What is magma?

Magma is like hot soup deep inside the Earth that can turn into rocks when it cools down.

Imagine you have a big pot of soup on the stove, it's bubbling and warm, and if you take it off the heat, it starts to get solid. Magma is kind of like that soup, but way deeper in the ground. It’s made up of molten rock, which means it's hot and liquidy, just like soup.

Sometimes, magma moves because of pressure, it's like when you squeeze a toothpaste tube, and the toothpaste comes out. The Earth can be like that toothpaste tube: when there’s lots of heat and pressure deep inside, magma pushes its way up through cracks in the ground.

If magma cools slowly underground, it turns into hard rocks, like how soup becomes a solid when it cools. But if it comes out as lava on the surface, like during a volcano eruption, it can cool faster and make different kinds of rocks.

So next time you see soup or toothpaste, remember, they’re just like magma in disguise!