Teacher

This worksheet will guide you through how to download Google Earth, how to navigate to each impact crater, how to measure the diameter of each crater and to put the sizes of these craters into perspective. You will then be asked to calculate the kinetic energies involved in some of the impacts which have created these craters.

What will I need for this activity?

• Google Earth - download from: http://earth.google.com/

Use Google Mars to observe some real impact craters on the Martian surface.

We suggest you try the activity; 'Measuring impact craters on the Earth' first as this activity compares craters and surface features on the two planets.

The Down2Earth Meteorite Loan Box is the focal point for this activity. Students examine and draw the meteorites, with and without magnification, consider their density and compare them with Earth rocks.

In this activity you will track a meteor’s path using a technique known as triangulation which can be used to measure the direction to an object from two known locations. From this you can predict where the meteorites might be found.

Back Down 2 Earth (BD2E) is an expansion of the existing Down 2 Earth (D2E) education project which teaches school students aged 11-19 about the geological side to astronomy. In this 46-page booklet you will learn about the wonders of comets and asteroids and the possible destruction that these bodies can cause on planets such as our own.

View this as a web-page (some material omitted).

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.