Grace Davis started work at the British Geological Survey in
July 2017, in this weekly series she shares what she gets up to as part of the
Comms team at the BGS...
Pebbles: small, round, found at
the beach. They’re not things that get a lot of attention really, although I
expect most of us have felt the small satisfaction of gripping a particularly
smooth one in our hands or skimming a lovely flat one across the waves.
I’ve found myself considering
pebbles a lot this week, and that’s all down to the Comms team’s new Pebble
Project! We decided that these little over-looked geological items deserved a
bit more attention so we’ve gotten to work on designing some pebble resources.
Aimed at all ages, these downloads will be available for people to take out and
about – use them at the beach to identify what you’ve found, use them as the
basis for a fun project (there are a surprising number of things you can do
with a pebble!) or use them to learn more about the different rock types around
the UK.
Our resources are currently still
in the creation stage, with a very glamourous pebble photo-shoot taking place
today. As you can see in the (exclusive, first-look!) images, we took
photos of the pebbles both wet and dry. This is simply because wetting pebbles
can often bring out beautiful detail that you just can’t see otherwise. If you’ve
a pebble on hand, give it a go and see!
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| Sandstone pebble |
And now I’m going to let you into
a little trick of the trade: the wet-look here is achieved not with water,
which would dry too fast under the studio lights, but with glycerine! By the
way, I do hope you’re building up a nice mental image of this photo-shoot – i.e.
me hunched over a tray of sand, feverishly rearranging pebbles and getting increasingly
grittier and stickier as I slather them in glycerine!
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| The same pebble with added wet-look! |
So, do look out for updates on the Pebble Project in the near future, including where you
will be able to get hold of the resources. Until then you can find our existing
information about pebbles (as well as our other great holiday geology guides) on
the BGS website, here.
And don’t forget, if you’re interested in resources for learning about geology,
at whatever level, you can visit our online
shop here or come and see us in our shops in Keyworth, Edinburgh and London.
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| Sadly not dragon eggs, but rather beautiful limestones! |
That’s about all from me this
week, but join me again next time as I continue to learn and share all about the
(amazingly varied!) work of the BGS…
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