We all wonder sometimes what's inside of us. How does it work? Well did you ever consider that maybe the earth wonders what's going on inside of itself too? It does all the time. Let's help it figure it out.
What's convection? Do I have layers?
Here we start with the four layers of the earth! The blue/green is the crust, the orange is the mantle, and the yellow is the outer core with the red/orange being the inner core. We'll being focusing on the mantle mainly.
The rocks and chunks of lava and earth stuff rise up through a Non-Newtonian fluid, and as they rise, they get less dense.
We are focusing on the mantle because something super cool yet very important happens in here; convection!
The rocks and chunks of earth stuff (including lava) spread out once they have risen, but they also have gotten cooler and therefore more dense.
*size of rocks and chunks and lava varies; it is not meant to look like it has shrunk
Since the rocks, lava and chunks have all gotten more dense, they are sinking. Another reason they are sinking is because they want to go back to the heat source to get warmer since they have cooled off when they rose to the top because (that is what made them more dense).
Now the earth knows what goes on inside of itself (at least in the mantle) and you do too! Sometimes, though, the concept can be hard to understand. There are some other examples of convection that might be easier to understand. Let's ask earth for some suggestions!