UGS Hosted Earth Science Week

Local students discover the excitement of geology while panning for pyrite, magnetite, and other minerals at the ‘gold’ panning troughs.

SALT LAKE CITY (November 6, 2024) — UGS scientists, staff, and volunteers recently hosted over 400 school students from second to sixth grades for the annual Earth Science Week (ESW). Spanning two weeks, ESW provided students from Salt Lake and Tooele counties with a two-hour field trip to the Utah Core Research Center, where they engaged in five hands-on, interactive stations including learning about earthquakes and discovering where and how they happen, examining dinosaurs and ice age fossils in the paleontology lab, and panning for pyrite (also known as fool’s gold) and other minerals.

Earth Science Week, celebrated in the second full week of October, was established in 1998 by the American Geosciences Institute to promote public appreciation and understanding of the earth sciences and to encourage Earth stewardship.

Since initiating ESW for schools in 2001, the UGS has welcomed over 15,000 elementary and middle school students from over 80 Utah schools. Thousands of teachers, parents, and geoscience volunteers have also participated in this educational event.

For more information, including details on attending or volunteering, please visit https://geology.utah.gov/teachers/earth-science-week/.