Have
you ever wondered what it would be like to be on a mountain that was as hot as
the sun? Well, if you were standing
on a volcano that was pouring out lava, that’s what it would be like.
Volcanoes
are so amazing! You can find
volcanoes all over the world even under the sea.
But so far they have never found any in Canada.
A
volcano starts deep in the earth. Inside
the earth the rock is very soft and it is called magma.
When the magma gets too hot it explodes out of the earth and now it is
called lava.
There
are different kinds of lava. A
small piece of lava that goes into the air is called volcanic dust.
If the lava is smaller than an apple, it is called volcanic ash. But if the pieces are larger than an apple they are called
volcanic bombs.
Some
volcanic dust has been pushed up as high as 17 miles into the air.
That’s high!
Volcanic
bombs have enough power to blast through the roof of a house.
Lava
is very dangerous. It can kill people! The
only way to get near lava is by wearing a special suit.
Volcanologists wear the suits when they are studying volcanoes.
Do
you know what a volcanologist is? Volcanologists
study volcanoes so that they can predict eruptions.
They use special equipment like a seismograph to measure the tremors of a
volcano.
Before
an eruption, the magma builds up inside the volcano and the volcano starts to
shake. The Volcanologists study
this and sometimes they can predict an eruption weeks a head of time.
Lava
takes a long time to cool. Sometimes
even years!
Something
else that is interesting, is that volcanos can be covered with snow or ice and
when they erupt they can cause a mudslide.
The
Mauna Loa volcano in Hawaii is the largest volcano in the world and the Stomboli
volcano in Italy erupts every 20 minutes.
Wow!
Can you imagine living near a volcano that erupts every 20 minutes?
I think I would move!
Most
volcanoes erupt for 3 or 4 weeks and then they rest, but some erupt for many
years, like the Stomboli volcano.
New
volcanoes are always forming under the sea, but no one knows they are there
until they erupt.
Volcanoes
are very noisy when they erupt. Noisier
than a jet! Sometimes a big boom
from a volcano can be heard hundreds of miles away.
There
are some good things about volcanoes.
The
dust from volcanoes can be good fertilizer to help plants grow better and faster
and that is why some people like to live near them.
But
I think I still like living in Canada where there are no volcanoes…Yet!
Thank
you.
By:
Aaron B. - Grade 3