In our Explosive Earth Topic, we have been investigating why some volcanoes explode. We tested what happened to bubbles in thick lava and thin lava (don’t worry, we didn’t use the real thing!) and discovered that thick lava was more explosive than thin lava.
We also looked at how thick and thin lava changed the shape of volcanoes. Our experiments told us that thick lava forms cone shaped volcanoes like Mt St Helens and Vesuvius, and thin lava forms shield volcanoes like Kilauea in Hawaii.
One of the exciting things we looked at was this website, which is an interactive map of volcanoes and earthquakes around the world.