Underwater Volcanos

Hey folks- 

We actually did this demonstration last Monday, however we do not currently have internet at home. We will continue to experiment, and post as often as possible! Thanks for bearing with us. 

Today we talked about underwater volcanoes. Did you know that the Earth is mostly covered by water??? That’s so cool! There are volcanoes on land and underwater.  To see how volcanoes work underwater, we built one!

First thing we did was gather materials. For this demonstration we needed:

Wax

Glass Jar

Sand

Water

What we did:

First we put the wax on the bottom of our jar and covered it with sand. We then filled the jar about three quarters full of water.  We put the water on the stove, used a double boiler to prevent the glass from getting too hot. Then we watched what happened!

What happened:

The wax started bursting up the sides of the jar. The wax was heating up like magma and bursting through the sand. It came up the sides first because that’s where the sand was weakest, and there were cracks and fractures.  To see what would happen if it came out in the middle, we drew a fracture with a knife in the middle of the jar. Soon an island was formed! The wax came from the middle and made a disk on top of the water. Our island was connected to the bottom of the glass by a long piece of wax, which we soon discovered was a tube. The hot wax formed a pipe, and traveled up the pipe and formed an island when the wax cooled.  Mina was quick to remind us all that the wax changed forms and went from a solid, to a liquid to a solid again. We then drained the water and examined our island. We could see very small holes in the tube and island itself. It was neat!

Other exciting news! Mina and Anna both have science experiments for the fair happening right now. Scientist Anna is working on a hamster blimp, and Scientist Mina is experimenting with growing plants using other liquids besides water. We hope to have information about their experiments on our blog soon!

Anna: The tiny island is so cute, and it looks like a horseshoe when you flip it over.

Mina: It was cool, but it wasn’t as awesome, cool or yummy as the jello volcano.

Jack:  When we drained the water, it was all dry but it was still kinda hot.

Science Fact:  The largest orchid in the world can grow up to 20 meters tall.