When lava meets water, the results are often explosive.

Last year, lava from Hawaii’s Kilauea volcano flowed into the ocean , creating bombs of molten rock that were flung into the sky and then smashed into a nearby tourist boat, injuring 23 people.

In 2010, a glacier-covered volcano in Iceland called Eyjafjallajökull erupted and spewed a plume of ash 30,000 feet into the air, causing hundreds of flights in Europe to be grounded.

Scientists want to better understand these violent reactions to help prepare communities near volcanoes and bodies of water or groundwater. But doing so at active sites can be impractical. Instead, a team of researchers recently brewed their own backyard lava.

“We are not just crazy people mixing and seeing what happens,” said Ingo Sonder, a volcanologist at the University at Buffalo. “We are scientists and we want to quantify, and we do have an idea of what we are doing here.”