This interactive lava flow simulator is part of the Physics Friday™ series within our Earth Science Lab Series, a collection of standards-aligned science simulations for K–5 classrooms and families. In this simulator, students explore how three variables — lava temperature, silica content, and slope steepness — combine to determine how fast lava flows, how far it travels, and how large an ash column an eruption produces. Real volcano presets for Mauna Loa, Mt. Etna, and Mt. Pinatubo let students compare dramatically different eruption types side by side. Grade-band content (K–1, 2–3, and 4–5) adjusts the science explanations to meet students where they are, from wonder-first discovery to viscosity, polymerization, and real evacuation decision-making. An evacuation story banner for each real volcano grounds the science in the human stakes that make it matter. Below is our Volcano Lava Flow Simulator, bring it to your classroom, and read about how we decided to create this simulation model below. Scroll below the Simulator to read about our personal links to volcanos below.
– Dr. K.M. Schlatter
Our Connections to Volcanos
I have been fascinated by volcanoes for as long as I can remember. Growing up, I spent several years living in Tokyo, where the volcanic landscape of Japan was simply part of daily life — mountains that doubled as ski slopes in winter and quiet, brooding giants the rest of the year. That early proximity to volcanic terrain planted something in me that never really left.
Years later, I found myself on the summit of Mt. Etna with my young daughter, the two of us bracing against a wind so sharp it felt personal. Within minutes of the hike she had buried her face into the crook of her father’s neck. And then our guide did something unexpected — he told us to lie down on the gravel. We did, and instantly felt the warmth of Etna rising through our jackets, our jeans, our shoes. The locals call her Mamma Etna, and in that moment, lying on the warm ground while the wind howled above us, the name made complete sense. That child is now six years old, and volcanoes have not left the top of our family agenda since. I built this simulator in her spirit — and in the spirit of every child who has ever looked at a mountain and felt that pull of wonder.
May is Volcano Awareness Month, a designation proclaimed annually in Hawaii and anchored by the work of the USGS Hawaiian Volcano Observatory — one of the most important volcano monitoring institutions in the world. It is a moment to pause and appreciate both the science and the very human stories that volcanoes write. This May, we are also marking the 45th anniversary of the eruption of Mt. St. Helens on May 18, 1980 — an event that reshaped an entire landscape in a matter of hours and permanently changed how scientists, emergency managers, and communities think about volcanic risk in the United States.
Volcanoes are not only geological events. They are community events. They displace families, erase neighborhoods, and rewrite the geography of home. My colleague and fellow contributor Vanessa Farrell knows this more deeply than most. Born on the island of Montserrat in the Caribbean, Vanessa lived through the aftermath of the Soufrière Hills Volcano eruption that began on July 18, 1995 — an eruption that is now approaching its 30th anniversary this July. She has written with extraordinary honesty about what it means to return to an island you knew before and after, to stand in the ruins of a village that raised you, and to carry that loss forward with grace. Nineteen lives were lost. A population of 12,000 dwindled to below 5,000. Plymouth, the capital, was buried. And yet, as Vanessa writes, Montserrat’s spirit remains unbroken. Like the phoenix, it rises. Read Vanessa’s full piece here.
Volcano Awareness Month is also a moment to honor the thousands of families in Hawaii who have lost homes to lava flows — most recently during the 2018 Kilauea eruption in Leilani Estates, where over 700 homes were destroyed. It is a moment to think about the 25 million people who live within reach of Popocatépetl in Mexico, and the communities around Mt. Rainier in Washington State, where scientists consider the lahar risk one of the most serious in the country. Volcanic risk is not a faraway story. It is a present one, managed every day by scientists, emergency planners, and communities who have learned — sometimes through tremendous loss — how to read the signals a volcano sends.
That is ultimately what this simulator is about. Not just the physics, though the physics are genuinely fascinating. It is about the decisions that flow from understanding those physics — when to evacuate, how fast danger travels, why thick lava sitting barely outside a crater can still send 200,000 people fleeing, as it did at Pinatubo in 1991. Science saves lives when it is understood, communicated, and trusted.
Read more about volcanoes, wonder, and what my daughter taught me about all of it here.
