nature, By Ben • infographics science • 4 Mar 2013

Lava fountains are impressive. Recently Mt. Etna has been throwing up lava fountains that reach heights of 600-800 meters tall. Erik Klemeti of the Eruptions blog compared that to the size of the Empire State Building:

In his post on the Mt. Etna laval fountains there was a discussion on the height of the largest lava fountains ever recorded. While not official, it is believed that lava fountains during Mt. Vesuvius' 1779 eruption reached heights of 3,000 meters. I wondered what that would look like, so I threw together this image which compares a 3,000 m lava fountain to the height of the Empire State Building:

In order for lava to reach 3000 meters, if we ignore air resistance, it would have to leave the vent traveling nearly 550 miles per hour.

There's a Rhett Allain Dot.Physics post in here if we attempt to look at force, pressure, volume, and acceleration of the magma...

inspired by: Stunning Lava Fountains From Italys Etna at Wired Science

Tags: Etna, geology, impressive, lava, lava fountains, physics, Vesuvius, volcanoes