Fun with Lava

This year for science we're studying Astronomy and last week we began the chapter on Venus. Did you know that Venus is hotter than Mercury? And that is has a lot of volcanoes all over it?

Our book suggested  we do an experiment to see how lava flows over the land so we broke out our safety glasses and assembled our experiment.  We took a small custard bowl and turned it upside down on a plate and then surrounded it with flour to make a little mountain.

Safe and fashionable

Then we melted about a 1/4 stick of butter in a sauce pan and poured it slowly on the bottom of the custard dish/top of our mountain.
It was very cool the way it cut rivers through the flour down the mountain just like lava does when a volcano erupts.

We let it sit for a couple of days so we could see the butter harden like the lava does into volcanic rock.

Very fun stuff!