Is water a mineral?

During our learning about rocks and minerals, Seb came up with the question

Is water a mineral?

We weren't sure of the answer so looked in books and encyclopedias. There weren't any convincing answers.

We looked on the internet. This site, which is a site you can add your own answers to, gave the answer of NO.

However, you have to be careful what you read on the internet...Last year I was playing around with a site callled wikianswers, with my daughters. We thought it would be fun to ask the question...Who is the best in 4M?...as you can see, it is quite easy to put information onto the internet which may be an opinion or may not be true.

Anyway, Seb went away and thought and decided that he NEEDED TO ASK AN EXPERT.

Luckily for Seb, he has a relative who is a scientist.

I asked Seb

"Can I publish his explanation to the blog?" and "Are you happy with his explanation or do you need another expert to back up his answer? "

He said :
It is ok for you to put it on the blog and I kinda want another scientist to back it up to see if they have the same idea.

So here's the reply Seb got to his email:

Dear Seb
It's GREAT to get a message from you.
I am not an expert on minerals but it seems to me that ice fulfills all the requirements of minerals that I learned in school. I looked to see if the requirements have changed since then, that is, whether there is a new definition of mineral.
It looks like in 1995 some mineral experts added a new requirement, which is that the crystal be formed by geologic processes. If you follow that definition, ice
would not be a mineral because it's formed rapidly and reversibly. However,
by the standard definition, I believe that ice should be considered a mineral.

So, if there are any science teachers out there or experts in minerals, who could add to our discussion, please comment.

How hard is rock?

Seb and Joe found out that a man called Mr Moh invented a scale of hardness, which we call the Moh scale.
Samuel reminded us that diamond is the hardest rock.
Seb and Joe also discovered that talc is the softest rock.

Due to the different properties of rocks and minerals, we use different rocks for different purposes.

Would you make a floor tile out of chalk? Why?
Would you make a roof tile out of diamond? Why?
Would you use granite for a wind screen (windshield)? Why

We use rocks for different purposes, because of their properties.

Here are some other interesting rock facts and questions which really make you think about how often we use rocks and minerals.

Here is a great site which shows how rocks and minerals are used around the home.

What is in soil?

Choose the right words from the list below in the right sentence:
rock, four, magnifying glasses, sieves, microscope, three, organic, separated.



1. We used _________ to separate out the rocks and soil.

2. Soil is made up of _________ material (it used to be alive), as well as fragments of ________

3. We used _________ sieves and __________ the soil into _________ different piles of material.

4. Afterwards, we used __________ and a ___________ to look at the particles.

How can we make sand for our model of Ancient Egypt?

We are learning about Ancient Egypt and want to make a large model for the shared area. We are making it from 8 squares of corraflute (60cm x 60cm) but we need to make it more desert like.

























We have some buckets of earth, soil, and rocks.










How could we separate the sand from the soil sample?

Please send your ideas in as comments.

Volcano update

Animated map of ash fallout.

Video of helicopter flying near plume of volcanic smoke - lightning and debris are visible. See below:



These sites are from Lazzy Ferlazzo's blog.

Cool lava!...no really, it is actually cool enough to touch!

We are really lucky to have a recent visitor to Iceland in our class, who returned to Bangkok hours after the volcanic activity started.

Here are some pictures.

To be esafe, we have not included the visitors name. Remember not to include names in your comments or else they will not be passed.

Do you have any questions for our visitor?

If so, post a comment and we'll post a follow up article with some answers.

BlogThis!