hot lava

We just finished up studying Venus. Volcanic Venus sounds crazy and ucky. I am glad that conditions for life include very beautiful things like water, plants and trees that grow food on them, and an airy, blue atmosphere in which whitish, billowy clouds occur. Though if Venus’ features were the ones required to sustain life, and if I was born there, maybe thick, heavy, swirling, sulfuric gas clouds would smell lovely to me and maybe an orange hue cast over everything would be aesthetically pleasing? And maybe I would love to sun in burning hot dirt? And maybe ancient civilizations would have set up holidays surrounding the eruptions of volcanoes and we’d be celebrating all the time and the flying sparks would be our fireworks and ash would be our confetti?

Anyway, we did a project that included a small bowl upside down, a large plate right side up, flour patted into a mound around the bowl and melted butter.

The flowing butter was meant to illustrate what hot lava does when it flows freely over land. Then when the butter hardened, it was meant to illustrate magma.

Photo by Jonny

We thought it was pretty cool.