You will need:
- Saucepan
- Stove
- Kitchen cloth or mittens
- Tin pie pan
- Hammer + nails
- Water
Follow this simple experiment and figure out how fumaroles work.
INSTRUCTIONS
- Ask an adult to help you. Take a tin pie pan, turn it over and ask the adult to hammer a nail into it so as to make a hole.
- Fill a saucepan half way with water and place it on the stove.
- Wait for it to start steaming. Before it starts boiling, simmer the stove.
- Ask the adult to place gently the tin pie pan with a hole in it, over the saucepan, right side up. Observe the steam coming out from the single hole in the tin.
- Next, ask the adult to remove the tin pie pan gently with the help of mittens, and using the hammer and nails make yet another hole in the pan.
- Put the pie pan back on the saucepan. Observe the steam escaping.
- Repeat the process of making holes 4-5 times more in the pie pan and placing it back on the saucepan with steaming water. Observe.
RESULT
With only 1 opening in the pie pan, there was too much pressure on the pie pan causing the steam to rush through with more speed and force. However, with more holes made in the pie pan, steam would have had more outlets for release, resulting in lesser pressure. Fumaroles are steam vents in the earth which help release steam created after the water in any hydrothermal feature has boiled away before it reaches the earth’s surface. If there is just one steam vent, the pressure is too much, and it causes the earth to crack, creating more holes/ vents from which the steam escapes.
