Tuesday 23rd June 2020

Geography

Use the video and website below to learn about volcanoes. Then look at how a volcano is constructed. Your task is to copy and label a diagram of a cross section of an erupting volcano. Copy it out neatly into your home learning book.

Art - Can you recreate this NASA image of the highest volcano on the planet Mars?

This is the Olympus Mons Volcano - Highest Point on the planet Mars: Olympus Mons volcano is the highest point on Mars at an elevation of 21,229 meters (69,649 feet) It is also the highest mountain in the solar system and the solar system's largest volcano. In this image, Olympus Mons is the largest volcano. Lava flows from Olympus Mons and its neighboring volcanoes have resurfaced the planet in this area. These lava flows are not heavily cratered, revealing that the eruptions which formed them occurred at a point in the planet's history that was after the heavy asteroid bombardment. NASA Image.

More information on the Olympus Mons for those that are interested.

Olympus Mons is an enormous volcano. It stands about 25 kilometers (15.5 miles) higher than its surrounding landscape and it is over 500 kilometers (310 miles) in width. The map above has been enhanced to make topographic features more obvious. On that map, Olympus Mons looks steeper than it actually is.

Olympus Mons is a gently sloping shield volcano, much like the volcanoes that make up the Hawaiian Islands. If you were placed on the flank of Olympus Mons and not told that you were standing on the slope of the volcano, you could probably look around and think that you were standing on a gently sloping plain. You would see a gentle slope upwards in one direction and a gentle slope down in the opposite direction.

If you were placed on the rim of the summit crater and looked down the slope of the volcano, your horizon would be located on the volcano's flank. The volcano is that gently sloping and that immense.

Astrogeologists believe that plate tectonics processes on Mars are no longer active. Olympus Mons is thought to be located on a stationary "plate" over a deep hotspot. The stationary nature of the plate has kept the Olympus Mons fixed above the hotspot, allowing repeated eruptions to build it to a very great heigh