Geology game: igneous, sedimentary and metamorphic rocks
A geology game for understanding that rocks are not eternal: they change from one kind to another in a cycle lasting millions of years. Some questions use the cycle diagram, with an arrow marked, and you say which process it is: cooling, weathering and erosion, compaction, metamorphism or melting. Others show a drawn sample of a real rock (granite, basalt, pumice, obsidian, limestone, sandstone, conglomerate, coal, gypsum, marble, slate, quartzite or gneiss) with what can be seen in it, and you say what type it is, which rock it comes from if it is metamorphic or, on hard, whether it is plutonic or volcanic and which processes turn one rock into another.
Geology · Primary, Secondary
Textbooks often present igneous, sedimentary and metamorphic rocks as three lists to memorise. Here they are stations on one cycle, linked by processes, and the route questions make you travel round it: for granite to end up as sandstone, it first has to be broken down and then its grains compacted.
Each sample is described as it would be in the lab: granite’s large crystals reveal slow cooling underground; obsidian, with no crystals, cooled all at once; pumice floats because of its bubbles; limestone and marble fizz with vinegar. That way you learn to reason out the rock type, not just remember it.
Each arrow in the cycle carries a single process and the wrong routes are genuinely impossible. Limestone never appears when asking whether a sedimentary rock is chemical or organic, because textbooks classify it both ways and there would be no single right answer.
"A sample appears with alternating light and dark bands, like a squashed granite: it is gneiss. What type of rock is it? Metamorphic, because it is another rock transformed by pressure and temperature without melting. Which rock does it come from? Granite. And if it melted and the magma cooled slowly underground, it would become granite again."
Prefer to learn without screens? Try this analogue version:
Collect five or six different stones on a walk, on the beach or by a river.
Look at them with a magnifying glass: do they have crystals, sand grains, layers, bands or holes?
Put a drop of vinegar on them: if it fizzes, it may be limestone or marble.
Sort them into igneous, sedimentary or metamorphic and explain what you looked at.
If you like The Rock Cycle, these activities work similar skills:
Multiple choice on rock types, how they form, minerals and their properties, with an explanation for each answer.
Another Earth science game: reading forecasts, radar and isobar maps.
Grate chocolate (sediments), squeeze it in foil (sedimentary), press it with the warmth of your hands (metamorphic) and melt it (magma) to start again.
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