HW_Volcano and the River of Lava
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EES 0836
Volcano and the River of Lava
Disasters: Geology vs. Hollywood
Introduction
In the movie Volcano (1997), a raging volcano has formed, raining a storm of deadly fire bombs and an
endless river of white-hot lava upon the stunned city! As lava threatens the city, geologists need to work
quickly in order to control the flow of lava on a downtown road. In the video clip, you can see they decide
to trap the lava by creating a cul-de-sac of concrete and fire trucks, and then dousing the lava with several
helicopters-full of water. We know that in Hollywood, everything works out in the end, but what if this
was real life? Would it have worked?
Learning Objectives
●
Quantify the process of hydraulically cooling lava.
(4, 5, b, c)
●
Critically assess the portrayal of science in the movie Volcano (1997).
(4, 5, b)
Part 1:
Watch the clip
You can see the river of lava moving slowly down Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles in the movie clip.
Helicopters and firefighters work to cool the lava.
1.
Do you think it’s plausible to cool a river of lava like this? Explain your reasoning.
It is somewhat plausible to cool a river of lava like this. A popular method to stop the flow
of lava is hydraulic cooling, which this is just a worse way of doing. However, the movie
definitely did not have enough water to actually cool the river of lava. The effectiveness
also depends on how viscous the lava is.
2.
How many helicopters were used to help cool the lava? Do you think this would be enough?
Explain your reasoning.
I think there were around fifteen or sixteen helicopters, I may be one or two off because
of the lack of brightness. This would not be enough to cool down the lava river. The
helicopters would either need much more water or many more helicopters to stop a river
of lava moving fairly fast.
EES 0836
Part 2
: A look at the numbers
In this section, the thermodynamics to quantify how much water it takes to cool lava enough to slow its
flow has been done for you. Some information used to calculate this is known, but since this is all
happening in a movie, there are several factors that are assumed or estimated. Most notably, the length,
width, and depth of the lava flow are estimated using Google Earth’s measurement tools.
Note:
What we know based on the movie is that they are only trying to slow the movement of lava, not
completely solidify it. All math is relative to this.
In order to cool lava, emergency responders will need:
1 kg of water
per
7.72 kg of lava
Using rough road estimates and an average density of lava, the mass of magma in this scene is:
130,000,000 kg
Questions
1.
How much water is needed to slow the flow of lava?
In order to slow the flow of the lava, you would need roughly 16.8 million kgs of water.
2.
If a helicopter can carry about 900 kg of water, how many helicopters are needed?
You would need around 18,711 helicopters. That’s a lot of helicopters.
3.
How many days would it take if they were dumping one helicopter's worth of water per minute?
If they were dumping one helicopter’s worth of water per minute, it would take just under 13 days
As we can see in the movie, it’s not just helicopters. There are also several fire trucks helping to cool the
lava. Again, with some assumptions being made, let’s factor that into the equation.
1 fire hose equals approximately 9.5 helicopters per hour
1.
Let’s say there were ~20 fire hoses used per hour. How many helicopters would this account for?
The fire hoses would account for 190 helicopters.
2.
How many days would it take if they were using this many hoses?
It would take around 7 days with this many hoses.
EES 0836
Based on what you saw in the film, and the results of your calculation, would the lava chilling, as it is
shown in the film, be successful?
The lava would definitely not be chilled. Even if they had double or triple the number of hoses, the lava
would not cool down that fast.
Part 3
: The real world
There is often some grain of truth behind Hollywood exaggeration. In this case, stopping a lava flow by
using water chilling was a method successfully used in Iceland in the early 1970’s.
Read this:
The Little Icelandic Town that Survived an Epic Lava Flow
Watch this:
1973 Iceland Volcanic Eruption
1.
Based on what you saw in the Iceland film, identify 2 significant differences between the scenario
in the movie “Volcano” and in the real-life scenario in Iceland on which it was based. Explain
your reasoning for both of these differences. (1 paragraph)
There were many differences between the movie and the real-life scenario. Firstly, in the real-life
scenario, people were being evacuated from the area. In the movie, there were reporters who were
extremely close to the river of lava. People would probably prefer to stay far away from lava in
real life. Another difference is the use of helicopters. There were no helicopters in the real-life
scenario, they only used fire hoses to cool down the lava.
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