This exercise is designed for a sophomore or junior level required course in petrology.

Students should have a basic knowledge of petrology and petrologic laboratory skills.

This is a semester-long culminating project.

This project is designed to give petrology students experience in the methods and approaches taken by petrologists to solve a petrologic problem. This project ranges from the basic descriptive aspects to very sophisticated utilization of the electron microprobe facility i.e. it follows the process commonly used in petrology research.

This activity involves data analysis and synthesis of ideas.

This project involves writing and oral presentations.

The pet rock project is a semester-long project in which each student randomly selects an igneous or metamorphic rock from the instructor or brings in a rock from an appropriate locality, and follows all of the steps a petrologist would take to interpret an igneous or metamorphic rock from an unknown area. This project runs in the background of the petrology class during the initial part of the semester while the student acquires the petrologic skills to make more sophisticated interpretations. The culmination of the project is for each student to spend several hours with the instructor using the electron microprobe to identify more difficult minerals with certainty, to produce high quality digital backscattered electron images and to obtain quantitative electron microprobe analyses of selected minerals that aid in the interpretation of the pet rock. Ultimately, the student interprets the rock, generally with the assistance of the instructor, writes a report explaining the process and results and presents the results to the class.

Students have met the goals of this assignment if they write a thorough, well-written report explaining their processes and results and successfully present their findings to the class.