Volcanoes Facts for Kids
Explosive facts about volcanoes and geology
Many of the world's tallest mountains are volcanoes. Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, the highest peak in Africa, is a dormant stratovolcano that last erupted around 360,000 years ago.
Volcanic bombs are large blobs of molten rock hurled into the air during explosive eruptions, which spin and harden as they fly through the air, often developing a twisted or streamlined shape. They can be as small as a cricket ball or as large as a car.
Mount Nyiragongo in the Democratic Republic of Congo contains the world's largest permanent lava lake in its crater. In 2002 its lava lake dramatically drained through fractures in the volcano's flanks, sending fast-flowing lava streams through the nearby city of Goma.
In the early history of the Earth, billions of years of volcanic outgassing released water vapour, carbon dioxide, nitrogen, and other gases that formed the primitive atmosphere and created the oceans. Without volcanoes, Earth's surface might look very different today.
Scientists now use drones to fly directly into active volcanic craters and collect gas samples and temperature readings in places too dangerous for humans. This technology is revolutionising how volcanologists study active volcanoes up close.
Tuff is a rock formed from compressed volcanic ash and is surprisingly easy to carve when freshly quarried. The ancient Romans used tuff as a building material, and the famous Easter Island statues (moai) are carved from a type of compressed volcanic ash called tuff.
A fissure eruption happens when lava wells up along a long crack in the Earth's surface rather than from a single vent, creating a dramatic curtain of fire. The 2018 eruption of Kilauea in Hawaii featured spectacular fissure eruptions that destroyed hundreds of homes.
ParΓcutin, in Mexico, is one of the youngest volcanoes in the world β it appeared suddenly in a farmer's cornfield in 1943 and grew to over 400 metres tall in just one year. It is one of the only volcanoes in history whose birth was witnessed and recorded from the very beginning.
Volcanoes are classified as active, dormant, or extinct. An active volcano erupts regularly, a dormant one has not erupted recently but could again, and an extinct one is considered unlikely ever to erupt again β though even this classification can sometimes be wrong.
Magma and lava are actually the same molten rock β it is called magma when it is underground and lava once it reaches the Earth's surface. Magma can remain in underground chambers for thousands or even millions of years before erupting.