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Pasta Coquina: Make Your Own Sedimentary Rock
What is coquina? What is it made of?
- 1 disposable cup
- 1/2 cup of pasta, at least three shapes and sizes (shells, macaroni, rotelle, whatever you’ve got)
- 2 tablespoons water
- 1 disposable stirrer
- 2 tablespoons white glue
- 1 piece of wax paper
- 1 sample of coquina
- 1 magnifying glass
- 1 piece of paper and a pencil
- Take a small amount of the pasta (maybe about a quarter of it) and break it into smaller pieces.
- Put all of the pasta, whole and broken, into the cup.
- Pour the water over the pasta and use the stirrer to stir it around until all of it is wet all over. Pour out the water out carefully.
- Put the glue in the cup with the wet pasta and stir it until the pasta is evenly coated with it.
- Dump the glue-coated pasta out onto the wax paper and leave it out to dry where it won’t be messed with.
- Leave it to dry completely (this may take a day or so).
- Pick up your homemade sample and look it over carefully. Draw a close-up picture of it showing the different shapes.
Coquina is a sedimentary rock that’s formed when seawater minerals cement seashells and sand together.
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