Volcanoes Are Often Associated With Fire, Earthquakes, Term Paper

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Volcanoes are often associated with fire, earthquakes, victims and damage. The activity of nature often turns peaceful mountains with smoky tops into fire vents with lava and smoke getting out and turning everything into fire and burning it.

Why do volcanoes erupt and where does such an incredible energy get from inside the earth?

After the radioactivity phenomenon was discovered, especially one of uranium and thorium, scientists began to understand that the heat is conserved inside the earth because of the radioactive decay of some chemical elements. The studies made in the field of nuclear energy problems proved this fact again.

Accumulation of heat energy inside the earth makes the earth matter heated. The temperature gets so high that the matter has to melt but under the high pressure of the upper earth layers it stays solid. In the places where the pressure of the upper earth layers is not so high (it happens because of the motion of crust and in the places with tectonic cracks) the heated masses transform from solid phase into liquid.

The masses of melted rock saturated by gases in the deep layers of earth are called magma. Under the high pressure of releasing gases, magma passes the way and forms volcanic vent or volcanic canal. Released gases, by the means of explosions free the way for lava, breaking and throwing the pieces of rock on high altitude. This phenomenon is also followed by earthquakes in the environs of volcano.

The volcano starts by eruption of post of black smoke on the altitude from 1 to 5-kilometer. Then it gets wide and more intensive at the same time pieces of rock are also erupted from the volcano's vent. The amount of pieces of rocks, gasses, smoke and ashes often increases the number of ten million cubic meters or even 100 million cubic meters.
The nature of erupted gases can be different, between volcano gas products are: combinations of chlorine, sylph gases, hydrogen, nitrogen, combinations of oxygen with other gases, water steams, etc.

There are several dozens of acting volcanoes nowadays, most of them are situated in the Pacific region, as it's a place of high tectonic activity (the facts such as earthquakes in Japan, Hawaii, Pacific Isles and the motion of Australian continent are good examples that witness high rate of geological activity of crust).

One of the most interesting cases about volcanoes happened in Mexico, 1943 on the plane farm land. It was formed on a plane farmland and got the name of the closest village-Paricutin. The witness of the volcano's birth was an Indian- the owner of the farmland. He plowed and felt that the soil was getting hotter and hotter from day-to-day, then he saw the steams of smoke and loud rumble under the ground. He escaped.

There began the earthquake and clouds of sand, rocks and dust were erupted from the ground, then the lava flowed. The eruption was lasting more than a year and later on the activity of volcano didn't stop. Now the height of a relatively new-born volcano is approximately 2500 meters.

In the Pacific, in the strait of Zond there is a volcanic island Krakatau that has a shape of half-moon. The volcanic vent is hidden under the water. In the year of 1883 during the volcano's eruption the huge explosion occurred. The biggest part of the mountain was destroyed and appeared in the sea, and the resultant motion was so strong that huge waves were noticed….....

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