Summer Fun with Science!

reblogged from Otherwhere Gazette

This is the first of a series I will be doing this summer on fun activities for geeky kids and their parents. While some of what I will highlight will be specific to our area of Southern Ohio, you can readily find similar things local to you with a little google searching. Or you could travel here.

fossil hunting

The first thing we decided to do was to go beachcombing. You read that right – looking for seashells in Ohio, a landlocked state. Ohio is also one of the best places in the US to find fossils! During the Ordovician Period Ohio was covered with a warm, shallow sea, and the remnants of that time are now easily found locked in soft stone at the surface of the land. My First Reader tells me that when he was a child he could easily sit in the creek and pick up interesting fossils, but many years of hunting have thinned them out.

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