Saturday, March 20, 2010

Volcanic Eruptions by Emily Lim

Volcanoes form where the Earth's crust and outer skin is weak. There, gas and hot melted rock called magma buried underground bursts through the surface, causing volcanic eruptions.

Volcanoes can be classified into three groups: firstly,active volcanoes, secondly, dormant and thirdly, extinct.Active volcanoes are the ones that have recently erupted or is still erupting. Dormant volcanoes have not erupted for a long time but is thought to wake up and do so again. Extinct volcanoes have not erupted for a long time and is believed to never erupted. However they sometimes they do the unexpected by erupting again!

There are over 5000 active sea volcanoes, some which erupt in the sea and become islands like Hawaii.

People suffer from volcanic eruptions as burning lava and mud may flow to occupied houses or poisonous gases from the eruption may reach homes. Also, if there is 10 cm thick of ash on your roof, the roof may collapse. 

One gadget used to predict volcanic eruptions is the tiltmeter. It measures the exact shape of a volcano as the shape of a volcano will often change just before an eruption. Another is the seismometer. It measures vibrations near a volcano to see if an eruption is coming.

An agency looking into volcanic eruptions is JMA (Japanese meteorological agency) .

I cannot prevent volcanic eruptions from happening but I can warn people living near volcanoes to heed scientists warnings.

 

mtetna

Mt. Etna firing a shooting display of lava 1000 feet in the air
lavastonejewellery.co.uk

image

Hawaiian volcano spews 12m high fountains of lava.
current.com

volcanicisland

A volcanic island emerging from the Pacific Ocean 4 months after erupting in the sea.
discovermagazine.com

extinct

An extinct volcano
sciencemag.org

Picture3

A photograph taken by my family of a dormant volcano in Bandung, Indonesia

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