Rocks at Cliffe Castle Museum
The Rock Cycle
Without the rock cycle we wouldn’t be here, it’s as simple as that! All the rocks on Earth are constantly being recycled. Round and round they go, being buried, eroded, melted, reformed, heated, squashed, blasted out and weathered.
Look at any rock, it’s part of that cycle right now. It’s hard to imagine that to rub pumice on your foot is to start that igneous rock on its long journey to becoming a sedimentary one. Drag chalk down a blackboard - erosion of rock. Throw a stone in a river - transportation. The wind and rain hitting your house - weathering. From the imperceptible movement of single clay particles to the violent eruption of a Hawaiian volcano, the Rock Cycle is vital to understanding our Earth and everything on it.
In a nut shell: each kind of rock, igneous, sedimentary and metamorphic can eventually, through a whole host of fascinating processes, become one of the other types of rock. A constant never-ending cycle that will last as long as our planet and which has an impact on our lives every day.
Follow the ' Related Links' at the very end of this page to interact with the rock cycle at your work station or on the interactive whiteboard.
Test what you have learned about Rocks by taking our quiz - the Rock Hard Memory Test.
Learning article provided by:
Cliffe Castle Museum and Art Gallery |
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