Meteorite

Backblipped for 18th January

Our morning's activity began with a U3A Geology visit to the National Museum Collections Centre in Granton, to be shown round the labs, where conservation and repairs are undertaken, then across to the Minerals collections, where we were allowed to rummage among their specimens and handle some of the more interesting.


Main photo of Peter Davidson, Senior Curator of Mineralogy, demonstrating a special item in the museum collection, one of the four parts of a meteorite that fell in Strathmore, Perthshire in 1917. In fact,  an exhibition to celebrate its centenary was held in the Chambers Street Museum but we were too busy to see it at that time.


We also learned that the binomial system of classification that Carl Linnaeus introduced was not limited the the Kingdoms of plants and animals but included one for minerals, however subsequent knowledge of the origin of rocks determined that this was unsuitable. Among the prized museum collections is one from Rev John Walker (extra photo) who collected various building stones from around the world and each specimen is labelled, in his own hand, in the old Linnaean system.


We all agreed that the visit was far too short for our aged brains to assimilate all the museum has to offer but had to allow time for the second group to take their tour, it will be interesting to compare notes at the next monthly meeting.