Recently on a tour to the Newberry caldera, an 11 year old girl posed this question: "So if we melted this obisidian and re-cooled it, would it be the same texture?" I had been explaining about how obisidian rock forms by way of rapid cooling lava, with high silica content and low moisture...thinking of course that it was all way over the heads of the kids on the tour. But it was her question that made me stop my normal train of thought, and forced me to think outside the box. Melt this obsidian??? I thought about how much energy it would take to generate a couple thousand degrees of heat. The impracticality didn't matter, and there was no way I could get around explaining the logistics of the experiment to dodge the question: I needed to answer her! I supposed out loud that if we heated the obsidian enough, and then re-cooled the liquid at the same speed that it first cooled to form the original rock, then yes, we could reform the very same textured obsidian. She seemed satisfied with this answer; that the possibility existed, no matter how unlikely it was. She had many other great observations and questions throughout the rest of the aftenoon. Maybe she'll become a geologist some day, or at least maintain an interest in the rocks around us. But her question was one of the reasons I love having kids along on our tours--they ask the un-askable, the question from way out in left field, the question that many adults may preface with "This maybe a stupid question, but..." Those questions keep me on my toes, and make my day more interesting because I have to step outside of the box of my normal tour speeches to find a good answer.
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