The creation of the hexagonal stone pillar on

The road of the Northern Ireland giant is a special natural wonder with tens of thousands of hexagonal basalt blocks that rise straight up into the sky along the coast.

The path of the giant on the Irenland coast

The road of the giant (Giant's Causeway) is located on the coast of Altrim county, Northern Ireland. This work includes 40,000 giant black basalt columns neatly lined up, made up of an ancient volcanic eruption. Basalt columns are arranged into steps leading from the cliff to the sea. Most columns are hexagonal, although some have 4, 5, 7 or 8 edges. In particular, the highest column reached 12 meters. According to Irish legend, the work is the remnant of a road built by giants.

Hexagonal basalt blocks on the Road of the giant in Northern Ireland.(Photo: Blogspot).

According to the IFL Science, basalt stone columns in Giant's Causeway were born from volcanic lava . Basalt shaped hardened inside a lava flow and cooled off abnormally. When a small part of the lava flow begins to cool from the inside out, it shrinks and breaks. If the cooling speed is relatively uniform and the heat from the lava emanates at balanced intervals, the high hexagonal basalt columns will be born.

In theory, basalt columns can carry 5-sided, 6-edge and sometimes 7-sided shapes. However, the most common is the hexagonal column. Through research on computer models, scientists at Dresden University of Technology, Germany, have discovered the cause of this special shape.

When the virtual lava flow in the model began to cool evenly, the cold style of natural lava sprayed from the ground below, the fractures formed at a 90 ° angle. The cooling process continued, the fracture gradually increased, causing the angle to extend to 120 °. This is also the measure of each angle in the hexagon.

The basalt column reaches the temperature of the surrounding environment and maintains the hexagonal shape, while the cold process takes place with the stone columns surrounding it. When a perfectly symmetrical hexagonal stone pillar was born, many other stone pillars tended to form the same shape, creating a massive collection like Giant's Causeway .