What is Molten rock (magma)?

Molten rock, or magma, is like lava that’s trapped underground.

Imagine you have a big chocolate bar inside a warm oven. The chocolate gets soft and runny because of the heat. That's kind of what happens with magma, it's rock that has gotten hot enough to become liquid, but it's still deep inside the Earth, not yet out in the open like lava.

When the Earth’s core gets really hot, it can warm up the surrounding rocks. These rocks start to melt, turning into magma. It’s like when you put a rock in a microwave, eventually, it becomes soft and squishy.

Magma lives inside the Earth, sometimes in big pockets or chambers, kind of like how bubblegum can get stuck in your hair. If there's a path for it to move up, maybe through cracks in the rocks, it can come out as lava when it reaches the surface.

So magma is just hot liquid rock waiting to become something new!