A Tour of the Rocks and Minerals Gallery

kansuze (63)in #geology • 6 years ago

Today, you're getting a little taste of the rock and mineral collection at the Canadian Museum of Nature, Ottawa. I was at the museum recently with a cousin from out of town to see the live butterflies but the rest of the museum is always interesting. In recent years, they have been gradually updating the galleries and I'm seeing new developments in the rock and mineral gallery now.

The first photo is quartz with rutile inclusions. Rutile is a mineral that is the most common form of titanium dioxide. It’s often used in optics because it has among the highest visible refractive indices of any crystal. This sample comes from Brazil and was part of the museum's Mineral Giants exhibit.

As you might imagine, there are display cases, here, full of rock specimens, at least a large room full!

Each case contains some basic family of rock or mineral. There were many of these including semi precious stones.

Working our way through the gallery, we entered a new area. Here's the entrance. The last time I had been to the museum, there wasn't much back here because it was under renovation but now are going to see how rocks are made.

Many museums are moving to interactive displays and the rocks and minerals gallery is no exception. There were three displays; one each for sedimentary, metamorphic, and igneous rock. Each one had a computer simulation to show how that type of rock was made. I love the industrial steam punk look of the enclosures that house the computers.

I sat down at the one for sedimentary rock, the last one pictured, and it had me pull a lever to release gravel and other things. The computer screen simulated the rocks falling and you heard them fall. Then I had to pull another lever to apply extreme pressure to them. At the end, it told me what kind of sedimentary rock I had created. It was a good demonstration but, of course, it in no way shows how much time is really involved!

The area was roughly divided into the three themes of sedimentary, metamorphic, or igneous rock and there were more rock specimens pertinent to each area. It seems that when dealing with huge earth forces, the museum thought the lighting should be a little darker in the area so I was more intent on getting good photos and forgot to get the names of these specimens.

In the very back of the exhibit, they created a cave so we could see a little Karst topography. We entered the cave and we could hear running water and see stalactites and stalagmites. It was well done, just a small room, and with enough echo that it attracted some small screaming children. You have to hand it to the museum for making the rocks and minerals area interesting to people of all ages.