Templar Stone EarthCache
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Templar Stone is a leaning stone erected by artist Jane Rickards at Temple Quay, Bristol, in 2004. Designed at the request of the adjacent business, it pays homage to the Knight’s Templar, who owned land and an ancient port at this site. The nearby ruined Temple Church and the Knights Templar pub nearby show the extent of its legacy of this historic site.
Questions
Questions first, as the cache page contains many images which older GPS devices may not be able to load fully. If so, you will need to have a printout of the page, as you need to use the images on the page to identify the rock and answer Q3.
To log this EarthCache, please send the answers to the following questions by email or message. Due to owning many EarthCaches I receive numerous emails per day so there is often a delay in replying, therefore feel free to log before awaiting a reply. Only answers that are drastically incorrect or photos that reveal answers will be deleted.
All questions can be answered simply by observing the Templar Stone from the pavement. Please don’t trample on the flower bed to get up close to it!
1) Take a look at the Templar Stone. Describe it in terms of colour, size, shape and the angle that it leans.
2)
a) Take a look at the crystals in the Templar Stone. What colour and size are they?
B) Judging by the size of the crystals, did the magma cool quickly or slowly when forming the rock?
3) Based on your answer to Q2, what type of rock (from those listed below) is the Templar Stone most likely to be?
4)*Optional* Add a photo of you/your GPS in the GZ area, but NOT including the Templar Stone in the image. The nearby Brunel statue would be an ideal place!
One piece of important information that I will give you is that the Templar Stone is an igneous rock.
Igneous rocks are made up of many crystals. Some igneous rocks have large crystals (centimetres in length), while others have very tiny crystals that are barely visible to the naked eye.
The Earth’s mantle- the layer deep below us- is hot enough to melt rocks into liquid (what we call ‘molten’). When a rock is here, it is referred to as ‘magma’. When it eventually erupts from a volcano onto the surface of the Earth, it becomes ‘lava’. Eventually the molten rock cools down, which can occur intrusively (while underground) or extrusively (when erupted and on Earth’s surface, which is significantly cooler than inside the mantle!)
So what is it that determines the size of crystals in an igneous rock? It mainly depends on how quickly the molten magma cooled down and crystallised into solid rock.
If the magma cooled slowly, large crystals will form in the igneous rock.
Likewise, if the magma cooled quickly, small crystals will form in the igneous rock.
The quicker it cools = the smaller the crystals formed.
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
[It’s that big leaning rock in the flower bed! It can be accessed from the pavement so there’s no need to go onto the grounds of the adjacent business.]