Category: TecRocks
Across the Earth, rock is being created, destroyed, and transformed all the time. If you were to witness a volcanic eruption up close, you would see the birth of new rock. While such an eruption results in a dramatic display of Earth’s power, many rock-forming processes are invisible as they take place deep beneath Earth’s […]
Orrin Murray is a principal researcher at American Institutes for Research and external evaluator for our TecRocks project. We all come into the world primed to wonder. Curiosity is the internal drive that leads us from exploring our own hands and feet as a newborn to breakthroughs in everything from farming to space exploration. And […]
Traditional geologic maps beautifully illustrate the many different types of rock found on Earth’s surface. Geoscientists can look at a colorful geologic map and immediately spot important pieces of the story of Earth’s geologic history. For instance, in the map below, the red area found in Canada represents bedrock formed in the Late Archean Era […]
Is there a map that shows the distribution of the three major rocks types—igneous, metamorphic, and sedimentary—around the world? Our TecRocks team asked this question while trying to find real-world phenomena to engage students in the exploration of environments related to rock genesis. It seemed like a map like this should exist. Our hope was […]
The rock cycle, presented in nearly every Earth science curriculum and textbook, is typically taught in the same way from one classroom to the next. Students are shown an image that summarizes how all rocks are related to each other with suggested pathways by which one rock can transform into another rock. A nice, simple […]