A Volcanoe has 5 parts. A vent, a crater, a pipe, a cone, and a magma chamber. A vent is an opening in the earth surface. A crater is a bowl shaped diversion were lava and ash are released.The pipe is a passageway in the volcano in which the magma rises through to the surface during an eruption. The cone is the circular shape around the volcanoe were lava and ash are piled.

    Hot Liqued lava can be very dangerous.  People usually have time to get out of their homes beacuse of how slowly it moves.  Ash and firery Fragments are usually spit up from the earth.  The cooled fragments that fall back to Earth are called tephra.This can cause a great danger to any one.  Evan worse than lava flows!  Hot gases and tephra flow down the mountain.


 

       Volcanoes usually occur on plate boundries.  Plate broundries are where plates meet or split apart.  This may cause alot of damage! There are three type of plate boundries; convergant, divergant, and transformant.  Volcanoes form on Convergant and divergant boundries. They can also form on hot spots. At a convergant boundry a plate can be pushed under another and melt to form magma.  At a divergant boundry plates are shoved togehter and magma is pushed to the top.

           Mount St. Helens, Washington
    Mount St. Helens is at 46.2N and 122.2W.  It is 8,363 feet high.  This volcanoe is a stratovolcanoe.  That meens it erupts somtimes and then stays still for a long time. And when it erupts again the explosion can be huge. On 18 May 1980 the top of Mount St. Helans ,wich was 1,300 ft., was gone in minutes!   The explosion sent remains over 150sq miles away.  The sky was coverd in ash and smoke.  Mount St. Helans is a very powerful volcanoe! You can find out more about Mt. St.Helanshere.
                                Vesuvius
    Situated in the Bay of Naples in Italy this volcanoe is surronded by 3 million people. In 1631, it destroyed Pompeii, a very lage city. Since this volcanoe erupted so long ago it may be ready to explode any time soon.  That explosion would take away about 1 million people. The public officials of this area are trying to move some people closest to the mountain to a safer place before it's to late!  They hope to have the place nice and secure by the year 2002.  More about this volcanoe here.