Minerals and rocks
The Science Museum of the University of Navarra has a collection of more than 1,000 specimens of rocks, minerals and fossils. The specimens come mainly from donations from the Colegio de Nuestra Señora del Buen Consejo de Lekaroz (rocks, minerals and fossils) and from the personal collection of D. Manuel Martel, consisting mainly of minerals of great beauty and size. The collections are structured in such a way that the visitor can discover our planet a little more closely: its composition, but also the dynamics that make the conditions of formation of rocks and minerals (pressure and temperature) vary and give us rocks and minerals of incredible beauty.
In the part of the rocks the collection on display shows several didactic routes. One, the essential one in which the rocks are separated according to their formation environments (sedimentary, igneous and metamorphic) and another in which some of the uses given to rocks are shown, from their use as construction materials to the extraction of some essential elements for our life.
In the case of the mineralsIn the case of minerals, the collection presents a variety of routes, starting with a sample of the physical characteristics that lead us to identify and classify minerals according to their structure. The main physical properties of minerals are shown with examples. From the atomic scale, i.e. the unit cell that indicates the geometry formed by the arrangement of the atoms and which, repeated infinitely in the three directions of space, gives us the minerals (and which, only sometimes, can be recognised in the geometry of the minerals) to the macroscopic scale, showing groups of large minerals. The tour continues with a complete display of the different groups of differentiated minerals as well as some of the uses that humans have made of minerals from prehistoric times to the present day.
Finally, the collection has some examples of the most abundant fossils in the mountains around us, as well as examples of extinct groups such as trilobites and fossils The fossils are organised in such a way as to provide an overview of some of the most important groups in the evolution of life on the planet, giving us an idea of the evolution of life on the planet. The fossils are organised in such a way as to provide an overview of some of the most important groups in the evolution of life on the planet, giving us an idea of what the planet and its life forms were like from more than 500 million years ago to the present day.