Geology
The Earth Below Our Feet
Join us on a geology journey at Burpee Museum! For the last 4.6 Billion years, the Earth has been changing. This new exhibit opened in 2021 and will take you on a journey of forces and time. Travel with us and explore many years of the Earth’s forces: wind, water, ice, pressure, and heat, and more. Choose a path and see how liquid rock, or magma, becomes the soil, sand, and rocks beneath our feet today.
WHAT CAN YOU SPOT IN THIS EXHIBIT?
Rock Cycle
AN INTERACTIVE JOURNEY
Earth’s forces are powerful! From Compaction to Erosion, to Extreme Heat, and more, you will journey through the forces and meet the minerals that make up many of our local rocks! You can touch and examine the minerals’ journey up close!
Chalcedony
AGATE SLICES
Agate is a translucent variety of microcrystalline quartz called Chalcedony. The deposition in concentric layers around the walls of the cavity creates the banded patterns characteristic of agate. Impurities within the silica cause different colors!
Ultraviolet (UV) light
FLUORESCENCE
Some minerals appear colorless in daylight, but when exposed to ultraviolet (UV) light, these minerals glow in fluorescent colors!