A Project Guide to Rocks and Minerals (Earth Science Projects for Kids)

Claire O'Neal

ISBN 10: 1584158662 ISBN 13: 9781584158660

Publisher: Mitchell Lane Publishers, 2010

Synopsis

Rocks and minerals shape our world. Nature uses rocks and minerals to create the landscape around us. People also depend on these important resources to make the buildings in which we work and play, the roads on which we drive, and even products such as jewelry, electronics, and medicines. Learn more about rocks and minerals with these fifteen simple science experiments you can do yourself. You ll think like a geologist as you start your own rock collection, learn about earth processes, explore the properties of minerals, and even grow your own crystals. Calling all rock hounds!

About this title

About the Author

As a child, Claire O Neal enjoyed collecting rocks and minerals with her brother. Her favorite specimen was a big purple fluorite octahedron she collected from a mine in southern Illinois. Though she grew up to study English, biology, and chemistry at college, she secretly loved rocks so much that she married a geologist. Today, she is a versatile author, having published a dozen books with Mitchell Lane in addition to professional scientific papers. She lives in Delaware with her husband, two young sons, and a fat black cat.

Reviews

This colorful book from the Earth Science Projects for Kids series presents basic information about rocks and minerals within suggested projects, encouraging readers to learn about topics such as the formation, layering, and weathering of rocks and their density, porosity, and specific gravity. Projects include using heat and pressure to form “crayonite” from crayon shavings, creating a layered Jell-O dish that mimics sedimentary rock, making 3-D paper models of geometric crystal shapes, and growing crystals in a jar or, geode-like, inside an egg shell. Although the projects seem well designed and practical, the book’s intended audience is puzzling. Its polysyllabic vocabulary seems better suited to high-school than elementary-school readers, but the activities frequently call for “an adult’s help,” and the photos occasionally show a young child. And indeed, while many of the activities could be done by young children with help from adults, they would also make good projects for older students. A good supplemental source of science projects. Grades 4-7. --Carolyn Phelan

Edition details

• Publisher: Mitchell Lane Publishers
• Publication date: 2010
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1584158662
• ISBN 13: 9781584158660
• Binding: Library Binding
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 48