Last Friday, November 4, the Geology 110 Lab students attended a field trip to Marion and Princeton, Ky. Which included a mandatory exercise based on the field trip activities, so practically all of the Geology 110 Lab students were in attendance. It took three chartered buses to hold all of the students.
One of the locations was an active quarry owned by Rogers Group in Princeton, Ky. Limestone is the main product that is mined in the quarry.
The Geology 110 students learned that the quarry mines over 400,000 tons of limestone every year, and the limestone is generally used for crushed stone, aggregates, gravel and road construction.
The students also visited the Ben E. Clement Mineral Museum in Marion, Ky. While at the mineral museum, students were able to gain a better understanding for some of the characteristic properties of minerals such as fluorite, as well as learning the history of mining.
Most of the minerals that were on exhibit were from the mines of the famous Southern Illinois and Western Kentucky Fluorspar Region. Students raved about the “collection wall” where under a short-wavelength black light, the rocks and minerals were fluorescent in colors of neon yellow, green, pink, red, blue, orange and more.
With the popularity of the Geology 110 Lab field trip, the Department of Agriculture, Geosciences, and NRM hopes to extend the opportunity for a field trip to the Geology 120 Lab classes in Spring 2012.
In the past, the field trip had to be cut from the syllabus due to funding, but with the $20 fee that all Agriculture and Natural Resource Management students have to pay each semester, it is possible to afford the field trip for the Geology 110 and 120 courses.
