Exploring Rocks with ProScopes

The students in Mrs. Baum’s class used the ProScope, a hand-held USB microscope, to view a variety of igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic rocks. They were looking for different properties in the rocks to determine what type of rock it may be. For example, if the rock had a striped appearance, it’s probably sedimentary because the sediments pile up in layers to form this rock. With the ProScope, students can easy click and take a picture of their magnified rock. They were so excited about the pictures they took and wanted to share them with their classmates, so we used Google Classroom to upload their photos. The students logged into Google Classroom and created a post in which they attached a picture of their rock and typed what rock type they thought they were viewing. Some students even took a guess at the actual name of the rock. It was a fun lesson and the kids were amazed at how the rocks looked when they were magnified 200 times!