Where did the change begin?
Labs / Geography
Drive the Rock Cycle
You have one rock sample, and it starts as glowing magma. Apply a geologic process — only the ones that are physically possible right now light up — and watch the sample crystallize, crumble, layer, or band as it travels between igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic rock. Click a process button or tap a node on the wheel.
Labs / Geography / Drive the Rock Cycle
Drive the Rock Cycle
You have one rock sample, and it starts as glowing magma. Apply a geologic process — only the ones that are physically possible right now light up — and watch the sample crystallize, crumble, layer, or band as it travels between igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic rock. Click a process button or tap a node on the wheel.
Why it matters
Why explore this?
Geography explains how places, people, and Earth systems affect one another. This model lets you change one factor and watch its effects spread across space.
Explore
Try the model
Rock MagmaType MoltenProcess —T 1200°CP 8 kbar
Investigate
Questions to test
Predict first, try it in the model, then use what you observe to answer.
What to try
- Can you make sedimentary rock without ever passing through magma first?
- Which process is available from every solid rock, and why does that make it a shortcut back to the start?
- What has to happen before loose sediment can become solid rock again?
- Turn on the conditions gauge: which state sits at the highest temperature, and which at the highest pressure?
- Can a metamorphic rock become a different metamorphic rock, or does it have to leave that corner of the cycle first?
Explain
Make sense of what happened
Connect the pattern to place: identify where the change begins, where its effects appear, and which process links those locations.
Check
Before you leave
What spatial pattern appeared?
Which process connects the cause and effect?
If you can answer all three using evidence from the model, you understand the main idea. If not, return to Explore and change one setting at a time.