ShmoopTube

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[ musical flourish ]

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And here's your Shmoop du jour, brought to you by... rocks.

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Whether you need a chair, a pet,

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or just an emergency bludgeon,

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rocks are there.

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Check out the following passage. Petrified wood.

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[ mumbles ]

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Which of the following assumptions would be reasonable

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given the information in the passage?

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And here are the potential answers. [ glass breaks ]

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For anyone who loves plants but wishes they weren't

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so darn green and full of life,

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well, nature has you covered.

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What inferences can we make about the petrification process?

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Well, the only age-related thing

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the text mentions is that it takes a hundred years

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for wood to petrify.

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That means we could have petrified wood from the Stone Age.

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Or the Industrial Age.

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There's nothing saying it's more common from one era or another.

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So we can rule out option A.

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And while petrified wood is made up of many

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ordinary minerals such as quartz,

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there's no mention of valuable minerals.

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Not getting rich off the petrified forest there,

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so sorry, C. You're out.

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And there's also no mention that petrification is more common

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in one location or another.

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It can happen, well, anywhere.

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But we do know that during petrification,

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organic wood turns to rock.

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And one thing we know about rocks is that they're hard.

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So we can assume that, unlike normal trees,

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petrified rocks are also hard,

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making B the correct answer.

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Didn't answering that question just...

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rock? See? Rocks are funny, too.

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[ crickets chirp ]

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Well, not all the time.

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