Magnitite and Lodestone

Transcript:

Sarah: Here we are where we can find the magnetite, and we have a note about the difference between rocks and minerals, and when our friends are collecting their things they have to be really careful. They're actually going to get different boxes to collect their rock samples and their mineral samples and to keep them separate. But what I wanted to show you is that in this chest beside Kaya, we have these compasses, and what we didn't see on the path on the way here it actually shows us that compasses will point toward the world spawn in Minecraft. So there's a compass down there somewhere that's actually pointing to the research center which, is where we spawn into this world. So the compass should be pointing that way, but this compass that we find over here is actually pointing toward this magnetite. 

Kim: Interesting. So that is something we have to be careful of as geologists out in the field, is sometimes we have such magnetic rocks that it actually will point our compass away from the Earth's magnetic field and take us in the wrong direction, so we want to make sure that we make our way home at night and make sure that we understand what kind of rocks are around us.

Sarah: Didn't get it back in the chest just then. Right, yeah, so this is our magnetite which in our collections database is also called a lodestone, and this is the the texture of it and why does it have that kind of like reddish color, Kim? 

Kim: Well, there's lots of iron in it. So I don't know if anybody has an old car, or an old bike or something, but it has a lot of metal in it, and sometimes it starts to rust. So, actually, the rock is doing something very similar and rusting and turning a little bit red. Certainly my car looks like that. 

Sarah: And I notice in the picture from the database there's actually a nail stuck to this one. 

Kim: That's right. So you what's really fun about magnetite is that it attracts iron, it's magnetic, and so you can stick all sorts of things to it, all metal things.