is Lively", Dianna Hutts Aston writes "All rocks are made of a mix of ingredients called minerals. Just as a batter of flour, butter, and sugar makes a cookie, a batter of minerals makes a rock. The recipe for a rock might include minerals like aluminum, copper, diamond, fluorite, gold, gypsum, lead, nickel, platinum, quartz, silver, sulfur, tin, topaz and turquoise."
Minerals are the ingredients that come together to make rocks. Minerals are grouped together and given names based on their unique chemical compositions and special crystalline structures. Some examples of minerals include quartz, pyrite, and hematite. You can see pictures of these minerals at the end of the post below.
Because rocks are made of one or more minerals (just like cookies are made from one or more ingredients), rocks are grouped together and given names based on how they are formed. The three main types of rocks that we'll be looking at in the coming weeks are sedimentary, metamorphic, and igneous rocks. Some examples of these rocks that you can see here in Connecticut are brownstone (a sedimentary rock), gneiss (a metamorphic rock), and basalt (an igneous rock). You can see pictures of these rocks at the end of the post below.
In today's activity, we will be combining some "minerals" from our pantry (flour, sugar, chocolate chips, butter, almonds, corn chips, and oats) and using the heat of the earth (our ovens) to bake them into delicious rock cookies. Follow the steps in the photographs below to make some rock cookies at your house!