Tephra cone

Alright, so imagine you're playing with sand at the beach. When you take a handful of sand and sprinkle it, it falls in a cone shape. That cone shape is similar to a tephra cone.

Now, a tephra cone is a special type of cone that forms when there is a volcanic eruption. When a volcano erupts, it shoots out all kinds of stuff like rocks, ash, and other volcanic materials into the air. These materials are called tephra.

As the tephra gets spewed out by the volcano, it falls back to the ground and starts piling up in a cone shape around the volcano's vent. The more the volcano erupts and keeps spewing out tephra, the bigger the cone gets. It's like when you keep sprinkling sand on top of each other, the pile gets taller and taller.

The tephra cone is made up of different sizes of tephra. The smaller pieces like ash fall closer to the volcano, while the bigger rocks and boulders can fall farther away. This is why the cone is usually taller near the vent of the volcano and gets smaller as you move away from it.

Tephra cones can be pretty amazing to see because they can get really big. They can even reach heights that are several times taller than the volcano itself! And they can also have different shapes, depending on how the tephra falls and settles.

Sometimes, tephra cones can even block rivers or streams flowing near the volcano. The tephra piles up and creates a dam, which can cause the water to pool up and create a lake. It's like when you build a sandcastle and block the flow of water in your little rivers.

So, that's a tephra cone for you! It's a cone-shaped pile of different volcanic materials that forms around a volcano when it erupts.