Teachers' Domain; Hewlett Collection; Lava Sampling on Kilauea Volcano, Hawaii

Is. This a. Romance. Working with volcanoes. And it's this opportunity I think to combine this level of excitement with trying to solve a geological problem. You know let's try to figure out how does a volcano work. What's the nature of the magma that's supplying. The volcano. Since 1983. Killer way out has been erupting almost continuously. And we think we know quite a good deal about what's happening inside a killer way a volcano. Of low killer way a volcano has a single crater at its summit. Magma often mined just to push its way. Through the flanks of the volcano along one of these two roofs so. Actually break the surface and lead to an eruption. Keel away as activity is under constant scientific observation

as part of the effort to understand it. Mike Garcia of the University of Hawaii collects samples of lava for chemical analysis. Frown on kilo a volcano looking at some of the younger three with fate on earth. As you get close you can really feel the heat from the earth rising gas and this. Guy. What I want to be where I can approach the sky light where it's not overhung and be able to roll a cable in and try to a sample a bit of the lava. This is probably the first place most of this lava seen a surface so it's really quite hot. The lava is over two Sausan degrees Fahrenheit. Standing here is like standing in front of a blast furnace. Garcia will essentially be fishing for lava to collect a sample. He

uses a long chain with a square steel pipe on the end of this pipe will dip briefly into the flow and scoop up some lava. Without protective clothing. Garcia has to move in quickly. The flowing lava pulls on the chain like a living thing. The guide was hung up on the end and there it is again. We'll use this lobby here to beat your sample. It's very hot and it is cool very little since it passed in the deep interior of the earth. Even so the sample is quickly cooled with water. Garcia can handle it in only a few minutes. On Caraway a volcano there are a variety of different kinds of analyses going on there's physics there is ground deprivation news gas chemistry and looking at the lava is just another tool to try and understand what's

going on inside the volcano. From here the lava continues to flow toward the coast. But about a mile downhill it becomes blocked and is forced to the surface. The lava we saw on the skyline was extremely fluid as it passes down through the tube system and comes out and surface flows lower down the hill. The lava has lost more of its heat and temperature so it's much more viscous. We're going to try and sample the edge of a boy. Well here you can see from all the orange in the crack that it is most all the therapist. This is molten rock that only a few days earlier may have been a mile underground. It's like a thick paste and stretches into seem glassy filaments by quenching a lava region.

What was there before we took the sample. Otherwise it changes hands as slowly cools we want to see what was originally planned to lava state. After a year of his collected his samples on killer whale volcano he sends the samples to me and I determine their chemical composition and we're using this. The chemistry of these lovers to try and find out what's happening inside the volcano in other words what's going on in the volcanos plumbing system although it's 15 miles from the summit. This is like all killer whale Abos with characteristic proportions of aluminum titanium silica and other elements. This chemical fingerprint tells just how complex and extensive the killer whale system is. But it tells another story as well. The earliest workers on the island of Hawaii. Thought that the two volcanoes of mana lawyer and killer whale are interrelated. In

other words the killer whale was a sort of a smaller satellite sitting on the flanks of the much larger volcano. When we look carefully at the composition of the lovers from the two volcanoes we see that they are quite distinct. No words. Each volcano has its own sort of chemical pattern which we can recognize.