• Question: Why did you want to laern about volcanos?

    Asked by to Oliver, Becky, Dre, Charli, Heather on 17 Jun 2014. This question was also asked by , , .
    • Photo: Rebecca Williams

      Rebecca Williams answered on 17 Jun 2014:

      Hi Marlydaley,

      As I said in my answer to your other question, I think that volcanoes are just cool. I’ve been interested in them since I was at school. I was interested in all the different eruptions they have and the effect they have on people and places.

      The more I learnt about them the more interesting they became. I learnt that they kind of eruption they have depends on what kind of magma is inside them, and how much gas is in it. I learnt that if you trap that gas and make it difficult to escape, you can make bigger eruptions.

      I also learnt that there was still a lot we don’t know about volcanoes. We still don’t know how to tell when they will erupt, or if they will have a big or small eruption when they do. We don’t really know how some of the flows like mudflows or currents of hot gas, ash and rocks, behave – how fast they flow or where they might go. These are the most dangerous things a volcano can do. So I wanted to learn more about them so I could help the people who live near volcanoes be safer.

    • Photo: Oliver George

      Oliver George answered on 17 Jun 2014:

      Volcanoes are just really interesting places.

      When you think of life you might think of trees, fish, horses or even yeast (the microbe that makes bread rise). These things all live in quite pleasant conditions. What I find amazing about volcanoes is that even though they can be really really hot and really acidic life is still able to flourish in and around them. While you almost certainly won’t find life growing in lava (it’s simply much too hot) the land around the volcano may have microbes living there and in some cases you may even find some super hardy plants!

      I’m a big believer in the possibility of finding alien life and if life on earth is able to thrive in such difficult conditions then why couldn’t it live on other planets?

      There’s also something majestic about huge mountains with a direct link to the beating heart of the earth.

    • Photo: Charlotte Flavell

      Charlotte Flavell answered on 18 Jun 2014:

      Although volcanoes are really interesting, and definitely worth knowing about, I’ve always been more interested in learning about how bodies work instead 🙂 I’m hoping that figuring out how our brains work will help cure some horrible things like dementia (when people lose their memory and forget who they are), post traumatic stress disorder (when someone is really scared because of a bad thing that happened to them like fighting in a war) , anxiety (when someone gets really scared all the time over lots of things), and addiction (when people can’t stop taking drugs/doing something they probably shouldn’t).

      Sorry my answer wasn’t more volcanoe-y but I don’t know very much about them!

    • Photo: Heather Price

      Heather Price answered on 19 Jun 2014:

      I loved learning about volcanoes at school and University – I think it’s because they’re so powerful – there’s not a lot we can do if a volcano starts to erupt except start running! But in the end I got really interested in the air we breathe, probably because air pollution affects everyone in the UK now.

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