• Question: with volcanoes is it right to say that geology and science in volcanoes are the same things?

    Asked by jasanni to David on 21 Mar 2011 in Categories: .
    • Photo: David Pyle

      David Pyle answered on 21 Mar 2011:

      Yes, it’s all the same.. People who study volcanoes in universities are usually either in Geology (Earth Science) or Geography departments. But to answer the question ‘how do volcanoes work?’ I need to use techniques and information from all areas of science.

      For example, to date an old deposit I might use carbon-14 dating to date the wood or charcoal from a tree which burnt up in the eruption. This involves physics (radioactive decay) and biology (what sort of tree was it?). To understand magma, I need to analyse the rock: chemical analysis of the rock tells us its composition (using techniques like spectroscopy); but we also need to use spectrometers to analyse the composition of individual minerals, so that we can find out when and where they formed. And to understand what might happen next, I need to use statistics to calculate the probability of future eruptions..

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