Our son Jamie has recently developed a fascination for all things 'volcano' and 'earthquake.' Of all the things on offer during a visit to the excellent Melbourne Museum, the geology section was the one that really got him buzzing.
We left the museum that day with a pretty amazing pop-up book about volcanoes and earthquakes. After a lot of nightly discussions about how these things work, he got up during the "show and share" segment of his kindergarten and gave a pretty good presentation (apparently) for his classmates - including a biff on the nose of his teacher with the pop-out ash cloud featured on the Krakatoa page...
In any case, eventually things HAD to come around to us making our own volcano at home. Of course.
Here's what we ended up with...
Jamie's volcano experiment roars into life!
Pretty simple to make (for those who don't know, just a cone made of plaster or clay or paper-maché with a little cup inserted in the top, pop in some baking soda, food colouring, dishwashing detergent - for your 'magma' - then add some vinegar to create the lava eruption), and his little sister certainly got in on the act as well.
A great day for simple science in the Raven household today!
:-)
