High vesicularity (light)
Low vesicularity (dense)
Water test tank
This 2D companion drives the same vesicularity-depth model and buoyancy physics as the 3D quarry diagram — a depth-dependent porosity profile, a handling-intensity penalty that collapses vesicle walls into fines, and bulk density from the solid-glass/pore-fraction relation — through a flat cross-section view instead of a rotating process scene, and adds a water-soak timer that turns the porosity model into a live floats-then-sinks demonstration.
Pumice is frozen volcanic froth, and how much of it is empty space — its vesicularity — decides almost everything about how a quarry treats it: how heavy it is, whether it floats, and how much survives handling as usable, graded product instead of dust. This 2D canvas view puts real numbers on all three.
A quarry face banded by a depth-dependent vesicularity profile, a conveyor carrying extracted material to a growing stockpile, and a water tank that tests whether a sample of today's bench floats or sinks — both dry and after a timed soak.
Drag the bench-depth slider to mine a different horizon, raise handling intensity to see fines eat into usable tonnage, and drop a sample in the water tank to watch its density climb as its open pores fill.
The same mechanism that sinks a lab sample after a few soak-minutes here also sinks real ocean pumice rafts — some drift for months before enough seawater finally works into the pore network to end the float.
Same vesicularity-depth profile and buoyancy physics as the 3D quarry diagram, rendered as a flat cross-section instead of a rotating process scene, plus a water-soak timer that turns the porosity model into a live floats-then-sinks demonstration.
Vesicularity is the volume fraction of gas-bubble pores frozen into the pumice as it cooled. It is lower near the weathered cap and the compacted, welded base of the deposit and peaks near the middle of the cooling unit, where degassing was least disturbed.
Its bulk density stays below water only while its open pores are air-filled. Once enough of them fill with water, the saturated density crosses 1000 kg/m³ and it sinks — the same process behind real pumice rafts losing buoyancy at sea.
It represents crushing and screening during quarrying. At higher intensity, vesicle walls collapse, effective porosity drops, and a larger share of the extracted tonnage ends up as fines rather than graded product.