Leicester geologist to present rock-licking trick for Hallowe’en treat at Royal Institution
If you are looking for a treat this Hallowe’en, the Royal Institution in London will be hosting a University of Leicester geologist as he explains the benefits of licking rocks.
While it might sound more like a trick, there are fascinating insights from this unusual technique that tell us much about where the study of geology has come from.
Emeritus Professor Jan Zalasiewicz from the School of Geography, Geology and the Environment will be discussing them in detail at a special Ig Nobel Face-to-Face event on Friday 31 October, where members of the public will get to hear from winners of the infamous awards that make people laugh, then think.
Professor Zalasiewicz won the Ig Nobel Prize for Chemistry and Geology in 2023, for his essay in the Palaeontological Association newsletter on why many scientists like to lick rocks. In the past, geologists licked rocks to help identify minerals – and even today, it’s still useful to lick rocks, as wetting the surface of the rock allows fossil and mineral textures to stand out more clearly.
Today, geologists have a host of techniques available to them to study the composition of rocks, fossils and minerals, but in the past, their toolbox was considerably more limited. Professor Zalasiewicz’s essay highlighted that while technology has changed much in the discipline, geological fieldwork can still be very much low-tech and improvisatory, and based on local skills picked up by lots of practical experience.
Professor Zalasiewicz is usually better known for his work on the proposal of the Anthropocene – a new geological epoch in which human activities dominate the surface geology of Earth. Earlier this year, he also co-authored Discarded: How Technofossils Will be Our Ultimate Legacy with Professor Sarah Gabbott, also from the School of Geography, Geology and the Environment.
The Ig Nobel Prizes honour achievements so surprising that they make people LAUGH, then THINK. The prizes are intended to celebrate the unusual, honour the imaginative — and spur people’s interest in science, medicine, and technology. At the Ig Nobel Face-to-Face event on 31 October, he will be sharing the bill with fellow Ig Nobel winners Vikash Kumar and Kees Moeliker, and joined by Marc Abrahams, founder of the Ig Nobel Prizes.
Professor Zalasiewicz said: “Humour is a very good way to make science more approachable – and it helps make you think, too.”