User:Alexrider/Rock walk

We went on the rock walk so we could find out more about rocks, the rocks were around the town some were on buildings and some on statues.

Here are some pictures.

	We started by looking at the bridge which is made of Limestone but the stones look different because some of them are older, some of them get worn away by the weather.
	Then we looked at this statue, there were 4 different types of rock here. Can you find them? (you might have to click on the picture to get a larger view) They were all made by being crushed under the sea, they are called sedimentary rocks. If you look really close, you can see bits of shells.

There are also lots of fossils like these:

This is a piece of granite from the drinking fountain.

This is where it has been polished and it is more shiny and you can see the crystals and different minerals that make the rock. The black one is called mica.

There is also a picture of a grave stone which is unpolished granite. Can you see the difference?

I took the picture of the grave because it looked so kind and peaceful, I liked the carvings. What do you think?

Do you think the cross is the same as the swiss cross you see on penknives, mum thinks it is a celtic cross.

The church was made of different stones. Some of it was called greensand, but it didn't look very green to me.

When it gets polluted by air the greensand turns brown because it has got iron in it which goes rusty.

The other picture is of a mason's mark, this is where the people who built the church have left a special mark to show who made it.

This statue was a dog, I thought it was interesting how people had rubbed their hands on his nose and made it go all shiny.		We also saw some marble, which is a metamorphic rock, which is made when volcanic rock is changed by heat and pressure into a new rock.
Here is another metamorphic rock, and you can see big crystals, that look like "eyes" and some smaller ones. You can tell how fast the lava cooled down by the size of the crystals, when it cools down fast the crystals are small, when it cools slowly the crystals are bigger.
This rock is called Blue Pearl Granite, it is so shiny you can see our reflections in it.

Want to ask me about the rock walk - then why not post a message in the schome community forum?

This photo shows detailed carving around the door to this church in Lyndhurst, Dorset. The pillars look like they're made of a black granite as you can see crystals, the leaf carvings are probably a pale creamy sandstone common to the area. But what is the grey stone above the carvings and the whitish shield to the left? Gill