Rock Cycle Sorter Game
Every rock is one of three types, and how it formed decides which. Igneous rocks cooled from melted rock, sedimentary rocks built up from layers of grains, and metamorphic rocks are older rocks changed by heat and pressure. In this game fifteen rocks ride a conveyor out of a quarry, each drawn with the tell that gives it away, and you sort them into their bins before the shift's clock runs out.
Rocks ride a conveyor out of the quarry. Sort each one into its bin: igneous, sedimentary or metamorphic.
How to play
- Rocks ride the conveyor out of the tunnel. The front one waits on the sorting spot at the end of the belt.
- Send it into its bin: swipe it toward the bin, tap the bin, or press the left arrow for Igneous, the down arrow for Sedimentary or the right arrow for Metamorphic.
- A wrong bin spits the rock back with the reason. In the first shift that is all it does. From the second shift it also costs one of your 3 hard hats, and losing the last ends the day.
- A day is 4 shifts of 40 seconds, and the belt runs faster each shift. From the third shift the names are off, and you sort each rock by its look.
Becomes mode runs four rocks through a press, and the bins are what they turn into: slate, marble, quartzite and gneiss. Tap one, swipe toward it, or press 1 to 4. Escape or Space pauses. Sound starts off on a first visit.
Scoring
- A rock sorted right at the first try scores 100 points.
- Once the names are off, a rock sorted right scores 150.
- In Becomes mode, a rock sent to what it becomes scores 150.
- A rock spat back scores nothing when you sort it again.
- Each hard hat you still have at the end of the day scores 250.
Your five best scores in each mode are saved in this browser, with the shift each game reached. In practice no hard hats are lost, so the day always runs to the end. End it from the pause screen. Practice games are not saved.
The fifteen rocks
Igneous rocks, from melted rock:
- Granite: big speckled crystals
- Basalt: grains too fine to see one by one
- Obsidian: smooth glass with curved ripples
- Pumice: holes all through it
- Gabbro: big dark crystals
Sedimentary rocks, from layers of grains:
- Sandstone: layers of sand grains
- Limestone: a shell in it
- Shale: thin flakes
- Conglomerate: rounded pebbles
- Chalk: a lump of flint in it
Metamorphic rocks, changed by heat and pressure:
- Marble: wandering veins
- Slate: flat sheets that split apart
- Quartzite: a sugary glint
- Gneiss: light and dark bands
- Schist: shiny flakes of mica
A rock's colour varies, so the game never asks about it. Rocks that sit between two types are left out, such as tuff, which is volcanic ash laid down in layers.
What the press makes
Heat and pressure deep underground change one rock into another. Becomes mode asks four pairs that a school geology text pairs one to one:
- Shale becomes slate, with a little heat and pressure.
- Limestone becomes marble, with heat and pressure.
- Sandstone becomes quartzite, with heat and pressure.
- Granite becomes gneiss, with great heat and pressure.
Shale goes on to schist and then gneiss with more heat, which is why its card says only a little heat and pressure, and schist is never a bin there. The facts were checked against the British Geological Survey's rock pages, the Geological Society's rock cycle pages for schools and CK-12's Earth Science text.
Read about what a mnemonic is, or try our other free memory games.
