Check your material
Only processes that can act on the current material are available.
Rock Cycle Journey
Choose cooling, weathering, burial processes, heat or melting to follow branching rock pathways.
Grades 3–5 · Earth Science
Your goal
Start as magma and finish as igneous. Your journey must visit magma, igneous in any valid pathway with at least 1 changes.
Reduced motion is on. The controls still update the scene.
You are now magma. Magma is melted rock. Begin by cooling it. Available changes depend on the material.
The rock cycle has many possible routes rather than one required circle. Cooling magma makes igneous rock; weathering produces sediment; compaction and cementation make sedimentary rock. Heat and pressure make metamorphic rock, while melting returns solid rock to magma. Processes happen instantly here but often take very long in nature. Weathering includes breakdown and transport to the sediment store. This model omits detailed mineral changes and tectonic settings.
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Learn with Rock Cycle Journey
Rock Cycle Journey introduces elementary students to several possible pathways among Earth materials. Begin with magma and choose a process that can act on the current material. Cooling, weathering, compaction and cementation, heat and pressure, and melting lead to different destinations. The scene highlights the current material and records the places visited. Goals require particular destinations and intermediate materials, so students explore routes beyond one fixed circle. Available buttons help distinguish changing solid rock through heat and pressure from melting rock into magma.
What to look for
Explore branching routes
Solid rocks can weather or melt. Igneous and sedimentary rock can become metamorphic.
Separate heat from melting
Heat and pressure change solid rock. Melting makes magma and cooling makes igneous rock.
For teachers and curious learners
Trace valid transformations among magma, igneous rock, sediment, sedimentary rock and metamorphic rock. Ask students to predict what will happen, change one setting, and explain what they observe. Learn gives a starting point. Practice and Challenge offer new goals with the same scene.
Process changes are instantaneous and represent long geological transformations. Weathering includes breakdown and transport to a sediment store. Mineral details, tectonic settings and exact timescales are omitted.