Travel deep inside the Earth to discover how rocks and minerals are formed, to learn about the three types of rock, and to understand how rocks change over time through weathering and erosion.
Learning Objectives
Students will know how the earth is structured. There are three major layers to the earth, the crust, mantle, and core.
The crust is the outermost layer and is composed of rock. It includes the ocean floor and mountains and their outcroppings.
Start a rock and mineral collection: Have students bring in rocks and minerals that they have found as a class, test their properties and rank them on the Mohs' scale. Discuss whether they are igneous, metamorphic, or sedimentary and how this is determined. (Mohs’ Hardness Scale: 1-Talc, 2-Gypsum, 3-Calcite, 4-Fluorite, 5-Apatite, 6-Orthocla...