When lava spills from a volcano, little stands a chance. 

At a temperature exceeding 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit, flowing molten rock will consume most everything in its path. That sounds like bad news for the more than 500 million people who live near active volcanoes. Yet, coexistence is possible. 

So, how exactly does one stop a force of nature?

As it turns out, there are “some really fascinating and outlandish things that we have tried,” said volcanologist Arianna Soldati. Take, for instance, the time the U.S. Army Air Corps bombed lava flows in an effort to divert them. 

Soldati lays out some of that peculiar history and more in new learning materials developed in collaboration with TED-Ed.

TED-Ed is the youth and education initiative of the nonprofit TED. It produces original videos, questions and resources to help educators design lesson plans around specific topics. 

In NC State’s Department of Marine, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, Soldati works to better understand how lava moves, including where it might go and how fast it might get there. That kind of research will improve models that predict where lava goes after an eruption, leading to more accurate evacuation orders.

Soldati pitched a lesson on lava flows to the TED-Ed team after conducting research in Iceland. Upon watching the town of Grindavik construct diversion barriers, she became increasingly interested in how people living near volcanoes manage to safeguard life and property.

Her pitch was a success: For roughly a year, Soldati worked with TED-Ed’s writers, animators and reviewers to develop a lesson that explores the science of lava flows, as well as the historical and contemporary ways of diverting them.

“I seriously think participating in this project is one of the coolest things I’ve ever done,” Soldati said. 

The lesson includes an animated video, which Soldati wrote the script for. She then spent time sending edits back and forth with reviewers and the animator to ensure the script and visuals were both approachable and scientifically accurate. 

“It’s a huge team effort,” Soldati said. “You see these little five minute videos and sometimes don’t realize what goes on behind the scenes to make them. I’m really proud of this product in the end.”

In addition to spotlighting volcanology as a science, Soldati said it was important to her that the video highlight how much teamwork and creativity goes into successfully diverting lava flows.

“There’s an ingenuity aspect to it — as humans, we can be really creative and come up with a lot of interesting ideas to solve problems,” Soldati said. “We don’t have to completely abandon living in volcanic areas. We don’t have to stop volcanic eruptions from happening, which we wouldn’t be able to do anyway. But, we will keep coming up with solutions so that we can keep coexisting, and I think it’s important that geoscientists can help achieve that.”

Explore more of the TED-Ed lesson on how to stop a lava flow.

This post was originally published in Department of Marine, Earth, and Atmospheric Sciences.