Cart

How Basalt Columns Form Training Center

Ari Raider's Training Materials · Lava Safari · Training Center 1 of 6

How Basalt Columns Form

The six-sided columns holding up the Realm's roof are cracked — and they only knit back together for someone who knows exactly how they formed in the first place.

What you're training for

At the Basalt Columns, three of the pillars are cracked through and the ceiling has already dropped a hand's width. They mend for whoever can put the forming steps in order. Train here first; prove it in the simulation.

The science

  • It starts with thick lava that pools and stops — a deep flow with nowhere to go.
  • It cools slowly, outside first, and cooling rock shrinks.
  • Shrinking rock has to crack — and the cracks meet at angles that carve the flow into mostly six-sided columns.
  • It's real and you can visit it: Giant's Causeway in Ireland and Devils Postpile in California are whole landscapes of these columns.

Teach it today — one pan of mud

The cracking pan. Spread a thin layer of cornstarch-and-water slurry (or plain mud) in a tray and let it dry over a few days. It shrinks as it dries and cracks into polygons — the exact same physics as a cooling lava flow, at desk scale. Photograph it daily and compare to photos of the Giant's Causeway.

Trained and ready? Prove it at Stop 1 — the Basalt Columns. Free, no logins, progress saved on the device.

Enter the Realm at Stop 1

Resources in this training center

Worksheets, reading passages, flashcards and printables for this lesson are being added — new resources land here first. Get one email a month when they do, or browse the whole free library.

The hands-on half: the Lava Safari Adventure Kit puts six real specimens, six Digs, six Gemlings and the Realm map in your students' hands — $19.99, or $15 a student for classrooms.

More Lava Safari training

Basalt Columns · Magma vs Lava · Cooling Speed · Volcanic Gases · Eruption Types · Why Lava Glows · Enter the Adventure →

Back to top