Geology

Ready to learn about volcanoes? From lightning that sparks at a volcano to its deadly hazards, we’re going to dive into 10 little-known facts about volcanoes

“Lahar” is an Indonesian word for mudflow at volcanoes. Lahar flows down volcanoes as a mix of mostly water, mud and rock debris (similar to wet concrete).

The name “shield volcano” originated from its Roman shield-like shape. They are broad, flat and can stretch hundreds of miles wide like Mauna Loa in Hawaii.

The stratovolcano is tall, steep & cone-shaped. Unlike shield volcanoes, stratovolcanoes build up height by layering lava, ash and tephra on top of another.

The 3 types of faults are: normal, reverse and strike-slip. When two blocks slide horizontally, it’s strike-slip. If it moves vertically, it’s dip-slip.

Think of permafrost like glue. The ice is the glue in permafrost which holds the rocks, sand & soil. Like glue, permafrost doesn’t melt. Instead, it thaws.

If you could fast-forward 250 million years in the future, you would witness all continents will assemble into one giant supercontinent called Pangea Ultima.

From large to small, the 7 major tectonic plates include the Pacific, North American, Eurasian, African, Antarctic, Indo-Australian and South American plate.

Today, we explore 13 parts of a volcano. From tephra, fumaroles, magma, lava domes, pyroclastic flow to volcanic bombs, this is the anatomy of volcanoes.

Conservative or transform plate boundaries slide across each other. They neither converge or diverge such as parts of the North American and Pacific Plate.

We can’t physically go inside the Earth. But we use seismic tomography from earthquakes to see inside our planet. From Earth tomography, we create 3D models.

The Paleozoic Era marked the first fossil records of animal life.The Cambrian explosion was the largest diversification of life in Earth’s history.

The 3 types of volcanoes are stratovolcanoes, shield volcanoes and cinder cones. Based on their geography, volcanoes take different appearances.

The Pacific Plate stretches all the way along the west coast of North America and reaches all the way to the east coast of the islands of Japan & Indonesia.

Volcanoes are the foundation for igneous rocks. When volcanoes erupt, magma and lava spews out. After cooling and solidifying, they become igneous rocks.