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Erupting volcano

Print a real volcano that erupts with baking soda and vinegar. A cup slides in from below, the vent opens at the real crater and the foam runs down the real valleys into a tray. With a worksheet about that volcano, for science fairs, classrooms and kitchen tables.

Pick a volcano

Drag and zoom the map to frame the cone. The red dot is the vent: it finds the crater by itself, or drag it (or use Move the vent) to put it somewhere else.

The model

Size across

Mountain height

Lava channels

Shallow grooves from the crater down the real valleys, the way lava and water would run, so the foam pours down them.

Snow on the top (when it is high enough) Engrave its name and terraprinter.com underneath

The eruption

How much foam

A bigger eruption needs a bigger cup, so the model may stand on a taller base.

Your printer's bed

A tray with a raised rim to catch the foam

Colours

The slopes change colour with height, so on a one-nozzle printer they are simple colour changes at a layer. In the 3MF every colour is its own named part.

Download

Worksheet

Three pages for ages 8–14: the volcano's kind, how it formed and its famous eruptions with a labelled cross-section; why the model erupts, this model's recipe and safety notes; a fair-test experiment table and a cross-section to colour in.

Free for personal use, and for selling up to $5,000 a year with a TerraPrinter credit. Bigger sellers need a commercial license. Keep the data credits. License

How the volcano works

A cup from below

The baking soda goes in a printed cup that slides up into the volcano from underneath, and the vinegar is poured in through the crater. A cup you can take out is easy to fill, rinse and dry, and nothing is left to go mouldy inside. A sealed tank with a fill hole would be hard to clean and would need supports to print, so the cup is the sturdier choice.

The inside

Above the cup the hollow narrows with a 45° roof, steep enough to print without supports, into a vent shaft that opens at the real crater. The walls are at least 2.2 mm thick everywhere. If the cone is too low for the cup, the volcano stands on a rock base, so the walls never get thin.

The real crater and valleys

The terrain comes from real elevation data. The vent is put in the crater floor automatically: the lowest spot in the bowl near the summit. Lava channels start at the crater rim and follow the way water would run downhill, so the foam pours down the same valleys as real lava and mudflows.

The science

Vinegar is an acid and baking soda is a base. When they meet they make carbon dioxide gas, and washing-up liquid turns the bubbles into foam that pushes up the vent. Real volcanoes erupt because of gas in hot magma, but the idea is the same: gas pressure pushes material out.

In the classroom

Print one volcano per group, or the same volcano at two sizes. The worksheet's fair test changes only the amount of baking soda: measure how high the foam goes and how long it bubbles. Compare a steep stratovolcano with a gentle shield volcano: where does the foam run?

Safe and clean

Wear safety glasses, do it on the tray or outside, and never block the vent. Vinegar is mild, so PLA and PETG are fine; rinse with cold or warm water, not hot. A clear coat seals the print. The model is for experiments, not for food.

Elevation: Copernicus DEM GLO-30 (© DLR e.V. & Airbus) and Mapzen Terrain Tiles on AWS (SRTM, GMTED2010, ETOPO1 and others). Volcano facts: Wikipedia and Wikidata (CC BY-SA, CC0), checked for each volcano. Map © OpenStreetMap contributors, © CARTO. Want the volcano as a layered model or a classroom lesson? Make contour layers, see the classroom kits, open the TerraPrinter app or see more 3D map gift ideas.