For the past three days in science class, we have been working on making a replica of a volcano somewhere in the world. My group choose to copy the Mauna Loa volcano in Hawaii. The Mauna Loa is a shield volcano, which means that it doesn’t have really steep sides. It has gently slopping sides that lava slowly flows down. On our volcano, we put two kinds of lava. The chunky red kind of lava is called A’A and the smooth runny lava is called Pahoehoe. Both kinds of lava are hot lava flows. You can’t see this in the picture very well, but we made a cut-out of the volcano on one side. In the cut-out is the magma chamber that is full of hot magma. The magma chamber is where all of the magma is stored and it is connected to the pipe which is what carries the magma up and out the top of the volcano, where it explodes. At the top of the volcano is the vent where the magma leaves the pipe and turns into lava. Also, the crater is at the top of the volcano. It’s the ring around the top that the magma goes out of. Sometimes, there is weak rock on the sides of the volcano and the magma can go through the side of the volcano. That is called the side vent of the volcano. We painted a geyser and a hot spring on the side of the volcano. The cotton balls are supposed to represent a Pyroclastic Flow, which is when a cloud of hot ash and gas shoots out of the volcano with cinders and bombs. It destroys anything in it path and move really fast. Through this project I learned so much about volcanos and how they work.