🇮🇹 Maximus Shopilius 🇺🇸 EarthCache
-
Difficulty:
-
-
Terrain:
-
Size: 
(other)
Please note Use of geocaching.com services is subject to the terms and conditions
in our disclaimer.
🇮🇹 Fontana di Trevi 🇮🇹
🇺🇸 Maximus Shopilius 🇺🇸
🙄 🤦🏻♂️
The Story 📖
Earlier this year (2023), I visited the real Trevi Fountain in Italy with Lizrdh and we had the most amazing experience there. A few months later, walking around the Las Vegas Strip, you can imagine my surprise when I noticed a replica of that impressive structure... outside a shopping mall... 😂.
The fountain here is a bit smaller than the original, and the wording is a little different. I doubt Nicola Salvi would enjoy this, but as the old saying goes... imitation is the sincerest form of flattery... right?
Salvi's masterpiece was built almost entirely from Travertine, so I decided to create a replica for the replica, in hopes of sharing a similar experience one can get from visiting the real thing in Rome. Read on for some background information about this type of stone, and how to receive credit for this Earthcache.
The Earth Part 🌎
Travertine is a sedimentary rock formed by the chemical precipitation of calcium carbonate minerals from fresh water (e.g. springs, rivers and lakes), most commonly found at the mouth of a hot spring or in a limestone cave. It is typically brown, cream, orange or gray in color tone, but can also contain red iron oxides. If you have ever been to a hot spring, you are actually witnessing volcanic activity that leads to the creation of travertine.
Plants that surround fresh water areas absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, then release it back as oxygen. However, when hot volcanic CO2-infused water comes into contact with these plants, it pulls even more carbon dioxide from the plant roots. Now containing a rather large amount of carbonate minerals, when the hot water is exposed to cooler air, a reaction occurs from this overdose of carbon, creating a solid mass built up around the source. In caves, we see these growths as stalactites, stalagmites, and other types of speleothems. As formations grow, they can trap nearby plants and creatures, resulting in fossils and impressions. Travertine can also harbor bands of crystallized color from local minerals surrounding that water source. When travertine gets harvested for projects like the fountain seen before you, those fossils, impressions and minerals become exposed, creating a unique visual experience into how they came to be.
After its formation process is complete, Travertine becomes classified as part of the Marble family, and often gets used as a building material. It typically lacks planes of weakness, and its high porosity makes it fairly light in weight when considering its strength. This composition gives it good thermal + acoustic insulating properties, and also makes it relatively easy for anyone to manipulate. Dense travertine becomes excellent decorative stone when polished, and is one of the most frequently used stones in modern architecture.
A Spectrum of Color 🌈
Typically there are two types of colors in Travertine: monocolor and polychromatic. Monocolor is a single tone with varying shades, while polochrome has sub-classifications based on the variety of minerals present and the underlying conditions to which it was formed:
- Veined, where listings appear different color than the background.
- Arborescent, when streaks appear in all directions.
- Gaps, if they contain more or less angular fragments trapped on a main mass.
- Brocades, analogous to the above but smaller fragments.
- Lumaqueles fossiliferous, when they contain or appear to contain fossils of a different nature.
Color of the stone is determined from a variety of factors:
- Whites are usually rich in CO3Ca sometimes marked by some barely visible veins.
- Blacks/Grays contain carbonaceous or organic substances.
- Reds/Pinks contain oligisto.
- Yellows/Browns/Creams contain iron as limonite.
- Greens contain magnesium silicates.
How to Claim a Find 🙂
To log a find, you will need to answer the following questions. Please submit your answers to me via the geocaching message center (preferred) or via email; do not post the answers to your log. You also do not have to wait for my reply before you claim this, though if something is noticeably incorrect with your answers, I will reach out directly to resolve.
Earthcache Questions/Tasks 🤔
(send to me via the Message Center or via email, before logging a find)
1. What color type is the travertine of this fountain, and what is the reasoning behind your conclusion?
2. Look closely at the stone work for any anomalies that are embedded within the stone (fossils, veins, etc… not the turtles… LOL). What did you find, if anything, and how do you think it got there?
3. To curb the potential for armchair loggers, take a photo of yourself (face not required) and/or a personal item in front of the fountain (without revealing any of the answers), then post it to your log.
Additional Hints
(No hints available.)