1. What is the name of the Earth’s largest active volcano, located in Hawaii?
Answer: Mauna Loa. The term “Mauna Loa” translates in English to “long mountain.”
2. Which volcanic eruption is credited as the loudest sound on Earth to ever be recorded?
Answer: the 1883 eruption of Krakatoa. Located in Indonesia, the volcano produced an eruption loud enough to be heard in Perth, Australia!
3. What is the name of the most volcanically active zone on Earth?
Answer: the Pacific Ring of Fire. This is a point where the Pacific makes contact with other tectonic plates.
4. What are the names of the four main types of volcanoes?
Answer: cinder volcanoes, composite volcanoes, shield volcanoes, and lava domes. Other types of volcanoes include calderas and fissure volcanoes.
5. Volcanoes can be classified into three categories based on activity: active, dormant or…?
Answer: extinct.
6. True or false: lava and magma are the same thing.
Answer: false. Magma describes molten rock found underneath the Earth’s surface. It becomes lava when it is released during a volcanic eruption.
7. What is the name of the largest volcano in the solar system?
Answer: Olympus Mons. It’s found on Mars!
8. What are the three main types of volcanic eruption classifications?
Answer: magmatic eruptions, phreatomagmatic eruptions, and phreatic eruptions.
9. What is the name of the volcano that destroyed the city of Pompeii, Italy?
Answer: Mount Vesuvius.
10. What is the name of the fast-travelling, destructive, volcanic mudflow derived from an Indonesian term?
Answer: a lahar. It contains a mixture of rock pieces, ice, water, volcanic ash, and tephra, and usually travels down river valleys.
11. True or false: volcanoes can produce lightning.
Answer: true. This has been documented almost 200 times in the last two centuries!
12. What is the most common type of volcano on Earth?
Answer: cinder cones. They are technically known as scoria cones.
13. What is the name of the most active stratovolcano on Earth?
Answer: Mount Etna. It is also the world’s tallest Mediterranean island mountain.
14. What is the most active volcano located in the Cascade Range?
Answer: Mount St. Helens. The Cascade Range is a volcano chain that encompasses parts of the United States and Canada.
15. Which famous stratovolcano is also nicknamed “the Lighthouse of the Mediterranean”?”
Answer: Stromboli. It is a popular tourist attraction due to the volcano’s beautiful nighttime eruptions.
16. Which Filipino volcano caused the second-largest eruption in the 20th century?
Answer: Mount Pinatubo. The June 5th, 1991, eruption produced ash plumes that reached 40 km high into the air, and 10km3 of magma!
17. What is the hottest volcano in the world in terms of radiated energy?
Answer: Kilauea. It is also considered Hawaii’s most active and youngest volcano.
18. What is the name of the world’s tallest free-standing volcano (i.e., not belonging to a volcano chain)?
Answer: Mount Kilimanjaro. It is a stratovolcano located in Tanzania, Africa.
19. What are the names of Mount Kilimanjaro’s three volcanic cones?
Answer: Mawenzi, Shira, and Kibo. The first two are extinct while the latter is dormant.
20. What is the name of the most common type of volcanic rock in the world?
Answer: Basalt.
21. How many active volcanoes are estimated to exist in the world?
Answer: around 1350. This does not include volcanic ranges on the oceanic floor at spreading centers (e.g., Mid-Atlantic Ridge).
22. What is the name of Ecuador’s second-highest peak, also one of the world’s highest active volcanoes?
Answer: Cotopaxi. It is located in the Andes Mountains.
23. Which volcano is responsible for the deadliest eruption in history?
Answer: the 1815 eruption of Tambora in Indonesia. It led to 92,000 deaths, most caused by starvation.
24. Which volcano on the island of Martinique caused the third deadliest eruption in history?
Answer: Mount Pelée. This eruption occurred in 1902 and caused 29,025 deaths, most caused by ash flows.
25. Which 1883 volcanic eruption lowered global temperatures by 0.5°C, and was the second deadliest in history?
Answer: the eruption of Krakatoa, Indonesia. Global temperatures did return to normal until 1888.
About the Author
Yasmin is a McMaster University graduate and Program Coordinator at SCIFAA. She holds a Bachelor of Applied Science in Sustainable Chemistry and a Minor in Environmental Sciences.
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