UW hosts gem and mineral show

The annual gem and mineral show hosted by UW’s Earth Sciences Museum took place on Friday, Oct. 25 and Saturday, Oct. 26 at the Centre for Environmental and Information Technology. The free event showcased minerals and gems from multiple Canadian vendors such as Adventure Visuals and the KW Gem & Mineral Club. On Saturday, the Kids Science Open House took place at STC and EIT. The open house included over 50 free hands-on activities. 

This year’s show featured fun activities, including the popular fossil fish digging experience. The mitigating microplastics was a brand new activity added this year, and also a program for high school students at the science museum. Corina McDonald, the Earth Sciences Museum curator, said that “microplastics are a huge concern right now in our society we’re still learning about them, but bringing awareness to them I think is really important and that’s one of the things that we try to do.” In this activity, students first learn about the different plastics we have or different plastics that are produced, and then they learn about how they break down in the environment and get a soil sample. They get to examine the soil sample and pick out the different microplastics that they can see, and sort them into the different categories of plastics. 

In addition to activities, there were many vendors on display – some were local, such as Cambrian Gemcraft of Waterloo. Others came from further out, such as The Amber Room of Kingston, known for their amethyst, the provincial mineral of Ontario. McDonald added that the Ontario Geologic Survey attended, set up a booth and displayed minerals you can find all over the province. 

Mining Matters, an organization that is part of the Prospectors and Association of Canada also joined this year’s show. “They create programming for teachers and students all over Canada and they ship activities to schools all over the place,” McDonald explained. She explained how they’re advising how we can responsibly mine minerals and clean up the mine sites. McDonald said Mining Matters brought a new activity that has never been seen before. “They’ve deconstructed a cell phone and show visitors the different metals that are used to make that cell phone. They have examples of those metals so visitors can also see how they’re used on the phone,” she said.

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