Section+2*

__ Experiment Summary __
==== In our experiment we were testing the effect of balls of different mass on the crater size. We dropped balls of different mass into a tray filled with maize flower and measured the size of the crater. We found out that the larger the mass the larger the crater size. ====

__ Investigation Discussion __
==== 1. The common features of real impactor craters that didn’t happen in our experiment are that building weren’t destroyed, in our experiment the maize flower was laid flat but in real life the meteor might hit a mountain or anything. ==== ==== 2. The ways in which our experiment was different to real life is that there are different types of soils that the meteor could hit and we only tested on maize flower. Our balls were all spheres, real meteors are not round. ====

__ Effects of Impacts on Earth __
==== If a space rock smashed into Earth the shock wave would travel at about 30,000KM and smashed absolutely everything within 200KM. The space rock itself would be destroyed because of the heat. Bits of rock would shower back to Earth from the space rock. There would also be acid spraying down from the nitrogen and oxygen reacting in the air. The dust would be carried around the world and black us out from the sun. Then our planet would freeze. ====

==== 136 explosions happened in the upper atmosphere of Earth in between 1975 and 1992. The explosions are called airbursts. The airbursts happened because of meteoroids hitting the Earth upper atmosphere. If a meteoroid hit Earth it would be traveling at 20KM per second! ==== ==== Around 1,000,000 asteroids 1m across could hit Earth. Their crater size would be 10m wide. Around 10 asteroids 10KM across could hit earth. Their crater size would be100KM wide. This would be worse than the atomic bomb. ====

Here is a link to all the graphs showing our results and data that has been extrapolated to show what might happen in a real life situation.