Last year, scientists and students from the University at Buffalo donned protective aluminized suits and got very close to the molten material spewing from Iceland’s Litli-Hrútur volcano.
“It sounds like a bulldozer of broken glass coming your way,” said volcanologist Stephan Kolzenburg.
While most people would avoid getting anywhere near a volcano, the team had an important reason to be there: trying out a brand-new device, a penetrometer that measures the viscosity of lava. A new study published in Review of Scientific Instruments discusses the penetrometer and data from its first use in the field—information never before gleaned from an active lava flow.
Limitations of laboratory lava
Lava is a mixture of three phases: melt, or molten rock; bubbles, or gas contained in the melt; and crystals, or solidified and cooled materials. Knowing lava’s viscosity is key to better understanding how fast it flows. Higher-viscosity…
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