Deep Impact

There are 2 parts to this activity which should both be carried out prior to the Deep Impact mission. The aim of this activity is to learn about the specific features of craters.

In this activity students will work out how long it takes light to travel from comet Tempel 1 to Earth and how long after the collision in the Deep Impact mission we will see this event.

Objectives

Students will:

The aim of this activity is to use vectors and Pythagoras’ theorem to work out the speed at which an impactor hits a comet.

The aim of this activity is to calculate the kinetic energy of an impact and to learn how the kinetic energy changes when the weight of an impactor is altered.