ifuckingloveminerals:kidsneedscience:Seventy two years ago today on 20 February 1943, a cornfield in
ifuckingloveminerals:kidsneedscience:Seventy two years ago today on 20 February 1943, a cornfield in southern Mexico in the town of Paricutin erupted in a spectacular explosion and continued to shoot ash into the air for a year. By the time it was finished, the cornfield had grown a cone of ash over a thousand feet high and covered ten square miles. This explosion of gas, molten lava and solid ash is known as tephra, which is nothing more than the Anglicized version of the Ancient Greek word τεφρα (tephra) which meant ash. This type of eruption is also known as a pyroclast or pyroclastic flow or even pyroclastic density current, which comes from the Ancient Greek words πῦρ (pur), meaning fire, and κλαστός (klastos), meaning broken in pieces. Image of the Paricutin Volcano during its first period of activity in 1943 courtesy of NOAA via wikipedia, used with permission under a Creative Commons 3.0 license. -- source link