What Causes a Volcano to Erupt_

Hi, I am Jared. Welcome to Fun Science Demos. Through science we have discovered that inside the earth is really hot. It is so hot that it can melt even rocks. And when those rocks melt, it becomes a liquid. And scientists call that liquid magma. And sometimes that heated magma breaks through the crust of the earth. And scientists call that a volcano. We are going to make a volcano today to show you how that volcano works. Now for magma, that hot melted rock, we are going to use chocolate syrup. And that is just below the crust. Scientists call that the mantle. Then we need our crust. So I am going to put this plate and this bowl. And to make up our crust, I am going to use ice cream. Just scoop it in. So we have our magma chocolate syrup. And we have our ice cream crust. Now this magma is under a lot of pressure. And to demonstrate that pressure, I am going to squeeze that chocolate syrup and see if we can get that magma chocolate syrup to break through the crust of the ice cream, the surface of the ice cream. And see if we can actually form a little edible volcano. So here we go. Let us see if we can make our volcano erupt. Putting pressure up and we have magma flowing. Put more pressure on. You can see it is just oozing out a gentle slow flow. Stop the eruption. Now there are a couple of things to notice here. When that magma broke through the surface of the Look, it cooled down and became hard. That is exactly what happens in real volcanoes. Magma breaks through the surface of the crust and oozes down and it becomes hard. Also notice where the magma broke through the surface of the crust. There is a big hole. And scientists call that a crater. And when this volcano erupts again, it will form another layer of magma making the volcano grow bigger. See if we can get it to erupt again. And another eruption. Now only some volcanoes actually ooze magma slowly. Other volcanoes actually explode. And scientists call that an eruption. And sometimes that magma or liquid rock is under a lot of pressure. And it actually causes the volcano to explode or erupt. Now to demonstrate that, we have air that is under a lot of pressure. And we are going to see if we can make our volcano explode or erupt. And pay attention to the magma. See if you can see the magma shooting out through the crust. It does not ooze this time. We are going to see if we can launch it or explode it up. Now things could get messy, so I came prepared. Here we go. Let us see if we can make it erupt. Yep, our volcano is definitely erupting. Remember, a lot of pressure builds up causing the magma to come shooting out or erupting out of the volcano. It is quite a mess, but the good thing is I can eat it. If you want to learn more about how the earth works, check out our other videos or links in the video description. Science is so cool, especially when it is messy. Thanks for watching. Yep, our volcano is definitely erupting.