Basalt

Part 1: Volcano

Transcript: Part 1

Sarah: So we've looked at the basalt again, but there is a new kind of basalt that is in the game since the last update called "smooth basalt," and you get that by putting -- within the game, you get it by putting regular basalt into a furnace, and you get it naturally-occurring in Minecraft on the outside of a geode, and you get it not naturally-occurring in Minecraft in our volcano which looks a bit different than the last time that you saw it. 

Kim: It does. Interesting. So basalt is an igneous rock. It is an extrusive igneous rock, so that means that the lava comes out to the surface and then crystallizes very rapidly because we have all of the cool air or cool water that makes it crystallize very very quickly, so it makes it very fine-grained, and it definitely does occur on the outside of geodes, so that is 100 correct. Sometimes we have, even in our gallery and in a lot of the pieces in our collection, we have these beautiful geodes that have crystals on the inside and then the smooth outer basalt on the outside and you cut them open, or crack them open sometimes, and you get to see the beautiful, sometimes amethyst or other gemstones that are inside.

Transcript: Part 2

Sarah: We have already talked a bit about basalt but there's been a little bit of an update that i wanted to show you and kind of get your reaction to. So on the screen you can see what is on the screen in the middle is the regular Minecraft basalt block that all of our friends at home are probably going to be familiar with. But I'm going to jump into Minecraft and I'm gonna show you what it looks like in our world now. 

Kim: Great. 

Sarah: So you can see in the one that we looked at on the screen it was very very square on the top but there's just a little change to it now to give it this kind of illusion of a different shape and then this is the formation that it makes in our world so I just wanted to see if you have anything to say about that. 

Kim: Sure. So that looks like in in real life there's something called columnar basalt. So basalt is a fine-grained igneous rock, and it's usually black, and then as it's cooling it actually forms these six-sided little columns, and I think that's what we're seeing here in your world.

Sarah: Yeah!