A fun EarthCache to do while shopping at the Park Meadows Mall.
At the posted coordinates, you will find a big fountain made from natural red rocks from Colorado. But how did these rocks form?
The rust-colored grains within rock likely contain minerals made up of iron and oxygen, called iron oxides. One example of an iron oxide is hematite (Fe2O3), which is abundant in Earth's crust. Hematite is in rocks, too, and is also in much of the clay that is used to make bricks. Iron in the hematite (or other iron-containing minerals) rusts when exposed to oxygen and water.
A lot of the sandstone found in the desert Southwest of the United States is reddish in color - consider Grand Canyon, in Arizona, or Canyonlands National Park, in Utah. When sedimentary rock has a reddish color, it often indicates that the sediment was exposed to oxygen (in the air) before or during burial. For example, the Navajo Sandstone seen in many national parks and monuments (such as Zion and Grand Staircase-Escalante) formed from ancient desert sand dunes. Other red rock (such as some of the siltstone layers seen in Bryce Canyon) were formed by deposition in lakes and streams. Rock that is formed from deposition in deep seas, in comparison, is more likely to be other colors, such as gray or black, due to lower oxygen in deep water.
To claim credit for this cache you must answer the questions below. DO NOT POST YOUR ANSWERS IN YOUR LOG!
1. Feel the rock. What is the texture like?
2. Look at the rocks. About how red are they?
3. How do you think these rocks got their color?
4. To prevent couch logging, it is a requirement to post a picture of you (or something else to prove you were there) in your log. Do not send me your picture and not put it in the log. All logs who sent a photo and did not post it in their log will be deleted.
Sources: https://www.rutgers.edu/news/how-rocks-rusted-earth-and-turned-red
https://www.usgs.gov/educational-resources/find-feature-red-rocks#:~:text=Iron%20in%20the%20hematite%20(or,Canyonlands%20National%20Park%2C%20in%20Utah.
https://eos.org/articles/red-rocks-using-color-to-understand-climate-change
FTF: hartsdale