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Picture a volcano in your mind. You’re probably thinking of a cinder cone volcano, the simplest type of volcano. Cinder cone volcanos have steep sides with a bowl-shaped crater at the top.
Cinder cone volcanoes grow from a single vent in the Earth’s crust. Gas-charged lava is blown violently out of the volcano’s central vent, and the ash and rocks rain down around the vent. After multiple eruptions, the volcano takes on the familiar cone shape, with the erupted rubble forming the steep slopes. Cinder cones rarely grow much taller than 300 meters above their surroundings, and they’re common in western North America, and wherever there’s volcanic activity.
Although they can be solitary structures, cinder cones are often associated with other kinds of volcanoes, like shield volcanoes and stratovolcanoes (or a composite volcano). For example, geologists have discovered more than 100 cinder cones on the sides of Hawaii’s Mauna Kea, one of the biggest volcano in the world. Each cinder cone comes from a vent that opened up on the sides of the volcano.
One of the most famous cinder cone volcanoes erupted out of a Mexican corn field in 1943. The volcano erupted for 9 years, and quickly built up the cinder cone to 424 meters, and covered 25 km2 of fields in lava flows and rubble. Nearby towns were eventually buried in ash by the eruptions.
We have also recorded an episode of Astronomy Cast about Earth, as part of our tour through the Solar System – Episode 51: Earth.