Rocks & Minerals | Lafayette Science Museum

Rocks and Minerals

Rock and mineral samples from the UL Geology Museum collection are displayed according to type to demonstrate the everyday importance of geology and to encourage interest in the field. Geology is an earth science focused on the study of rocks, minerals, fossils, and natural resources and the processes by which they change over time. Encourage students to compare and consider differences in the rocks and minerals on display. How and where were they formed? What elements combine to give rocks their color, texture, shape, and structure? Notice that different combinations of minerals grouped together in the same case can produce very different looking substances.

Students will learn

Geology is the study of the solid Earth, the rocks of which it is composed, and the processes by which they change over time.
Minerals are the building blocks of the rocks that form the Earth.
The rock cycle is a model of the geological processes that make and recycle rocks.
Most of the rocks on Earth today are composed of the same materials that were present from the time our planet formed. These rocks have simply been recycled, changing from one type of rock to another over billions of years.

Explore the Rock Cycle Touch Table

Coming in Fall 2017, the Rock Cycle Touch Table will encourage students to learn about the rock cycle, the geological processes that make and recycle rocks. See and feel the differences between the main types of rock – igneous, metamorphic, and sedimentary. Learn how rocks are formed in different ways and changed into other types of rocks over and over again through the natural processes of weathering and erosion, compaction and cementation, heat and pressure, plate tectonics, and melting and cooling.
Most rocks on Earth began as igneous rocks formed from magma and lava as it cooled and solidified. Exposed at the surface, time and weather break the rock into smaller and smaller pieces called sediment. Wind and water carry and deposit sediment, which is then buried and cemented together to form sedimentary rock. When any rock is subjected to heat and pressure underground, it is transformed into metamorphic rock. Under enough pressure, friction, and heat below the Earth’s surface, rocks melt and become magma. As magma cools and solidifies, it becomes igneous rock and the process begins again.