Category: Science Publisher: James W. Cotton
Type: Non-Fiction
Pages: 197
Copyright: March 28, 2008
What causes Earthquakes? Why did the Dinosaurs die? This work is a wonderful overview of geology and Earth Science for the enthusiast and hobbyist. Includes hundreds of beautiful photos and diagrams.
Excerpt
Just as any movie or story has it’s ‘edge of the seat’ excitement such as car chases and gunplay, so does the story of our planet. Natural history is like a war movie…six months of boredom punctuated by ten minutes of sheer terror.
The equivalent of the bank robbery and high speed police chase is perhaps the volcanic eruption. The term ‘volcano’ comes from the old Greco-Roman ‘Vulcan,’ used to describe a mountain on an offshore island of Italy. Volcanoes erupt in a multitude of ways, some more violent than others.
The majority of volcanoes in the world are relatively calm fissure eruptions deep under the ocean along the massive mid ocean ridges. Cracks form, some of them hundreds of miles long, where they ooze lava which cools somewhat rapidly in the cold depths, adding to the earth’s crust. When lava flows underwater, it cools off in oblong bulbous masses called pillow lavas which cover virtually every square inch of the bottoms of all the world’s oceans.
