How Far Does a Lava Flow Go?
Lava behaves like other fluids in the liquid state of matter.Copyright 2004 Microsoft Corporation, One Microsoft Way, Redmond, WA 98052-6399 USA. All rights reserved.
While learning about volcanoes, magma and lava flows, students learn about the properties of liquid movement, coming to understand viscosity and other factors that increase and decrease liquid flow. They also learn about lava composition and its risk to human settlements.
Many types of engineers must understand the properties of liquids. Understanding viscosity and the factors that change how liquids move can aid in the design of structures that use liquids to do work, as well as structures and devices that control or contain liquids. Geochemical engineers use science to solve environmental and civil engineering problems, some working on ways to halt or divert lava flows to protect human-built structures. For instance, R.D. Schuiling suggests that limestone walls could be built to rapidly cool lava (making it more viscous) and thus slow the flow enough to salvage human settlements.
After this lesson, students should be able to:
- Describe two different kinds of volcanoes, in terms of the nature of their lava flows and resulting slopes.
- Explain how the properties of liquid movement are relevant to the phenomena of lava flows and how this can affect human civilization.
- Describe how fluid properties are important in science and engineering.