Please watch the video clip to the side before reading Iceland My trip to Iceland this past summer was one that will live in my family's memories forever. We were there when Iceland slaughtered England in the Eurocup (Okay, they beat them by 1 goal). We saw waterfalls, geysers, glaciers, volcanoes and bathed in a geothermal lagoon. I won't discuss the exotic food that some of us consumed, but you will not find it on an American menu. There were so many fascinating natural phenomenon that we observed and I wanted to learn more about them and share them with my family and students. For the first time in my life, I saw a geyser. "A geyser is an intermittent spout of geothermally heated groundwater. The word geyser comes from the name of a single Icelandicgeyser, Geysir, written mention of which dates back to 1294 AD."(World of Earth Science) In order for a geyser to form, certain conditions must be met: First, underground channels in the form of a vertical neck and a series of chambers must exist and vent at the surface. Second, there must be lots of water very deep down inside the earth that is in contact with or in close contact to magma. Finally, the water must come in contact with silica rich rock. When the hot water comes in contact with silica, the silica dissolves and forms a solution which seals the series of chambers that feed into the vertical neck, this allows the water to flow upwards instead of through the horizontal channels. Water underground is heated by the magma. Since the boiling point of water depends on both temperature and pressure, water can remain a liquid at temperatures above 100 degrees celsius if the pressure is high enough (this is called superheated water). Steam then forms in the upper part because pressure is lower (pressure gets less the further up you go). The steam bubbles force some water up to the surface which takes weight off the water underneath. The water underground now has less pressure and therefor a lower boiling point and is forced to the surface again. All this water seeps underground again and the cycle continues. A rock outcrop of the ridge at Thingvellir in Iceland
How has Iceland Benefited from its Natural Resources? "Iceland is one of the world's richest sources of geothermal energy--power generated from Earth's internal heat"(Pipe Dream) The Mid-Atlantic Ridge is an underwater mountain range that lies along a margin between adjoining tectonic plates. The tectonic plates that lie along the Mid-Atlantic Ridge are moving away from each other and magma is constantly rising from under the ground and forming new crust (Iceland is getting bigger). Iceland actually formed about 20 million years ago from erupting magma that rose above the ocean. Because Iceland is pretty young, its crust is very thin and more heat reaches the surface. Heat and hot water are delivered to more than 90 percent of Iceland's homes and businesses through pipelines that penetrate as far as 2 kilometers (1.2 miles) into the ground. Source Citation "Geyser." World of Earth Science. Ed. K. Lee Lerner and Brenda Wilmoth Lerner. Detroit: Gale, 2007.Science in Context. Web. 9 Aug. 2016. Davy, Emma. "Pipe dream: this winter, Icelanders begin drilling for a strange phase of matter that could yield a gusher of clean, renewable energy." Current Science, a Weekly Reader publication 11 Feb. 2005: 10+.Science in Context. Web. 9 Aug. 2016.
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