Meteor or Meteorite? Will the Rock Reach the Ground?
Learn the three names for one rock and the physics behind them: air heats and strips a fast rock, so size, speed and material decide whether anything reaches the ground, and the entry angle decides where it glows.
Before you try
What if a shooting star landed in your garden? How big was it in space?
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What happened?
Move a control to see what changes and why.
A simplified burn-off formula with rounded constants; real rocks also break apart under air pressure.
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Try these ideas
- Drop a 1 cm stony rock at 30 km/s, then a 1 m one. Where does each burn?
- Keep everything the same and change only the entry angle from 20° to 90°.
- Try the quiz five times and see if your predictions improve.
Why it works
A rock in space is a meteoroid. When it hits the atmosphere at 11 to 72 km/s, the air in front of it is squeezed and heated so fiercely that the rock’s surface boils away and glows: that streak is a meteor, a shooting star. Most are the size of a grain of sand and burn out 80 to 100 km up. If a piece survives to the ground, it is a meteorite.
What decides survival? Bigger rocks lose a smaller share of their mass, slower rocks are heated less (heating grows with speed squared), a steep entry burns lower down while a shallow one glows higher and longer, and iron holds together far better than stone while ice hardly survives at all. This lab lets you set all four and watch, then quizzes you to predict the outcome before dropping the rock.
Check your understanding
Question 1 of 4
The glowing streak of a shooting star is called a
Why does a meteor glow?
Which rock is most likely to reach the ground?
Most shooting stars are made by objects about the size of
Explain it in your own words
What changed? Why did it happen? Where might you notice this in everyday life?
What will you discover next?
Try Impact Crater Lab: How Big a Hole Does a Rock Make? next.
For parents & teachers
- Watch a meteor shower (the Geminids in December, the Perseids in August) and count streaks per minute.
- Ask: why do meteorites found on Earth so often contain iron?
- Discuss why the Moon has craters everywhere but Earth has few.