What is this rock?

with a sulfur smell it could be a clinker from a mill, but Its been washed in the water for pretty long (Put a quarter next to it , and photo it again so we can see it in scale).

Im leaning toward an arkose, which is a sandstone containing clasts of all kinds of rocks including feldspars. The pock marking in arkoses is usually due to chemical and physical wrosion of the feldspars as they dissolve into clay minerals and then get washed away.
The tumbled look of the rock indicates its been in an energy water envionment.

Man, if it's arkose, won't it show crumbly if scratched

I ask this as if I know something you don't, highly unlikely

It looks to me like a highly-worn chunk of bubbly lava so how far off the block have I ventured

Hello again guys, thanks for the attempts at identifying this for us. It is solid, it is not crumbly and it does not scratch. The actual color of it is closer in this photo than the other that I posted.[/URL]

now it looks more like a diabase or some other acidic igneous rock. that could be, it may be an eroded porphyry where the feldspars have been dissolved or "Picked" out of the matrix. The colors are very different from the first shot. Without a color wheel or a color screen I hve no way of being more accurate than that.

It doesnt look like its an unusual rock so if you knock a chunk off to expose FRESH surface, we may be able to tell better

Composition aside, it has been tumbled, probably in a stream. Glacial rocks that small appear different, less rounded .

Nice looking rock, there. I know no geology at all. I follow the geology threads for the beauty of the rocks, and for enjoying geology chat.

I still have my uncle's collection from his exploring years; he died in '45 when I was 3.. I'd send it on to you, Farmer, but I figure the last thing you need is more rocks.

Also have his wooden tool kit; he was head of tool and die at Douglas Aircraft..
I should donate it, I think, if I knew who to donate it to. He died of a heart attack fairly young just after they all finished a new plane, name of which I don't remember, but I've a photo somewhere in my clump of stuff.

Still, is it magnetic

(It does not appear to be magnetic.)

Farmerman,
Thanks for all of your clues. I Googled your guesses. I honestly think either of your guesses could be correct. We like the rock as it is...so breaking it is not an option. So I guess we will never know for sure...but at least we almost know! 🙂
To be honest, my nephew had hoped he had found a meteorite...but he still loves the rock. It was the sulfer/ burnt smell that I found interesting.

Thank you all for your help!

its definately NOT a meteorite.

If you have a university or college with a geo department nearby, Im sure they would be happy to do a positive ID, by a close exam of the specimen . Id use a loupe of at least 15X power and look at the shapes of the little grins in the matrix. If they are rounded or stratifies, its a sed rock. If they are crytalline , its an igneous. Its also NOT metamorphic because I dont see any structure or minerasl associated with such rocks.

Looks like basalt to me, but then I'm no geologist.

Actrually farmer I like and admire geologists - their studies subject matter and analytical approaches are unique - different from those in physics, even chemistry and biloogy. However, as an engineer i(harumph !! ) feel compelled to keep my distance.

I do enjoy the stories of How Lord Kelvin condescendingly discounted the initial findings of the Scottish geologists who, in the early/mid 19th Century opined that the earth is likely billions of years old. Nonsense Kelvin said - the sun couldn't possibly last that long, powered (he assumed) by gravitational contraction.

if , at least he would have begun much of his assertions with qn honest
"Well, Ive been thinking about the age of the earth and , I may be wrong here but...."

Were it not for all our amazing tools and instruments, perhaps we too wouldnt yet have all the inputs to the equations necessary to even speculate on the age of the sun and , therefore, the Solar System qnd the earth.

Yesterdxay I went and got a new bunch of Samsung phones and the guys at the shop were setting them up for us and we were playing with em and I was looking at the new gen of Sym Cards, Holy Crap!! . I began by taking some goofy selfies with me and a couple of our folks . The new phones have cameras that are 20 to 40 Megapixel and take beautiful big pictures and stoere em no problem. I have a quarter of a TERRABYTE on the damn thing and the guy at the store said a new terrabyte phone will be out very soon. (I think its all in the SYm card now).
We created a netwok of confidential files among several of the team and it took about 3 minutes of setup. WE used to need a staff of IT people big as a platoon just to get us computer literate. Now, its like the bridge of the ENterprise, the damn things tak voice commands on projects, Google, MAps.

I really wish Ida been born several decades later so I could be an innovator rather than just a damn user of this technology. I still need my Brunton Compass even though the damn phone does it all better by being hooked up to these damn satellites and to the Library of Congress at the same time..

JEEEZUS H........(nemind)

could be, the light is uneven so we have two different color casts. But a diabase and a porphyry have bigger crytqls than a basalt so , while theyre all in the same family, a pwerfect identification requires some work with a scope or a hndlens.

HEY, MAYBE THERES AN APP FOR THAT!!