Teacher Activity Guide: Scholastic's The Magic School Bus Volcano Adventure
Updated: April 8, 2004
Hint: To turn off or on the music while using the CD-ROM, go inside the bus, and click on the radio hanging on the wall in the center of the screen. To turn on closed captioning, click on the "CC" above the center window in the bus. When it is green, the closed captioning is turned on. This helps some students focus on the content or understand the words better. Inside the bus, click on Ms. Frizzle for help. Click on the door of the bus to go outside. In the activities, click on the questions mark (?) to hear an explanation of what to do.
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Volcanic Eruption
Materials
Small plastic bottle, large bowl or tray, clay or sand and gravel, funnel, vinegar, baking soda, red food coloring
Key Question
What causes volcanoes to erupt?
Curriculum Links
Science
Activities
Use the funnel to put baking soda in the plastic bottle until it is half-full. Place the bottle in the center of the bowl or tray and fill in around it with clay or gravel and sand to make the mountain. The bottle is like the volcano's underground chamber, and the top of the bottle is the volcano's opening at the top of the mountain.
In a separate container, add some red food coloring to the vinegar to make it the color of red-hot lava. Then quickly pour some of the vinegar into the bottle's opening at the top of the volcano. Watch the volcano erupt!
Discuss with students how this is like a real volcano. The gas bubbles in the model volcano are carbon dioxide, from a reaction between the baking soda and vinegar. In a real volcano, hot gases also are responsible for pushing the molten rock, called magma, up and out the top of the volcano. When the molten rock has exited the volcano, it called lava. Hardened lava flows often add to the size of volcanic mountains.
A volcano erupts when the hot gases in its underground chamber reach a pressure high enough to push out the fiery molten rock.
Use the CD-ROM
See stages in the life of a volcano, an animation called "The Life and Times of a Volcano." In the bus, click on the box with a cross section of a volcano, to the right of the computer monitor.
Different kinds of the magma affect the lava flow in "Make Your Own Volcano." Experiment with three levels of gas and three different thicknesses to see the results. In the bus, click on the dials above the clear tube.
See video of a lava flow. In the bus, click on the pink TV.
Volcanic Vocabulary
Materials
Dictionary
Key Question
Where did volcanoes get their name?
Curriculum Links
Science, Language Arts
Activities
Use the dictionary to look up all the entries from volcanic to volcanology. Count how many terms are adjectives, nouns, or verbs. In your opinion, what is the most unusual or interesting term among these?
(Depending upon your dictionary choice, the most unusual term might be volcanicity, which means the tendency or chance for volcanoes to erupt. Did you even know there was a word for that?)
Ask the students if there is anything in the entry for volcano to suggest where this word came from.
The Roman god of fire, Vulcan, probably will be mentioned. Have the students look up Vulcan.
Discuss the origins of the word volcano. Ancient Italians believed Vulcan had a workshop inside the volcanic mountain, Vulcano. Vulcano is one of the Lipari Islands just north of Sicily in the Mediterranean Sea. As the blacksmith of the Roman gods, Vulcan was believed to have a forge inside Vulcano where he made armor for the gods. The center of the mountain was believed to be a vent or a chimney leading down to Vulcan's forge. The eruptions of heat, smoke and hot lava were thought to occur when Vulcan got too active or excited and the fire of his forge got out of control. By the 17th century, all such volcanic mountains came to be called volcanoes, from the Latin Vulcanus and the Italian Volcanus.
Have the students look up the word vulcanize. Ask them: Why does the word for this technological process also come from the Roman god of fire?
Geologic Ring of Fire
Materials
Atlas, red marker or pen, map of Pacific Rim that student can mark on. (For a map, see web address: http://www.sinica.edu.tw/info/event/pnc/htdocs/firstmap.html. This is a nice map of the Pacific Rim, but all country names are not filled in; plan also to use an atlas for reference.)
Key Question
Why do so many volcanoes exist in a pattern lining the Pacific Rim, the so-called "Ring of Fire"?
Curriculum Links
Science, Measurement
Activities
Have students mark on maps of the Pacific Rim approximately where volcanoes exist, labeling how many are in each coastal country or state and decorating the Pacific Rim with red volcanoes.
Discuss with the students how most volcanoes form along the edges of the earth's plates. This is where rising molten rock, or magma, comes up, because tectonic plates that form the earth's crust rub together. More than half of the world's (approximately) 500 active volcanoes are under the ocean, most related to movement of the giant Pacific Plate and other plates that lie under the ocean and neighboring continents. This circle of volcanoes around the Pacific Ocean is often referred to as the Ring of Fire.
Indonesia is a Pacific Rim nation with 70 volcanoes, the largest number of active volcanoes in one country. More than 600 eruptions have been recorded from Indonesia's volcanoes. A listing of volcanoes by Volcano World (http://volcano.und.nodak.edu/vw.html), supported by NASA's Learning Technology Project, shows Japan with 38; the Kuril Islands, 48; Russia, 36; the Philippines, 14; Papua New Guinea and other South Pacific island groups, 34; and New Zealand, 13. (Plate boundaries generally place Australia outside of the Ring of Fire, to its southwest.)
Students usually like the name of the volcano, Blub Blub, which lies in the South Bismarck Sea near Papua New Guinea. What do you think its bubbling lava sounds like?
The listing groups some volcanoes together, so the actual volcano count probably exceeds even these numbers. Nevertheless, on the American side of the ring, the listing continues with Alaska, 48; Canada, 18; Washington, 6; Oregon, 23; California, 10; Mexico, 22; El Salvador, 5; Guatemala, 8; Nicaragua, 9; Costa Rica, 4; Columbia, 3; Ecuador, 17; Peru, 1; and Chile, 8. (Hawaii's 13 volcanoes are not part of the ring, because they are caused by weakened crust over a hot spot in the Pacific plate, rather than by plate friction at the edges.)
Use the CD-ROM
In the bus, click on the globe. You will get a map of the world marking famous volcanoes. This is an easy way to view the "Ring of Fire."
Water Holes in the Seabed
Materials
Large jar with a large mouth, small bottle that fits inside the large jar, string (about 20-inch length), red food coloring, water (hot and cold)
Key Question
What are hot-water holes in the seabed?
Curriculum Links
Science
Activities
Tie the ends of the string around the neck of the small bottle to form a handle. Fill the large bottle about three-fourths full with cold water. Fill the small bottle with hot water and add red food coloring.
Holding the string handle of the small bottle, carefully lower it into the larger jar. Watch the hot red water shoot up through the colder water.
Discuss with students these curious phenomena at the ocean floor called hot-water holes or hydrothermal vents. They are deep holes in the ocean floor in which water gets heated by the hot rocks and magma, which is molten rock within the earth's crust. The hot water shoots up rapidly from these deep holes, rising above the cold water of the ocean, just as the hot water rose in this demonstration.
When hot gases and molten rock bubble up through these deep undersea holes, they also are volcanoes. Volcanoes may be any physical feature through which molten rock and gas escape from within the earth, either large cracks and fissures or cylindrical vents in volcanic mountains. This helps to make the seafloor the youngest part of Earth, as it is changed by these undersea eruptions.
The ecology around these undersea hot-water holes is unique, supporting strange life forms and sea creatures that may not be found anywhere else in nature. Scientists used the submersible Alvin to view deep-sea hot springs near the Galapagos Islands and elsewhere. They learned of a new type of food chain, not based on sunlight but on oxidation of minerals from the vents. Some students may want to look for more information in this fairly new area of science.
Use the CD-ROM
Go outside the bus and click on the bus with a periscope in the lower left corner to play "Rub a Dub Dub Sub." In this game, you drive an underwater submersible to avoid heat vents and black smokers that come from the seabed floor, as well as red lava that comes into the water and cools as it sinks.
Volcanoes Beyond Our Earth
Materials
Ruler, pencil, scissors, string, tape, large-format paper (butcher block or gift wrap)
Key Question
How similar are Earth's volcanoes to those found elsewhere in the Universe?
Curriculum Links
Science, Measurement
Activities
Student-constructed cones approximating volcanoes on Earth, Mars and Venus will show the relative sizes of these planetary features. The fact that volcanoes are a feature of several planets points to their common origin, which is associated with the origin of the Universe and our Milky Way galaxy.
To make cutout patterns for the cones, draw three separate semicircles on the paper, each with a different radius as specified below. For drawing semicircles, you can make a "protractor" of any size needed by tying string to a pencil, where the length of the string is the desired radius. (You may want to leave an extra inch for holding the string at the midpoint while you pull the string tight to draw a circle.)
The radii of the semicircles for making the volcano cones are as follows:
| • | Mars volcano, Olympus Mons, 17 inches (actual height, 16.5 miles) (27 km) |
| • | Earth volcano, Cotopaxi in Ecuador, 4 inches (3.7 miles) (5.911 km) |
| • | Venus volcano, Sapas Mons, 1 inch (0.9 miles) (1.5 km) |
Cut out the cone patterns. If you want, have students label and decorate the volcano patterns appropriately with crayons or markers. Then curl each pattern into a cone, and tape along the edges that meet to finish the cones. Use the scissors to snip off a little bit at the top to show the volcano's opening.
Discuss with students the fiery origins of the planets and their subsequent cooling, resulting in a hardened outer crust that floats above a mantle of molten rock. The crust is broken into tectonic plates that rub together sometimes causing both earthquakes and volcanoes. Volcanoes are weak points on the crust's surface, either cracks or holes, where the pressurized molten rock of the mantle breaks through and spews out.
Compare the paper volcano models. Cotopaxi, in Ecuador, is the Earth's highest active volcano, at 3.67 miles. This is dwarfed by Mars' Olympus Mons, which is an extinct volcano. At 16.5 miles high, it is the largest known volcano in the solar system and is larger across than the Hawaiian Islands strung together. Venus' Sapas Mons is tiny by comparison, at 0.9 miles high, however this volcano covers about 250 miles from edge to edge at the base (an aspect not represented by the paper model). As an option, you might discuss shield volcanoes (these wide-base ones) vs. stratovolcanos (your more typical cone).
The most volcanic object in our solar system is a moon of the planet Jupiter, called Io (eye-oh). Photographs of Io taken by the Galileo spacecraft suggest it has about 300 volcanoes, with most of its surface covered by molten lava fields. One such field spews forth more than 100 tons of very hot sulphurous lava every second. Hawaii's Mauna Loa and Kilauea volcanoes have frequent lava flows, but they are nothing compared to the humongous lava flows on Jupiter's moon Io.
Scientists are especially interested in an Io volcano called Prometheus, which shoots up snow and small particles of dust. The unusual plume rises up about 60 miles above the surface, in what scientists call a "sprinkler-head effect." Images snapped by the Galileo spacecraft help scientists understand the fiery volcanic activity on Io, which then may help them better understand geologic processes on Earth. Voyager 2 and Galileo spacecraft took pictures of Io.
Use the CD-ROM
Go outside the bus and find the satellite flying across the sky. Click on it to see Olympus Mons on Mars and other extraterrestrial volcanoes. Three different views are available.
Volcanoes in Human History
Materials
Encyclopedia, world map, atlas, Internet access (optional)
Key Question
What volcanoes are the most memorable in human history?
Curriculum Links
Science, Geography, History
Activities
Ask students to use encyclopedias, atlases and world maps to find some famous volcanoes. Students might work in pairs or small teams to find out stories about famous volcanoes and share them with the class.
Some volcanoes become famous through stories and legends; some are famous because of the damage they have done.
Probably, the first recorded (written records) volcano was in 475 B.C. at Mount Etna in Sicily. Since then it has erupted more than 250 times, most recently in 1993.
The famous volcano Mount Vesuvius in Italy. It erupted on August 24, A.D. 79, and 2,000 people died when they were buried under ash and mud. There was no liquid lava, only volcanic ash and volcanic bombs. Vesuvius has been dormant since 1944, and volcanologists think it might become active again.
In 1902 Mount Pelee on an island of Martinique erupted without disaster. It was an old volcano with a crater filed with the water. Mt. Pelee is famous for the May 8, 1902 eruption which killed 29,000 people and destroyed the city of St. Pierre. This is the largest number of casualties for a volcanic eruption this century.
In the middle of a Mexican cornfield the volcano Paricutin started to form out of nowhere.
In May 18, 1980 Mount St. Helens in the State of Washington erupted. The eruption was as strong as 30,000 atomic bombs. When the volcano exploded, a huge area was ripped out from its sides and left a very big crater. Volcanologists were able to predict this eruption, so most people left their homes. 57 people were killed.
Mount Fuji is the highest and most sacred mountain in Japan. It is seen in many Japanese paintings and is a popular image of Japan around the world. It is a dormant volcano. It last erupted in 1707.
The largest volcano in the world is in Mauna Loa in Hawaii. It is 30,000 feet from the ocean floor and 60 miles wide at its base. It has erupted 40 times in the last 150 years.
The tallest volcanoes are in Chile, South America. Volcanoes that are always erupting include Stromboli in Italy, Yasur in the Pacific Ocean, and Erta'Ale in Africa. Furnace Peak in the Indian Ocean is the volcano that erupted the most times in the 20th century. It erupted 80 times.
Some other volcanoes that could be researched include:
| • | November 1985: Nevado del Ruiz, Columbia |
| • | Summer 1991: Mount Pinatubo, Philippines |
| • | August 1997: Plymouth, Montserrat |
Use http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/educators.html to view some online books by the U.S. Geological Survey about famous volcanoes.
Use the CD-ROM
See animations and pictures of some famous eruptions in "Dare to Compare." Click on the volcano in the bus. The four eruptions are Mount Saint Helens, Mauna Loa, Krakatoa, and Eldfell. View their fantastic features, see the lava flow, hear the volcano, and find out what rock trash is.
Measuring and Predicting Volcanoes and Earthquakes
Materials
Map of U.S., red marker or pen, reference materials, Internet access
Key Question
How do scientists measure volcanic eruptions-and predict them?
Curriculum Links
Science, Measurement
Activities
Scientists use many different scientific instruments to measure the volcano. One of the newest is Global Positioning System (GPS). A receiver in Ecuador uses data transmitted by orbiting satellites of several volcanoes in the U.S. and in Latin America. A change in the GPS measurements might indicate that the volcano is going to erupt soon.
Other scientists try to use sounds. Do the sounds volcanoes make before they erupt change in some predictable way? Could those sounds help scientists monitor active volcanoes and forecast their deadly eruptions? Just as a doctor uses a stethoscope to listen to your heart, some scientists now listen to volcanoes to try to hear any changes.
Scientists also use instruments to measure changes in the gases in the air. Hundreds of years ago, if the animals in an area fled from a volcanic area, it was a clue to the people who lived nearby that something was changing, and the animals were seeking safety elsewhere.
On a map of the U.S., draw small red cones at sites of volcanoes or earthquakes in the past. Mark with red stars the places you think might have an eruption in the next 50 years. Monitor current volcanic activity from around the world through the U.S. Geological Survey at http://vulcan.wr.usgs.gov/Servers/volcservers.html. See live seismograph displays at http://www.seis.utah.edu/helicorder/. To learn more about how scientists measure and predict volcanoes, read "Monitoring Active Volcanoes," an online book by the U.S. Geological Survey, at http://pubs.usgs.gov/gip/monitor/contents.html.
Use the CD-ROM
See animations and pictures of some famous eruptions in "Dare to Compare." Click on the volcano in the bus. The four eruptions are Mount Saint Helens, Mauna Loa, Krakatoa, and Eldfell. View their fantastic features, see the lava flow, hear the volcano, and find out what rock trash is.
