abstract
| - Real Life lava is molten rock. (The subterranean version is called magma.) Imagine an entire lake of electric-stove heating elements, all glowing red-hot. Its viscosity ranges from water-like fluidity to 100,000 times greater. It is an opaque emitter of reddish-yellow light. Its temperature is typically 700-1200 degrees C; coming within a dozen yards of it can inflict fatal burns. In fiction, Lava Is Boiling Kool-Aid. It flows like water, it's no heavier than water, and it can be diverted like water. Objects can sink in it. The heat will be trivial to overcome -- not just Convection, Schmonvection, but people swimming around in it with a special suit or vehicle, or game characters only taking a finite amount of damage per second spent in the lava. Lava's animation is likely to be just as bad, especially in works where the technology and artistic technique to draw bubbling and flowing are limited. (Games are the worst offenders here, since the CPU power necessary to plausibly model fluid dynamics is often more than it would take to run the entire game, minus the fluid-dynamics model.) Lava will look like someone tipped a barrel of red Kool-Aid in a lake; if something falls in, it will still be visible, through the red tint of cherry flavor. In many video games, lava is water recolored red with a damage script attached. (And sometimes the water causes just as much damage.) Acid and toxic waste will probably be Lemon-Lime and grape, respectively. Compare Sand Is Water. Sometimes a subtrope of Palette Swap. Examples of Lava Is Boiling Kool-Aid include:
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