Rocks in general

1. Rocks ingeneral THE EARTH'S CRUST The whole earth is made of rocks & minerals. Inside the earth there is a liquid core of molten rock and on the outside there is a hard crust. If you compare the earth to an egg, the shell on an egg is like the crust on the earth. The crust is made up of rocks and minerals. Much of the crust is covered by water, sand, soil and ice. If you dig deep enough, you will always hit rocks. Below the loose layer of soil, sand & crumbled rocks found on Earth is bedrock, which is a solid rock.

2. C/F/R/M. THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN ROCKS & MINERALS It is not easy to tell the difference between rocks & minerals because there are so many kinds of them. It takes years of study to be able to accurately identify a mystery rock and even then rockhounds want to know where the specimen came from. For more information see How Rocks & Minerals are FormedROCKS All rocks are made of 2 or more minerals, but minerals are not made of rocks. Rock Words: There are many common names for rocks and the usually give you an idea of how big the rock is. Here are a few: mountain - huge, giant hunk of rock that is still attached to the earth's crust, doesn't move, tall boulder - large, taller than a person rock - large, you could get your arms around it or a bit smaller but it is usually jagged, broken off a bigger piece of rock river rock - round rocks that are along the edge & at the bottom of fast-flowing rivers stone - medium, you could hold it in two hands pebble - small, you can hold it with two fingers, could get stuck in your shoe, usually rounded sand - made up of tiny pieces of rock, grains of sand grain - tiny, like a grain of rice or smaller, often found on a beach dust - really fine powder that is mixed in with sand or soil speck - as in a speck of dirt