Making Volcanoes - Science

AIM: To create the simulation of a volcano eruption.

Method:

Get a flat piece of cardboard. (Or flatten a box).

Get a 700ml bottle and place it in the middle of the cardboard.

Make glue (a little salt, water, flour).

Get a lot of newspaper and scrunch it up into balls.

Use your glue to stick the scrunched up paper onto the bottle. (Repeat this until you have a pyramid volcano shape)

Rip strips of newspaper and place them onto the scrunched newspaper with glue to smooth out the volcano's surface.

Paint your volcano and try to get a reference volcano to paint to.

Put 50ml of H2O2, a drop of food colouring, and a squirt of soap into the bottle of your volcano.

In a beaker put 30ml of water, 2 spat of potassium iodide, and dissolve it by mixing it together. 

Get outside and then put the beaker mixture into the volcano. WATCH IT ERUPT.

Results:

Discussion:

How do volcanoes form?
On land, volcanoes form when one tectonic plate shifts itself under another tectonic plate. Usually, when this happened it is a thin, heavy, oceanic plate descends below a thicker continental plate. The oceanic plates water gets trapped with it under the continental plate which causes the water to slip out and make some rocks melt into magma. The melted rock, magma, is lighter than the rock surrounding it which makes the magma rise up to the magma chamber. 

The magma stays in the magma chamber for a while as the gas and the steam builds up. When it releases the pent up gas it causes the volcano to erupt the magma turning it into lava. The lava streams down the volcano as the smoke surrounds the area and pollutes the air. That is how volcanoes work.

What is the difference between magma and lava?
Magma is melted rock that is found under the Earth's surface. Lava is molten rock that has reached Earth's surface through the volcanoes vents.

Conclusion:

The experiment was super fun to set up and during the waiting process with the paint and glue, we worked on learning a bit more about volcanoes and what makes them work the way they do. It was educational and our volcano was the best eruption of the day. We had a smaller bottle hole so our one came out in a line whereas other peoples volcanos came out more like a blob. If I were to do it again I would make the volcano more sturdy by compacting the newspaper more and them using more glue to stick it down.