June 13, 2006

Float copper. Float. Copper. Giant chunks of....of....of copper. Just....out there. ... Gosh.

I'm still boggling. It comes from glacial activity apparently. Float is a geological term used to denote any material that has been carried by erosion away from its spot of formation. A slab of rock slides down a hill. It is now float. A glacier carries a rock a hundred miles and drops it as it melts. That rock is now both drift and float, whose source is "up glacier" somewhere. Thus, in our area ,"drift copper"and "float copper" refer to the same thing. The Smithsonian has one as well, the Ontonagon Boulder (and this is interesting too; scroll down to the bit where the mine shaft parallels the copper seam) and anyway....wow. You can buy smaller specimens of float copper.

posted by polychrome 18 years ago
  • That's interesting. I was entirely unaware of float copper.
  • It's that bloody pole again, innit. It doesn't exist, I tell you, despite what Scopes the monkey tells us.
  • Could this happen with iron? This could clear up an historical mystery.
  • A glacier carries a rock a hundred miles and drops it as it melts. We like to call that an "erratic dropstone," because it implies mental illness and drug use in the rock.
  • > Could this happen with iron? i don't know if "float iron" could be the result of glacial activity, but it has been extracted from meteorites.
  • Fascinating. This reminds me of the bit in Iain Banks 'The Crow Road', where the father tells the group of kids that the large piles of rocks by the river docks are not ballast dumped by the ships, but rocks from the gullets of huge dinosaurs that were left when the beasts died. But children beware of ballast! Unwelcome visitors might be aboard...
  • The crab's testicles are considered a delicacy in Chinese and Japanese restaurants, where they are eaten raw. Er? Tell me this: who is the guy who first realizes that crab testicles are yummy? And, how many other things did that guy eat that weren't so yummy? I seriously suspect teenagers and the scientific method are responsible.
  • I ate a water snail from a mate's pond when I was a teenager and bunking off school. I have yet to see this delicacy in any restaurant round my way.
  • So, this copper... it floats?
  • We all float down here.
  • "Shaped like Lake Superior." Holy crap, that's erie.
  • when I was a teenager and bunking off school Tsk! *puts kitfisto on report, AGAIN*
  • *dips Koko's pigtails in the inkwell*
  • Bunking off! I haven't heard that expression in YEARS!!! I was the king of bunking off.
  • I hope you know, that this will go down on your permanent record.
  • Call the papers and tell them that, you rotten, dirty, lying copper! (I thought the article referred to a police officer killed in the line of action and dumped into the river.)
  • Float copper is cool. My mom used to find small bits growing up in the UP. (Upper Peninsula of Michigan, from whence this float came). That land could have gone to another state, but was given to Michigan as a sop to ease the pain of losing Toledo to Ohio. Yeah, you take that little strip of land, Ohio - we'll settle for this swampy cold peninsula that is frickin LOADED with copper and iron. Sure. Good trade, eh? SUCK IT OHIO! Anyway there's a big-ass hunk of float in the museum in Lansing if you don't wanna drive all the way to the Keweenaw just to see some yourself.