US Pacific Northwest volcanic system modeled with sugar water

Ars Technica : An international research team has modeled the complex tectonic system of the northwestern US by using a tank of glucose and fiberglass sheets.An area near the border of the states of Washington and Idaho marks a major tectonic plate subduction zone, where the North American plate is moving westward over the Pacific plate. The Pacific plate, which is moving eastward and getting subducted under the North American plate, collides with the mantle and melts, and the resulting magma erupts through volcanoes, such as those on Mounts Shasta, Saint Helens, and Rainier. Because the tectonic processes take place over a long period of time, the complex system is difficult to study. Now an international research team has constructed a model of the system by using sugar water in place of the molten rock, a sheet of fiberglass for the Pacific plate, a sheet of mylar for the North American plate, and a hose to inject warm, pressurized glucose solution into the tank to simulate the mantle plume. What the researchers found is that the motion of the plates causes the mantle plume to split in half, with part flowing to the east where it narrows and cools, and the rest flowing to the west, where the diving Pacific plate sucks it downward and creates a vortex. The model supports the observational evidence, and the researchers hope that further testing will improve its predictive power. Their results appear online in Nature Geoscience.