08/30/2010

After a very long flight from New York I finally made it to sunny Honolulu, the capitol city in the state of Hawaii.  I will be hosted by Dr Khan Lau and his son Aidan. Dr Lau is an optometrist but love to explore many different sciences. 

Our first stop is the Bishop Museum in Honolulu.  The Bishop museum is one of the oldest and one of the few science museums in Hawaii.  We will be visiting the volcano exhibit there. 

As you may know Volcanos and an integral part of the Hawaiian lifestyle and culture.  Many of the ancient Gods who were worshiped by the Hawaiian people we based on the geological phenomenon. 

Here is a look at how a volcano is formed.  Magma ( molten rock) pushes its way to the surface of the earth causing an explosion and causing the fomation of mauntains or in the case of Hawaii islands.  You can see the lava pushing upward in this model os the earth's crust behind me. 

You can see the lava rise behind my head as it pushes its way up to the surface where it breaches the earths crust before it becomes a volcano......

When the lava reaches the surface it explodes in a ball of fire forming a crater (area around the fire ) a caulderon (the molten soup in the crater). 

Once the explosions stop and the caulderon cools a molten soup, as is cools this molten earth becomes lava....  as more and more lava cools a mountain is formed like this wax model......

Lava cooling in the ocean forms underwater mountains and the lava will glow red until it has enough time to cool and solidify............

There are may active volcanos around the world many of them form a ring aound the Pacific ocean.  You can see the volcanos here on this globe represented by small red dots.....

This is the end of our vist to the Bishop Museum........

Lava cooling in the ocean forms underwater mountains and the lava will glow red until it has enough time to cool and solidify............

There are may active volcanos around the world many of them form a ring aound the Pacific ocean.  You can see the volcanos here on this globe represented by small red dots.....

This is the end of our vist to the Bishop Museum........

Lava cooling in the ocean forms underwater mountains and the lava will glow red until it has enough time to cool and solidify............

There are may active volcanos around the world many of them form a ring aound the Pacific ocean.  You can see the volcanos here on this globe represented by small red dots.....

This is the end of our vist to the Bishop Museum........