Geology Badge
Why is Greater Boston so hilly? Why can't it just be flat? And when I dig in my garden, I keep finding rocks! And when I take a walk, why do I always see stone walls, gravel driveways, stone foundations and other things manmade from rock?
Use these pages to create a geology scrapbook with samples of small rocks, drawings, notes, and photos.
Learn the names of the three kinds of rock: igneous, sedimentary and metamorphic.
About this page
We earned the Junior Girl Scout Rocks Rock badge on a field trip to Pine Banks Park in Malden. Girls created scrapbooks using these pages inside a mini-photo album. Rock samples, pictures, etc. fit well inside the 4x6 sleeves. Other scout troops are welcome to use these steps for earning the geology badge. Adults or older readers who are interested in learning more about the geology of the Greater Boston area can read Roadside Geology of Massachusetts, James W. Skehan, Mountain Press Publishing Company, 2001 or Geology: Eastern North America (Peterson Field Guides), David C. Roberts, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1996. Another good guide: Fifty Hikes in Massachusetts by Brian White and John Brady, Countryman Press, 3rd edition, October 1999. Information about Pine Banks Park comes from The Greater Boston Park and Recreation Guide, by Mark Primack, Globe Pequot Press, 1983.
1. The Story ... 600 Million Years Ago
Volcanic Islands. 600 million years ago ... before people ... before dinosaurs ... the Greater Boston area was a chain of volcanic islands. These islands were called Avalonia.
Find some igneous rocks in your neighborhood or in a park and put them in your collection. These may be:
- Fine-grained hard rocks like basalt, andesite or rhyolite ... these cooled quickly and the minerals formed small crystals.
- Large-grained hard rocks like granite, diorite or gabbro ... these cooled slowly and the minerals formed larger crystals.
Climb to the top of a volcano. Climb to the top of an ancient volcano in a park or in your neighborhood. It might be hard to tell that the rocks came from a volcano ... the volcanos in our area have been inactive for 600 million years. The smaller mountain in Pine Banks Park is an ancient volcano.
2. Continents Move!
Collision forms supercontinent! The continents weren't always arranged the way they are now. The Avalonian volcanic islands and two continents called Laurentia and Godwana slowly drifted together to form a supercontinent called Pangaea. When these land masses collided, the force pushed up hills and mountains.
Find a cliff or outcrop of rock in a park or in your neighborhood ... this might have formed when the continents crashed together. Take a photo or draw a quick sketch or make notes about what you saw.
Make a model of continents crashing together using paper, clay, bread, or other bendable materials. Show how hills and mountains can be pushed up when two continents collide.
3. Continents Break Up!
More mountains form! About 200 million years ago, the supercontinent Pangaea broke up and formed the continents North America, South America, Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia and Antarctica. When the continent broke apart, the force created more rocks and mountains.
Make a model. Trace a map of the world. Cut out the continents. Rearrange the pieces to show how the continents might have once fit together.
Eat an apple pie and notice how the apple filling bubbled up through the crust. The same thing happens when molten (hot) rocks bubble up through the surface of the earth. When the supercontinent Pangaea broke apart many of the rocks we see around Malden were formed from molten rock that bubbled up to the surface.
4. Glacier covers New England
Giant glacier leaves hills, ponds, rocks. Recently - 10,000 years ago - a glacier covered New England as far south as Cape Cod.
Look at a sample of soil and notice how rocky the soil is ... New England soil is very rocky because of the glaciers.
Find examples of what a glacier might have left behind - such as ponds, hills, and rocky soil and even large boulders in the middle of the woods. The largest mountain in Pine Banks Park is a glacial esker, which is a ridge of rocks and dirt left behind by a glacier.
5. People Change the Landscape
Natural or Manmade? Around Greater Boston, rocks have always been plentiful. People have used rocks for landscaping and building. People have also blasted into the rocks to make room for roads and houses. People also "quarried" granites and other rocks from Malden and surrounding towns for building materials.
Find some "manmade" rocks - such as pieces of cement, brick or asphalt - and add them to your rock collection.
Take photos or draw rocks that have been used in landscaping and building - such as stone walls, stone foundations, or rock gardens.
WHY LEARN GEOLOGY?
- Just to learn something fun
- Develop plans for safely building tunnels and tall buildings
- Collect and polish gemstones
- Study and predict earthquakes and volcanoes
- Explore for oil and valuable minerals
- Draw maps of the ocean floor
- Draw maps of the surface of other planets
- Work with archeologists to uncover evidence of past civilizations
- Hunt for fossils
- Share what you learn with others