General Meeting – Thursday, March 9th
Topic: Rock & Mineral Identification with Roger Danneman, our club Field Trip Guide
Identifying rocks and minerals found in Washington. This will also be a good opportunity to get your questions answered on identifying rocks and minerals in general.
Mineral identification is the first step in understanding the formation of a rock and its history. You learn to “read the rock” to understand Earth’s history at any given location where the rock is found in an outcrop. This allows geologists and us to understand what the environment was like at the moment the rock formed. Was there a volcano erupting or does the rock tell us that it formed deep inside a magma chamber? Was the rock formed by the burial of an ancient beach? Was the rock formed by compressive forces deep within the crust as continents collided and new mountains were forming? The clues to these widely different environments of formation are “written in the rock.” The first step in understanding the rock’s history is being able to identify, characterize and quantify the minerals that compose the rock. Rocks are fascinating to a geologist because every rock has a story to tell. As we read the rock from one location to the next, it helps us piece together the fascinating story of the Earth.
Show ‘n Tell: Bring something you want to be identified.