G.G.P.A

Who are we?

The Global Geological Protection Agency travel the world investigating rocks, soils, earthquakes and volcanoes.

The team receive a message, unfortunately some of the details were missing. We knew it was a map showing a country but which one? Using atlases we worked out that the country was Italy, we noticed that it was shaped like a leg with a foot at the end!

The next message began to arrive…what did the numbers mean? Were the numbers times or temperatures? One member of our team thought they’d seen something like this before and that the numbers might be coordinates. We plotted the coordinates on the map and noticed that they were all in a similar area in the ocean just off Italy.

The team received an email from a man called Marco. He contacted us as he’d heard of all the great work the team have done in the past. There is unusual activity in the sea off the coast of Naples (Napoli if you’re Italian). He requested our expertise.

We had a meeting to decide what to do. After a discussion it was agreed that we would travel to Italy to offer our geological knowledge.

We traveled by coach to Birmingham airport.

Our passports and documents were checked.

The flight took around 3 hours.

We collected our bags and equipment.

When we arrived at the hotel we unpacked then went on a sight seeing tour of the city. We saw a place, a beautiful cathedral, spectacular views of the ocean and of course in the distance the famous volcano Mount Vesuvius! Later we meet Marco to talk business.

We have been exploring making animations using an app on the I pads. We learnt that animations are made from a series of frames added together. We found out about ‘onion skinning’. We made characters out of plasticine and experimented with those then we used our new skills in our mantle. We imagined what we would see if we dived into the ocean around Naples. We created underwater animations. They look amazing!

The team need to keep up to date with their knowledge of rocks so they completed some testing.

The first test was to see which rocks are permeable and which are impermeable. We know that this means whether a rock will or will not absorb water. We dropped water onto each rock and observed what happened. We noticed that the rocks chalk, limestone and sandstone were permeable and the rocks granite, slate and marble. We were amazed to find the pumice floated in the water!

Which rock is the hardest rock? We tried rubbing each rock with sandpaper to see what would happen. The softer rocks like chalk started to rub away, we could see particles falling off. The harder rocks such as granite was very difficult to scratch. We ordered the rocks on a scale from softest to hardest.

The fishermen talked to us about the strange things that were happening under the ocean. The water seemed warmer than expected at this time of year. We wanted to see for ourselves what was happening. Using diving equipment we watched what was happening under the water. The fish we avoiding areas of the water, bubbles were rising from cracks on the ocean floor. We decided to collect rock samples from the ocean floor. We designed and built pneumatic systems that we could use to collect the rock as it would be too hot for us to touch. We really enjoyed testing the pneumatic systems and seeing how we could make things move using just air!

We discovered that the rocks we collected were igneous rocks. We know that there are three kinds of rocks, sedimentary, metamorphic and igneous. We had a go at making our own rocks using sweets! Small parts were put together to act as sediment to create sedimentary rocks. We added heat and pressure to the rocks and this changed the rocks into metamorphic rocks, finally we heated the rocks over hot water until they melted as if they had been inside a volcano 🌋 this created our igneous rocks. When they cooled down they hardened again and the rock cycle could begin again.