Fossils

A fossil is the remains of something living. I have learned that there are many different types of fossils including foramifera, trilobites, petrified wood, fossil amber, carbonized leaf, copralite and many more. I find each of these fossils to be very interesting in their own way from being what used to be a tree, bones or even animal dung. In class we got to make our own "fossils". We made these using a plaque and water  mixture and sand. For making the fossils we used three different mixtures varying the levels of each ingredient and a shell to place inside. In the fist cup we used a 50-50 mixture. So inside the cup we placed 40mL of the plaque mix and 40mL of sand. In this one the fossil was hardened by the end of class. In the second cup we had more sand than plaque mixture so we placed 40ml of the mix and 70 of sand. This made the combination out to be very thick. In the third cup we used more of the plaque mixture than sand so we placed in the cup 80ml of the mix and 70ml of the sand...with that  much sand the mixture was still very watery!

The fossils are now placed on the windowsill in the classroom for a couple day drying period. .......

After the drying period we began to chip away at our mixtures to get to the fossil inside. To start, our cup with more mix than sand was not hard and so it did not have a good result. Also, the cup with more sand and less mix was too crumbly to hold the shape of the shell. Our mixture that was 50-50 was perfect. It was hardened and solid. After chipping away to get to the shell we had a perfect indent in the plaster to serve as our "fossil".