Structure
The solid or liquid material in an eruption column is lifted by processes which vary as the material ascends:
- At the base of the plume, material is forced upwards out of the vent by the pressure of expanding gas, mainly steam. The gas expands because the pressure of rock above it rapidly reduces as it approaches the surface. This region is called the gas thrust region and typically reaches to only one or two kilometres above the vent.
- The convective thrust region covers most of the height of the plume. The gas thrust region is very turbulent and surrounding air becomes mixed into it and heated. The air expands, reducing its density and rising. The rising air carries the solid and liquid material from the eruption entrained in it upwards.
- As the plume rises into less dense surrounding air, it will eventually reach an altitude where the hot, rising air is of the same density as the surrounding cooler air. In this neutral buoyancy region, the erupted material will then no longer rise through convection, but solely through any upward momentum which it has. This is called the umbrella region, and is usually marked by the column spreading out sideways. The eruptive material and the surrounding cool air has the same density at the base of the umbrella region, and the top is marked by the maximum height which momentum carries the material upward. Because the speeds are very low or negligible in this region it is often distorted by stratospheric winds.
Read more about this topic: Eruption Column
Famous quotes containing the word structure:
“For the structure that we raise,
Time is with materials filled;
Our to-days and yesterdays
Are the blocks with which we build.”
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1809–1882)
“Women over fifty already form one of the largest groups in the population structure of the western world. As long as they like themselves, they will not be an oppressed minority. In order to like themselves they must reject trivialization by others of who and what they are. A grown woman should not have to masquerade as a girl in order to remain in the land of the living.”
—Germaine Greer (b. 1939)
“There is no such thing as a language, not if a language is anything like what many philosophers and linguists have supposed. There is therefore no such thing to be learned, mastered, or born with. We must give up the idea of a clearly defined shared structure which language-users acquire and then apply to cases.”
—Donald Davidson (b. 1917)