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Department of Conservation - Kids & Educators 

Make Room In Your Brain,
There's a World of Knowledge in These Pages

The Department of Conservation Web site is chock full o' fun facts and interesting information that students and teachers can use for school projects and, well, just plain learning.  It's a great place to find out about earthquakes, oil and natural gas production, beverage container recycling, California agricultural lands, and mining. For instance, did you know that California has the top-producing mining industry in the nation? That's right, $3.27 billion worth in 2001. But it's not "Gold Rush" type of mining, because today only 4 percent of production in California comes from precious metals like gold and silver. These days, it's construction materials such as sand and gravel (we mined $953 million worth in 2001) that lead the way.

Here's a few more tidbits to get you started (come back another time to find some new ones!). Then, follow the links below to other areas of this Web site for more articles, trivia and news you can use. 

Recycling

  • By recycling a single aluminum can, we save enough energy to run a television for up to three hours.
  • Each minute, Californians recycle more than 13,000 aluminum cans, about 7 billion are recycled per year. But also each year, approximately 2.5 billion aluminum cans end up in California's trash.
  • Glass takes more than one million years to decompose (break down and disappear) in our garbage dumps.
  • Glass can be recycled over and over and over again, conserving natural resources since glass is made from the minerals soda ash, limestone and sand (lots of sand!)
  • Recycled glass melts at a lower temperature than new materials, so it takes less energy to heat the furnace for recycled glass than to heat the furnace to make glass out of new materials

Geology

  • There are hundreds of earthquakes in California every year, but most of them are so small humans can't even feel them.

  • California's most-famous earthquake shook up San Francisco in 1906 -- a magnitude 7.8 quake that caused 3,000 deaths and $524 million in property damage.

  • Vibrations produced by earthquakes -- even the small ones people can't feel -- are detected, recorded, and measured by instruments called seismographs. These devices may amplify ground motions beneath the instruments to over 1 million times. The ground motion activates a writing arm on the seismograph, which translates the ground motion into a wiggly trace pattern called a seismogram. Scientists look at the seismogram to learn things about the earthquake -- such as how big it was and how deep in the ground it took place.

  • And in a non-earthquake related bit of information: The saber-toothed cat is California's Official State Fossil!

Visit these "Kids & Educators" Sections on our Web site