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Heard a kid at the park say 'rocks are boring' and it got me thinking

I was sitting near a playground yesterday and this little girl told her dad that rocks were boring. He just said 'they're just rocks'. It made me a bit sad, honestly. I went home and pulled out a piece of the banded iron formation I found up in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. I looked at those red and gray stripes, knowing they're over two billion years old and tell the story of when oxygen first filled our air. That rock is a time capsule, not just a stone. It made me want to find a simple way to explain that wonder to a kid. What's the best rock or mineral you've used to get someone, young or old, interested in geology?

3 comments

3 Comments

hollym291mo ago

My uncle gave me a piece of fool's gold when I was seven. It was cool for a day, then it just sat on a shelf. Sometimes a rock is just a rock, and that's okay.

cooper.phoenix1mo ago

But did you ever try to scratch it or hit it with something to see if it was real? That's the fun part of fool's gold... testing it. The letdown is kind of the point.

riley_schmidt1mo ago

Ever try showing someone a piece of mica that peels apart like pages, @hollym29? That thin layer thing gets people every time.