We were in Colorado on vacation, enjoying the mountains and it got me wondering about geology and wishing I knew more. While we were in a small hotel, we were watching Are You Smarter Than A 5th Grader. There was a question about rocks formed by extreme heat. The contestant answered that this rock was called lava, which made us laugh, and then admit that we did not know what it should have been, which was igneous.
As soon as I got home, I listened to more of a podcast of a Geology class from the School of Mines in Golden. He explained how these rocks form from flowing lava.
Then him mentioned Ship Rock, which we saw at the tail end of the vacation. It is the remaining core of an old volcano, which when you know that this is how it is formed only enhances the way it looks. The same can be said of Devil's Tower, which we saw on vacation about 4 or 5 years ago. That flow was slower and more laminar, and all the outside of the core is all eroded around. Ships Rock has lots of lateral flows, so it is very spiky and interestingly shaped.
I'm now totally into igneous rocks, particularly the cores of old volcanoes.
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