You maybe have already seen a volcanic eruption on the news or on social media. I at least then always asked myself how this fascinating natural wonder can take place. If you also ask yourself how a volcanic eruption takes place than this article is just right for you.
From History or Latin lessons you might also know from Mount Vesuvius and its eruption that destroyed Pompeii and some other important Roman cities. This Volcano is also the only one on the European mainland to have erupted in the last 100 years.
But now lets get back to what happens when a volcano erupts.
As you might already know the inside of the earth is super hot with about 6000 degrees in the center. It is so hot that rocks melt slowly to a gooey substance that we know under the name magma. Because this magma is lighter than the surrounding rocks it rises in to magma chambers. This magma then as soon as the magma chamber is full then pushes through vents up to the earth surface as soon as the magma has erupted from the chambers it is no longer called magma but lava.
But one volcanic eruption is not the same to another. An volcanic eruption can either be explosive like at the Mount saint Hellen in Washington or it can be super calm where the magma just flows out of the volcano that type of eruption is super common in Hawaii. But what happens differently in those eruptions. The difference lays in the consistency of the magma, the magma in calm eruptions is thin and runny in this case the gas can escape and it does not accumulate. In an explosive eruption the magma thick and sticky, here gases can not escape quickly and they accumulate under the magma till at one point it violently explodes. Here the magma gets blasted into the air and breaks in to pieces that can be small particles or really big boulders these pieces are called tephra.
Explosive volcano eruptions can be very dangerous and in some cases even deadly because we can not really predict how the tephra is going to move. The tephra clouds race down their path destroying everything that is in their way. The ash that got erupted into the sky at one pint comes down on the ground just like powdery snow and if it is thick enough these ash blankets can suffocate plants, animals and humans. An other option is that the hot volcanic materials mix up with water, ice or snow and then mudflows form, these mudflows called lahars have in the past buried whole communities under them.
Fun fact for the end did you know that there are also volcanoes under the earth?! An eruption of underwater volcanoes takes place the same way as the ones on the surface just that we mostly cant really see them erupting.
I do hope that with this article you now have learned more about volcanoes so that the next time you see one on the news you can impress your friends and family with your knowledge.