What is the difference between a volcano and a mountain?
Nicole
Hazard
Nicole,
This is easy. I bet you can figure out the answer yourself! A
mountain is a mass of land that is taller than its surroundings. I don't
think there is a definition for how high a mountain should be, but I
would guess anything less than about 1000 ft higher we would probably
call a hill. So a mountain is some high piece of land. One way to make a
mountain is to have a volcano erupt, but most mountains on Earth aren't
made this way.
Most mountains are made by the collisions of thick
portions of the Earth's skin. We call the upper part of the crust and the
upper mantle a PLATE. The Earth has about a dozen plates that move slowly
sideways, bouncing into each other and sometimes sliding down under one
another. During many of the plate collisions part of the Earth's crust
gets shoved up into the air creating mountains. All of the major mountain
chains - such as the Rockies, the Himalayas and Alps - were made this
way. Without plates there would be far fewer mountains.
So, volcanoes are mountains, but there are many mountains that are not
volcanoes!
Chuck Wood, University of North Dakota
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