Q: What do the following household items have in common: pencil, refrigerator, clock radio, vacuum cleaner, mirror

A: Each is made from minerals!

Brilliant and beautiful, raw and refined, the California Academy of Sciences’ exhibit: Gems and Minerals Unearthed, features nearly 400 dazzling and diverse geologic specimens that showcase and clearly demonstrate how these natural wonders have influenced ancient and modern cultures. Featuring artifacts from the Academy’s anthropology collection, including jewelry and decorative objects from around the world, visitors will see the wide influence and use of gems and minerals in art, craft, and fashion, inspiring creativity and human ingenuity for centuries.

Where molten rock cools and salt water evaporates minerals are formed becoming one of the planet’s most valuable resources. There are over 5,300 known mineral species. Minerals compose over 90% of the Earth's crust and perhaps most important, the diversity and abundance of mineral species is controlled by the Earth's chemistry. The Academy’s exhibit highlights the innovative ways minerals have helped to advance civilizations, from the Stone Age to the Space Age, making modern devices like smartphones, solar panels, and satellites possible through use of rare earth elements. The exhibit also explores the essential—and often invisible—role minerals play in our own bodies, supplying essential elements from calcium and phosphorous that make bones and teeth strong to metals like zinc and copper that assist with chemical reactions that impact our blood pressure, immune system, metabolism, and more.

The exhibit is called Gems and Minerals Unearthed, so what about gems and gemstones? From tourmaline and turquoise to rubies and sapphires, it’ll be easy to marvel at the enormous diversity of colors, textures, and properties found in all the beautiful, brilliant gemstones the Academy has on display. But we tend to forget that the gems we see used in jewelry and decorative art—faceted, polished, and sparkly and expensive—come from deep within the Earth. A gemstone is a highly attractive and valuable piece of cut and polished mineral. For thousands of years, people have been developing tools to shape and polish the hard, dull-looking minerals into rare gemstone treasures. While gems usually get first billing, there are no gems without minerals.

After immersing yourself in the world of color found in gemstones, wander over and check out the color of nature as seen among species, in one of the most interesting exhibits at the California Academy of Sciences, The Color of Life. The 8,000 square foot exhibit features a crazy combination of cool creatures and high-tech hands-on displays immersing visitors in a color-rich, multisensory space filled with eye-popping visuals at every turn – all designed to illustrate nature’s loudest universal, yet secret, language: color.

There’s also the natural history museum with a towering T-Rex skeleton, a 4-stories-tall rainforest, all found in one place, under one roof: at the California Academy of Sciences.

Opportunities to visit the California Academy of Sciences are available throughout the month of March:

   • March 7 through March 13 (requests for these dates must be confirmed by March 2)
   • March 14 through March 20 (requests for these dates must be confirmed by March 9)
   • March 21 through March 27 (requests for these dates must be confirmed by March 16)
   • March 28 through March 31 (requests for these dates must be confirmed by March 23)

You must select one of the following arrival times:

11:00AM l 11:30AM l 12:00PM l 12:30PM l 1:00PM l 1:30PM l 2:00PM l 2:30PM

If you are an ACFPA member and would like to request tickets, please fill out the following form.