Science Explains - Blue Lava

What color is lava? Red? Yes? Well, not always. Sometimes, the flames are bright blue.

Okay, it is not technically lava but rather liquid sulfur. But that isn’t any less dangerous! If you want to get close to it, you better wear a gas mask as the fumes are very toxic. Then again, what the hell are you doing next to an erupting volcano?!

If you click through the sources at the end of this post, you can see several pictures taken by an adventurous photographer who was present when the Kawah Ijen volcano in Indonesia erupted.

Sulfuric gases, pressed through cracks in the ground were heated up to about 600°C and ignited when they came in contact with the air on the surface. Giant flames, almost 5 meters high, were the result of this. When the gases condensed, the liquid, lava-like sulfur formed and poured down the hill.

It is always fun to see something burning in other colors than just boring red and yellow. And there are a lot of colors available!

Barium for example burns in a beautiful green:

But why do those different elements burn in different colors?

Explaining this is a bit tricky, as I don’t know how much you know about atoms and electrons. But I’ll try to make it simple:

Each atom has a certain number of electrons. That number varies with each element. The electrons are located in different “shells” of that atom. If you add energy (= heat it up), the electrons can “jump” into a higher level. But it doesn’t stay there. It “drops” back again and releases the energy that was put in in the first place. In some cases, that energy corresponds to a wavelength we can see as a color.

This is kind of useful if you want to find out what element you’re working with. Just burn it!

Just not all of it. You won’t have anything left to work with.

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This was the last part of my pre-written “vacation posts”! If everything goes as planned, we should return to my regular kind of posts tomorrow.
If I didn’t die in a horrible plane crash, of course. See you around!

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Sources:

Volcano erupts in bright blue flames: Stunning photos

Stunning Electric-Blue Flames Erupt From Volcanoes

This indonesian volcano erupts electric blue lava

Flame Tests

Why do different elements make different color flames when you burn them?

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First Picture taken from pixabay.com

Other credit:

Barium: German Wikipedia, original upload 30. Sep 2004 by Ertua: de:Bild:Boratflamme.jpg

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