What do Hawaii and Minnesota have in common?

Hello to you all, or should I say, "Aloha."

I am playing and learning in a place far, far away from Carlton County and the Pine Knot News. It took me 66 years to get here, but I made it: O'ahu, Hawaii.

It is a lot warmer and a lot greener here. I have seen whales, lizards in our Airbnb and flying fish being chased by tuna. I've wiped out on a boogie board, and jumped into a jungle waterfall. My favorite thing to do was snorkeling - I saw fish that put Dr. Seuss creatures to shame; the colors and shapes were unbelievable. One of the coolest fish was the Humuhumunukunukuapua'a, the state fish of Hawaii. Don Ho mentioned it when he sang, "My Little Grass Shack." Those of you who have been lucky enough to visit a warm oceanic land during a cold Minnesota month know the contrast in worlds that I experienced.

Even though northern Minnesota and Hawaii are extremely different, I noticed a striking similarity between the two. Those of you who have read this column know I love science. I love to understand, and I love to imagine watching the formation of lakes, mountains, bogs, snowflakes, and just about anything else in the natural world. Let's take a look at the formation of Hawaii and see what it has in common with our part of the world.

Actually, we can see Hawaii forming the way it has been for more than five million years by traveling to the big island of Hawaii itself, in the present time. You may remember the recent eruption of lava that destroyed so many houses there; this production of lava is happening all the time and is making the island bigger and bigger. Besides having active volcanoes, the big island is also much younger and bigger than the other islands (see my illustration).

This lava oozing onto the landscape of Hawaii is pretty much identical to the lava that oozed and flowed onto our part of the world one billion years ago as this continent unsuccessfully tried to split in half. Not all lava (molten rock above the ground) and magma (molten rock below the ground) is the same. Molten rock comes in different chemical flavors; the lava that formed much of our bedrock and most of Hawaii cooled to become a rock known as basalt.

Basalt is a gray, kind of a plain-looking rock that came from lava with a lot of iron and magnesium; it is called mafic lava. As you drive along the North Shore of Lake Superior, most of the dark gray rock is basalt, as is most of the dark gray rock along the North Shore of O'ahu. Besides both shores being made of basalt, they are both made of a specific kind of basalt with air bubbles. These bubbles were full of carbon dioxide and water vapor when the rock was molten and are now like little bubble fossils. We call this rock vesicular basalt. We can also find these bubble-filled rocks in local gravel piles and gravel pits.

It is a giant hot spot that causes the magma to flow up and spread out on the Big Island as lava. Looking at the map of the islands, you can see the respective ages of the islands. The older islands are also smaller. They used to be over the hot spot that is now under the newer big island. The hot spot is a huge plume or candle of magma that is close to the surface; it is stationary as the crust that forms the Pacific plate slowly moves over it at the speed of about the growth rate of a fingernail, just under 3 inches per year.

Next time you are somewhere new, look for something familiar and you might be surprised.

FDLTCC science tutor Glen Sorenson was Minnesota Teacher of the Year before he retired from teaching science at Proctor High School after 30-plus years. He is an avid outdoorsman who most recently coached the Lumberjacks Nordic ski team.