Study Guide – Volcanoes
1. Know all of the vocabulary off of the vocabulary list provided last Tuesday.
2. What is the Ring of Fire? Why are there so many volcanoes around the Ring of Fire?
3. Know the three ways/places that volcanoes occur (spreading boundaries, subduction zones and hot spots).
4. Know the parts of a volcano.
5. Know that dissolved gases in magma expand as the magma moves up the pipe of a volcano. The expanding gases exert a huge force making for a large eruption if there is a lot of gas in the magma.
6. The violence of a volcanic eruption depends on how much gas is dissolved in the magma and how thick the magma is. The gassier and thicker (viscous) the magma is, the more explosive the eruption.
7. Viscosity is the thickness of a fluid. The more viscous the fluid, the thicker it is. Water has a low viscosity and honey has a higher viscosity. Magma that is really viscous (thick) makes a very violent eruption.
8. Quiet eruptions make lava rock that is darker, heavier (more dense) and has fewer holes than the igneous rocks produced in a violent eruption. An example of a quiet eruption is the Kilauea volcano in Hawaii and an example of a violent eruption is Mount St. Helens and Mt. Pinatubo.
9. A pyroclastic flow is produced by a violent volcanic eruption. It is a mixture of ash, pumice and gases that are very hot and travel very quickly down the mountain.
10. Shield volcanoes are formed from quiet eruptions like Kilauea and composite volcanoes are formed when volcanoes erupt both ash and lava. Mt. Pinatubo and Mount St. Helens are both composite volcanoes.
11. How is a baking soda volcano like a real volcano and not like a real volcano?
