Active volcanoes generally occur close to the major tectonic plate boundaries.
Evidence for volcanism throughout geological time can be found in every Australian State and Territory, with extensive volcanism down the east coast during the past 60 million years. This volcanic activity can be divided into areas where large amounts of lava flowed from diffuse dykes and pipes over a wide area and others where volcanism was produced from either a single central vent or a cluster of vents.
A volcano is a vent or chimney which transfers molten rock known as magma from a depth to the Earth’s surface. Magma erupting from a volcano is called lava and is the material which builds up the cone surrounding the vent.
A volcano’s eruptive history may provide some clues. However, because only a small number of the world’s volcanoes have a known history it is extremely difficult to predict future eruptions, particularly for certain types of volcanoes. This problem is typified by using the repose period, or the time between eruptions to indicate the expected size and strength of an eruption.
Essay on Volcanoes
A volcano is active if it is erupting lava, releasing gas or generates seismic activity. A volcano is dormant if it has not erupted for a long time but could erupt again in the future. Once a volcano has been dormant for more than 10 000 years, it is termed extinct.
These erupt so explosively that little material builds up near the vent. Eruptions partly or entirely empty the underlying magma chamber which leaves the region around the vent unsupported, causing it to sink or collapse under its own weight. The resulting basin-shaped depression is roughly circular and is usually several kilometres or more in diameter.
Because the lava flows easily, it can move down gradual slopes over great distances from the volcanic vents. The lava flows are sufficiently slow for humans to outrun or outwalk them. This type of magma has a temperature between 800°C and 1200°C and is called basaltic magma.
Recently after reading a non-fiction book about volcanoes and earth quakes, it aroused an interest particularly about volcanoes with Miss 4 and 5. There was a number of questions and some misconceptions so we went on to explore these questions and then onto making our own homemade volcano.
To make the lava to mimic that of a real volcano you will need bicarbonate soda, red and yellow food colouring (or orange) and white vinegar.
Watching a homemade volcano erupt is a very exciting experience for young children as they watch and learn about the amazing power of these geological formations.
While we were waiting for the paint to dry we had a practice run to see how much bicarbonate soda and vinegar would be needed for the homemade volcano. To give you a bit of an idea, we used 4 tablespoons of bicarbonate soda and 1 cup of vinegar mixed with some red and yellow food dye.
What you will need?
Making your own homemade volcano is really simple and requires basic material that you can find around the home.
Making a homemade volcano is a fun and simple process that kids will take on a sense of pride, ownership and achievement of what they have accomplished. All this while learning new things and practicing some basic skills with an almighty eruption at the end. We repeated the eruption 3 times!
Sifting the bicarbonate soda into the funnel and about to pour in the vinegar…..you have to be super quick to get the funnel out. Miss 5 was standing by ready to grab it after Miss 4 poured in the vinegar.
Sifting the bicarbonate soda into the funnel and about to pour in the vinegar…..you have to be super quick to get the funnel out. Miss 5 was standing by ready to grab it after Miss 4 poured in the vinegar.
Tip – keep an old towel handy for the kids to wipe their hands on.
Our homemade volcano fizzing and frothing as the bicarbonate soda and vinegar react together.
Making your own homemade volcano is really simple and requires basic material that you can find around the home.
Some Simple Facts About Volcanoes
When the Paper Mache was dry, Miss 4 and 5 set to work to paint the volcano. We had watched a few videos on You Tube about volcanos and it was decided that the volcano needed to be black, dark grey and a little bit of brown.
Making a homemade volcano is a fun and simple process that kids will take on a sense of pride, ownership and achievement of what they have accomplished. All this while learning new things and practicing some basic skills with an almighty eruption at the end. We repeated the eruption 3 times!
To make the basic shape of a volcano I cut the middle of the plastic bottle out and then overlapped the two ends together securing it with masking tape. To give the volcano a more pyramid/mountain shape I then rolled newspaper into a tube shape and wrapped it around the base of the plastic bottle and securing it all with masking tape.
You will need an empty plastic bottle (this is 1 litre bottle), newspaper torn up in strips, PVA craft glue, masking tape and a container for the water and glue mixture.
The girls who are pictured working on letters and word writing are 3 and almost 5 years.
We used small portion cups with baking soda in one and red colored vinegar water in the other.
Exploring Earth and science concepts through art is hands on and developmental appropriate way for young children to learn about volcanos and lava.
I made a simple V is for volcano with construction paper and laminated it. The teacher guide suggested a paper volcano everyone could take turns writing on, but laminating it made it last longer. I know my kids respond well to using dry erase markers too.
Make & Play Volcano Art
Jurassic Lands including volcanos, Pangaea, Jurassic Plants, Extinction, and museum topics. Of course, volcanos are the favorite topic! See our V is for Volcano Preschool Activities including science and sensory, literacy and art.
After completely dried, we glued red tissue paper to to the top of the volcano to make it look like it was an erupting volcano.
Each month we focus on three letters. We receive these wonderful letter and phonics sets from Experience Curriculum. They include a large letter card with corresponding images. There are also uppercase and lowercase letter and picture cube cards for games like this.
I spent one on one time with those of my group who were interested in writing the letters and words. Their work was impressive!
So, ironically enough, I didn’t produce a schist, but I managed to accidentally make a fairly decent mafic volcano similar to what might be found in Iceland 🙂 I’ll have to try again for the schist sometime this spring.
I’ve talked before about the fact that I teach at a liberal arts college. In fact, all of my teaching positions have been at small colleges that have a strong emphasis on “writing across the curriculum.” I first came up with the idea for assigning a five-page analysis of a disaster flick when teaching a 6-week introductory Volcanoes & Civilization class. I had been encouraged to go for more qualitative, less quantitative assignments in the class and decided that a paper could serve as the final for the class. The students would have to take what they had learned over the course of the semester and apply the knowledge to deciding what was scientifically “correct” and “questionable” in a volcanic eruption portrayed by a film / TV show / cartoon. The assignment worked well, so when I taught Physical Geology the following semester, I gave them a slightly modified version of the paper. For them, it was a mid-semester project instead of a final substitute, but the students enjoyed the excuse to watch a movie & the papers turned out well.
I’ve also posted the list of movies / TV shows / cartoons that students have chosen over the four semesters I’ve used this assignment. The list is definitely not a complete list of volcano & earthquake disaster flicks, but it does have 90+ suggestions due to the size of my classes. If there’s a title you believe I should add or you have a comment about one already on the list, please just leave a comment below.
The blue & green sprinkles were not as heavy as the chocolate chips, so they simply homogenized within the “magma chamber” and gave the cake its green look. My oven also has issues, so even though the middle of the cake had originally swelled and was a good bit higher than the edges, during cooling the center “caldera” of the cake subsided. A similar process occurs with volcanoes when you remove the magma from the chamber either quickly (a massive eruption like Pinatubo in 1991) or slowly draining it (Mauna Loa from 1983-2001):
Who's writing?
Yesterday, Erik sent me a tweet about using disaster movies as paper topics. It was in response to a tweet I had previously sent about Laura’s Glacial Lake Agassiz post, so I don’t think Erik was aware that I have a Hollywood paper assignment that I’ve used several times. But it got me thinking about the assignment and I’ve decided to post it over on my Google site.
My original goal was to bake a metamorphic rock cake that had a bimodal distribution of porphyroblasts. I was going to use green & blue sprinkles to defining the schistose layering (micas) and two different sizes of chocolate chips (the normal & minis) to represent a bimodal garnet distribution. Instead of going the “easy” route, I decided to crack open my copy of Fannie Farmer and make the cake from scratch. This is what came out of the oven:
I had assumed that the viscosity of the cake batter would prevent the chocolate chips & sprinkles from moving very far within their original location in the pan. However, as the cake went into the oven, the viscosity of the batter went down and the “garnets” started to settle at the bottom of the pan. Which, had I had a way to capture the movement, would have been a great example of crystal settling within a magma chamber:
(this submission to the Accretionary Wedge #30 Bake Sale is late due to a missing camera. Luckily, someone found my camera and now I can show off my baking “mistake”)