Rock on!
14 Sep 2012 Leave a Comment
Much better start to school today. I helped Grace with her math while Hannah read her books. Grace has a bit of dysgraphia and it takes her forever to write, so I wrote her math problems for her so she would only have to write the answers. Then I had to sit there and watch her type in the answers to make sure she picked the same answers she wrote on the paper (sometimes she will switch numbers, so she might have written 641.13, but she’ll type in 614.31 which will be counted wrong.) This took awhile as there were 40 questions, she got them all right (well, she missed one per the computer, but I think I might have been doing something with Hannah and missed her typing that one in.) Bethany did science and math and literature. Hannah went through 4 math lessons and I let her skip to the tests to get the unit over with so she could move on to the next thing. She was upset that we weren’t doing any art today, but she found out we were going to the rock show – so she was happy.
I dropped Joel off for his cadaver lab, today they were opening bodies from the chest and taking out lungs, hearts and kidneys to examine. There was another body that was there with the skull opened up so they could take the brain out. Joel said the smell from the brain was overpowering and different from the rest of the cadavers, so I wonder what was up with that.
The girls and I took off for the Denver Gem and Mineral show, we were meeting some of our HS friends there.
We headed straight for the kids/educational area when we got there: free posters, $1 grab bags of rocks, fossils to rub, coloring books to get, free rocks and hands-on activities to do were calling us. We saw Mr. Bones and his dino puppets a few times during our trip.
We looked at mica under a light that showed off its iridescence and inside a kind of refracting scope, pretty.
We watched some minerals blow up when they were heated, split some mica with a hammer and gathered some coal in a baggie.
We tested rocks and found their density, checked to see if they were magnetic and if they conducted electricity. We watched a guy polish some gems and rocks using this machine, he had very precise measurements he had to dial up.
Of course we panned for gold (and found some), we also found small gems and a few shark teeth (that’s what we were really looking for.)
Some rocks for sale at the show.
I love agates.
At this booth there were agates from a mine in India, they somehow grew with this pattern that looks like a fern instead of the usual stripes.
He also had giant geodes and rocks that were split and then anchored with a small disk so that the top section could be rotated, we thought that was very cool.
More rocks.
We headed over to the fluorescence rooms, here are what the rocks look like under black lights.
Here is the art you can make out of them when you set your camera to long exposure and move around.
After perusing side rooms we headed over to the fossil side of the exhibits.
We saw ammonites and fossilized fish, mammoth tusks, horse teeth, fossilized eggs in a nest and lots of neat fossils.
Another great rock show.
