To accompany ‘Hawaii’s Kilauea volcano recently erupted like a stomp rocket‘

SCIENCE

Before Reading:

1. To the best of your understanding, explain how a volcanic eruption occurs. Use a series of illustrations to show the various stages. How confident do you feel in the accuracy of those volcanic eruption processes? Briefly explain your answer.
2. List three ways scientists might take measurements and collect data to study what goes on deep inside volcanoes.

During Reading:

1. For how many days in May 2018 did Hawaii’s Kilauea volcano erupt with strange blasts? How many blasts occurred during this time?
2. When launching a toy from the launchpad of a stomp rocket, onto what must a person stomp?
3. This story describes two standard processes by which volcanoes are known to erupt. Briefly describe how bubbles of gas in magma can trigger in an eruption.
4. Describe a second standard process in which groundwater might play a role in a volcanic eruption.
5. What is subsidence?
6. After considering the data, researchers figured out what likely caused the newfound type of eruption. Why do researchers compare this new eruption process to a stomp rocket?
7. What likely happened to cause Kilauea’s rocky roof to destabilize and fall?

After Reading:

1. In this story, scientists acquired many different types of data to better understand what is going on deep underground. List three types of data that scientists in this story collected. For one of these examples, explain how those data led scientists to draw a conclusion. 
2. How important do you think it is to understand geological processes like those described in this story? Briefly explain your answer. (Hint: How might such discoveries help people?)