FIELD LAB ASSIGNMENT PART I

Arthur NelsonGeol 1- C01

12/5/10

Where I Found My Samples

To look for my samples I went out to the Kings River in and around Lemoore, CA.

The Kings River starts in the Sierra Nevada, having three forks. The forks get back together in Fresno Country, where it is rapids. The water from the river flows to a dam in the foothills, and then splits six miles north of Lemoore into two more forks which join five miles west of Lemoore. The water then flows through an artificial channel into the Tulare Lake bed. In the Hanford area it has been that the depths to groundwater are increasing. There are many dams along the Kings River, because of the rise in hydroelectric power. In the San Joaquin Valley the water also helps to provide irrigation water.

ConglomerateA conglomerate rock consists of many smaller rocks cemented together by a fine-grained matrix. It is a sedimentary rock. The fragments are rounded and the clasts, or pieces of rock in the conglomerate, arelarger than sand.

JasperThis rock which I found I believe to be Jasper, but I’m not completely sure about it. Jasper gets its red color from iron oxide, and it is a sedimentary rock. It has a smooth surface and is sometimes polished in order to be used fordecoration.

Potassium FeldsparFeldspar is the most common mineral group because it can form under a wide range of temperatures and pressures. This rock has two planes of cleavage meeting at or near 90 degree angles. There are two different feldspar structures, potassium and plagioclase. Potassium is either light cream, salmon pink, or bluish-green.

Gneiss

Gneiss rocks are medium to coarse foliated. They are developed under high temperature and pressure conditions. The gneiss rocks are largely

recrystallized, but do not have large quantities of many minerals. They are metamorphed igneous rocks.

Quartz Monozonite

This is an igneous rock that is intrusive. There is a lot of quartz present in the quartz monozonite, and biotite and hornblende make it darker. Despite having the word Quartz in it’s name, even granitehas more quartz in it.