How high can a volcano throw lava up in the air?

A volcano can throw lava up in the air like a giant splash from a super hot puddle.

When a volcano erupts, it's like opening a firehose full of molten rock, lava! The pressure inside the volcano pushes the lava out with force, and sometimes it goes whoosh all the way up into the sky. Think about when you throw a ball straight up, how high it goes depends on how hard you throw it.

If the lava is really hot and moving fast enough, it can go as high as a few kilometers! That’s like stacking hundreds of toy blocks on top of each other, or climbing all the way to the top of a very tall mountain. But if the lava isn’t moving as fast, it might just flow out slowly, like syrup coming from a bottle.

Sometimes you can see the lava glowing in the air before it falls back down, it’s like watching little fireballs dance before they plop into the ground.