Impact Crater experiments

Dick van der Wateren

Are meteorites dangerous? What happens when they hit the surface of the Earth? Could they, one day, cause our extinction? After all, this is how the dinosaurs came to their end.
When you have done the experiments below, you will be able to answer some of these questions, and maybe some more of your own. Remember: you are completely free to do the experiments as you like and set up new ones!

In these experiments we will find out what kind of craters are produced by meteorite impacts. We will start with a very simple experiment, just observing what happens when a projectile hits a surface. We will then vary, one by one, quantities that may influence the size and shape of your craters, for instance the size of the object hitting the surface, its speed, the composition of the surface.
The last experiments will allow you to predict the size, velocity and impact energy of the meteorites that produced the big craters on the Earth, the Moon etc.
You are completely free to expand these experiments, think of new research questions and to set up new projects.

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Last Updated ( Thursday, 31 August 2006 )

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