What Is the Difference Between Volcanoes and Earthquakes?

Volcanoes and earthquakes are both exciting things that happen inside the Earth, but they work in different ways.

Volcanoes are like a hot lava fountain inside the ground. Imagine you have a big pot of soup on the stove, and it starts to bubble up and spill out, that's what happens with a volcano! Magma (which is hot rock deep underground) pushes its way up through cracks in the Earth’s surface, and then it comes out as lava, smoke, or even rocks. Sometimes you can see this happen, like when Mount St. Helens erupted.

Earthquakes, on the other hand, are more like when the ground suddenly moves, kind of like if you were playing with a seesaw and one side went up really fast while the other side went down. This happens because big pieces of Earth (called plates) shift and bump into each other deep underground, making the ground shake.

Both volcanoes and earthquakes are caused by movement inside the Earth, but one is more like a fountain, and the other is more like a shake.