Academic Quad-East Academic Quad-West Baker Institute Herring Hall Shepherd, RMC Cohen House and Allen Center Engineering Quad Hamman Hall, Herman Brown, and Mudd Residential Colleges President's House Science Buildings Main Page Contact		Baker Institute, Herring Hall, Shepherd, and RMC Baker Institute | Herring Hall | Rice Memorial Center   Baker Institute Jamail Plaza on the north side of James A. Baker III Hall is home to this beautiful fountain with five geysers. The base of the fountain is made of two types of dark granite, A and B, shown below. A B The fountain, completed in 1999, is a wonderful asset to the building stones on the Rice campus. In addition to the striking black stones shown above, the floor of the fountain has a third kind of granite. This third granite, a white granite, is shown on the left. Adjacent to it is a fourth stone, a black rock comprising the majority of the floor of the fountain. You can see crystals about an inch long throughought these brick-sized stones.  A  B   The main floor in the Baker Institute building is a marvelous example of beautiful stone-working on campus. Picture A shows serpentinite which is composed mainly of serpentine. Serpentinite is a metamorphic rock from an ultramafic protolith. Picture B shows a rock with a texture similar to the serpentinite in A, except that the colors vary from black to red instead of green. This red color indicates that the rock is iron rich.      back to top   Herring Hall The rock garden in the Herring Hall courtyard contains beautiful stones from all over the world. The 16th Economic Summit of Industrialized Nations was held at William Marsh Rice University on July 9, 10, and 11, 1990. US, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, UK, and the Delegation of the Commission of the European Communities each donated a stone to commemorate the summit. These eight along with Texas Granite from Rice make up the rock garden. This picture shows the Jura Stone Granite from Germany. This rock is slightly pink in color and mostly aphanitic (crystals are too small to see with the unaided eye). There are only a few visible quartz grains and some tiny black spots which are probably biotite. The rest is very fine-grained and difficult to distinguish minerals. There are some abnormalities that look like fossil remains. Though the rock is actually labeled as a granite, the texture and fossil remains indicate that it may be a sandstone.   This rock, also in the Herring Hall courtyard, is labeled Japan Inada Granite; however the proper rock name for this is a tonalite and not a granite because it does not appear to have any potassium feldspar. The modal abundances are as follows: quartz - 45%, subhedral crystals ~0.5 cm plagioclase - 40%, subhedral ~0.5 cm biotite - 15%, subhedral ~3 mm     This Blue Bahia Granite can also be found in the Herring Hall courtyard. This rock is unusual because of its swirled appearance and its high sodalite content. Sodalite is a rare tectosilicate with a rich distinguishing blue color and named in allusion to its sodium content. The swirls of the rock indicate that the rock may be metamorphic, and it probably should not be called a granite. Perhaps a better name for it is sodalite monzosyenite. Here are the modal percentages: sodalite - 40% plagioclase - 30% amphibole - 25% K-feldspar - 5%   This picture shows the greenish Burlington Stone Slate from the UK.      back to top   Rice Memorial Center This picture shows the serpentinite above the east side of the Rice Memorial Center (RMC, also called the Student Center) above the Chapel. This intricate pattern is made from yellow and green tiles and black serpentinite probably similar to that found in Hamman Hall. Unfortunately this stone is not easily accessible therefore making it difficult to examine closely. On top of these pillars rest two wise owls carved in limestone. The pillars and their accompanying owls welcome visitors who pass along the pathway to the Chapel in the RMC. This closeup of one of the marble pillars shows the black minerals which appear like stripes from far away. These black minerals are actually biotite grains and the white is perhaps a quartzite.   back to top Academic Quad-East Academic Quad-West Baker Institute, Herring Hall, Shepherd and RMC Cohen House and Allen Center Engineering Quad Hamman Hall, Herman Brown, and Mudd Residential Colleges President's House Science Buildings Main Page Department of Geology and Geophysics, Rice University, Houston.