Build A Volcano In The House

The Earth is constantly growing and changing. Volcanoes pour lava (melted rock) out from inside the earth onto the surface creating new land. When the lava flows out of the volcano it can be explosive shooting up into the sky or thick as syrup running down the side of the mountain. Some volcanic eruptions are much more powerful than the largest nuclear explosion.

Volcanoes are also responsible for much of the land we live on, 90% of all the continents and ocean basins are the product of volcanism. The air we breathe, and the water we drink have been produced by millions of years of eruptions of steam and other gases. Scientists use human terms to talk about volcanoes, such as active, alive, dormant, resting, sleeping, extinct, dead, lifetime, and restless.

Volcanoes have been the basis for myths and legends the world over. The word volcano is derived from the name of the ancient Roman island of Vulcano which lies off the southwest coast of Italy. The Romans believed that Vulcan, the god of fire and the maker of weapons, used the volcano on that island to forge his weapons.

Build a real working volcano:

Now this is a little messy. In this experiment we build a real working volcano. After mixing just the right amount of ingredients together, our volcano will erupt, spewing lava down the sides.

Things you need:

• Container to hold the whole structure (use a container, like a shallow box or plastic container, that you can leave in the volcano – we built ours on a cardboard but laid it on old newspaper when we erupted it so as to make it easier to clean up)
• A thin bottle or shallow cup container (if this container is too deep or too wide, it will take much more vinegar and baking soda for a good eruption – we used the bottom quarter of a water bottle, although a paper cup would work fine).
• Old newspaper
• Tape
• Glue
• Paint

What to do:

1. To create the base of the volcano with wadded newspaper, build around the bottle or wad the newspaper to life the cup to the desired height of the volcano. Make sure you do not cover the top of the container with the newspaper. Loosely tape the structure together.
2. Prepare a glue and water mixture of about 1/3 glue and 2/3 water.
3. Tear some newspaper into strips and wet in the glue and water mixture.
4. Place the strips around the volcano covering the whole structure before adding a second layer. While placing the strips, define the ridges and vary the angles of the slopes on the sides. Take as much time as you like to create a good volcano. Let the whole structure dry.
5. Paint the volcano. You can use tiny sticks for small trees and cardboard cutouts for a village base of the volcano.

The chemical reaction:

1. Fill the bottle most of the way with vinegar mixed with a little of the red food coloring.
2. Stir in 5 or 6 drops of the liquid detergent.
3. Loosely wrap 2 tablespoons of baking soda into a tissue.
4. Drop the tissue with the baking soda into the vinegar solution.

Notice the red ‘lava’ that flows out of your volcano. This happens because mixing baking soda and vinegar produces a chemical reaction in which carbon dioxide gas is created – the same gas that bubbles in a real volcano. The gas bubbles build in the bottle, forcing the liquid ‘lava’ mixture of the bottle and down the sides of your volcano.

A chemical reaction is a process in which one substance is chemically converted to another – all chemical reactions involve the formation or destruction of bonds between atoms.

For those who are interested but are short on time, Growing Fun has a kit that supplies everything you need to make a volcano and erupt it in your home.