Festival of Geology
Saturday 2nd November 2024
This year the Geologists’ Association organised their Festival of Geology in the rooms of the Geological Society in Burlington House, London. The Club was allocated a table in the upper library, a relatively small space by a window overlooking Fortnum & Mason. Stephen Parker and Pam Hamer brought geological type displays for the day. Stephen brought his Vickers geological polarising microscope, along with many interesting slides of thin sections of rocks and fossils. He also brought several books to help interpret the images one gets in plane and crossed polarised light. Pam had a small stereomicroscope with a variety of specimens of polished rock surfaces showing traces of microfossils, collected from a variety of sites across the country. Of particular note were small samples of rock from Lyme Regis which contained a good variety of different shaped fossils. She also had some partly-prepared sections of this rock which she invited children to take and finish preparing, using the system described in the Club’s leaflet on Things to look at with microscopes: Rocks and Minerals, so they showed clearly. One enthusiast took up the challenge encouraged by her father!
Quekett display
There was limited room at this venue, so most of the displays by the local geology groups were smaller than in the past, and everything did become quite crowded during the day. There was plenty of interest, including some people who asked for a lot of details about the display.
Crowds in the library
It was good to see quite a number of children during the day, probably because Rockwatch, the children’s section of the Geologists’ Association, had a display. Adrian Rundle had set up sets of microscopes and samples of microfossils so children could prepare slides in a similar exercise to that previously done by Dennis Fullwood. Several children dropped by and spent time with both Stephen and Pam examining the samples.
Stephen Parker with a young visitor
There was a variety of lectures during the day, with topics ranging from poetry celebrating nature to Mary Anning and dinosaurs. We were so busy we kept missing the start of these, so we hope they will be available later on the Geologists’ Association website. Despite the limited space, it was a very full day with lots of interest.
Report and photographs by Pam Hamer