Any fellow geology nuts / rock hounds out there?

Cat Herder · Understander of unimportant things

Any fellow geology nuts / rock hounds out there?

salesortonscom · Wise and Revered Master

I'm a rock nut. I pick up stuff all the time. It started out when I was a lad and got worse after that Rocks for Jocks class in college. I have no fewer than four large geological treasures sitting next to my computer this very minute. Two I found and two were gifts. The two I found are particularly nice specimens. One is a large rock about the size of a crochet ball. It is latticed with fine quartz and small caverns with large quartz crystals, the largest I have ever seen outside a museum. The other is about twice the size of a golfball or a large jawbreaker. Erosion caused it to split nearly perfectly in half so I have what looks like half a jaw breaker. The colors inside are amazing. It is volcanic in origin and appears to have been a solid glob or bubble. The rock appears to have cooled at a different rate from outside to inside. The outer half inch is a orange/red, then there is a bright red thin band that almost looks purple. Then the rock changes to a more pinkish brown color. It reminds me when I was a kid and would get those giant jaw breakers and then only lick one side so when it was flat on that side you had a rainbow of colors. If I didn't have a wife and kids to support, I'd get a grant and go to the College of Minerals and Mining in Butte, MT. I visited the place twice when I was a kid and loved looking at their collection.

Jen · Senior Bucketkeeper

My brother has a doctorate in geophysics. I don't know what he does, but it sounds cool. :)

nitasmile · Senior Member

When I was in high school Earth science class, I had a great teacher who made all aspects of the class fun. When we studied oceans, he made me want to be an oceanographer. When we studied astronomy, I wanted to be an astronomer. And wehn we studied geology, he made me want to be a geologist. So as that part of the curriculum, he took some of us on a trip to look for rocks. In so doing, I slipped several feet while climbing one, so now have several slight scars on my arm from that incident. And that ended my geology career!

Poncho29 · Senior Bucketkeeper

When we studied geology in the 8th grade my science teacher decided to play "Love on the Rocks" by Neil Diamond while we took our test. The test involved going around and identifying the individual rocks. He thought it was pretty funny.

Cat Herder · Understander of unimportant things

I think I told you this before Poncho, but your 8th grade science teacher was truly a legend in his own mind... NERD!!!!

Of course, I can't say much for my 8th grade science teacher either... one day in class some of the rude, bad-boy popular jocks asked her if there were Klingons on Uranus... and she fell for it and responded "I don't know! It's possible!" Yes, even me, the good boy, had a hard time swallowing the snort of laughter that just about made it out...

hiccups · Future Queen in Zion

I used to collect rocks. I would pick them up and put them in my coat pocket. I never remembered to take them out, though, and eventually they would wear holes in my pockets. Then I had a bunch of rocks in the liner of my coat. One day my mom noticed how heavy my coat was and she put an end to that collection.

The best rock I ever had was a broken, lightning-singed piece of the boulder I was 15 feet away from as the lightning stuck it. That was awesome scary. Sadly, my Downs brother got a hold of it I think, so now it's just a great memory. Is it odd to miss a rock?

glumirk · Senior Member

haha! I had a rock collection in a bag in my backpack, and when I cut a hole in the bottom (because I wanted a new one...), the rock back would "leak" out of my backpack so my backpack would have an appendage. The other kids would laugh because it was pooping.