While most kids spent their summer hanging around town or playing video games, Andrew Alder and Zackary Alder-Hills were busy exploring abandoned mines in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.
The Oxford cousins participated in a summer youth program at Michigan Technological University in Houghton where they spent a week in July studying mineralogy and field geology in the Keweenaw Peninsula.
Keweenaw contains unique and beautiful geology, including the largest lava flow in the world.
During the program, the boys visited the historic Delaware Copper Mine to study rocks and enjoy an underground picnic.
In operation from 1847-1887, the 1,400-foot deep Delaware Copper Mine yielded 8 million pounds of copper during its lifetime.
Andrew and Zack also visited the Quincy Mine near Hancock. In operation between 1846-1945, the mine was the nation’s leading copper producer from 1862-82.
The boys got a chance to collect some rock samples of their own, such as agates and quartz, on a beach in Copper Harbor.
On campus, Zack and Andrew toured Michigan Tech’s A.E. Seaman Mineral Museum, which houses more than 30,000 specimens from around the world, of which approximately 5,000 are on exhibit.
‘It’s got like almost every rock in it,? said Zack, who’s a seventh-grader at Oxford Middle School.
Andrew, who’s a seventh-grader at Berkshire Middle School in Birmingham and a resident of Oxford Lakes, was particularly fascinated by a rock from India called flexible sandstone, which he described as ‘like Play-Doh.?
‘You could fling it up and down, and it would bend,? he said.
Flexible sandstone is basically ordinary sandstone with flakes of mica in it. It’s these mica flakes which make the rock flexible.
While collecting and learning about rocks and minerals is a fun hobby, the boys don’t plan to make careers of it. They want to go into ‘math-related? fields like architecture or engineering.
To learn more about Michigan Tech’s summer youth programs visit www.youthprograms.mtu.edu.