Geology 4 Geologist

                                              Why don’t rocks burn? While many rocks don’t burn, a number of them do. It depends on what the rocks are made from – and that’s associated with how they were shaped.   There are three important rock sorts: igneous, sedimentary and metamorphic. These rocks are products of minerals that each one has one-of-a-kind characteristics. Some will soften into magma or lava – splendid-hot, liquid rock – whilst they're uncovered to heat. Others will catch fire. Rocks can appear alike, but one rock isn't like some other.    Rocks that burn after they get heated up are combusting. This way, elements in the rocks are reacting with oxygen within the air to supply warmth and light, in the form of flames. The factors sulphur, carbon and hydrogen effortlessly react with oxygen. Rocks that contain those elements are flammable. Without those elements inside them, rocks that are exposed to sufficient heat will melt as opposed to catching fire.      

  Do rocks and minerals control our destiny? One day in October 1820 two younger men, Elijah Hamlin and Ezekiel Holmes, were trekking on a hill in Maine called Mount Mica after they spotted a glowing, inexperienced stone on the ground. They picked it up and started to search for others, but darkness turned into falling. The next day it snowed. When they in the end came back, inside the spring, they located the hill affected by such stones, on the grounds that identified it as tourmaline, a semiprecious gem prized for its range of colours. Words unfold. In 1879 a gentleman geologist and man-about-the-world named George Kunz visited. He gave some pieces to a businessman named Charles Tiffany, who hired him on the spot. One of Tiffany’s board participants changed into JP Morgan, the banker and robber baron, who started out buying tourmaline and other jewels through Kunz. Much of that series wound up inside the American Museum of Natural History.    I made the acquaintance of Morgan’s tour