Activities about Impacts and Craters
Impact Craters--Holes in the Ground!
This lesson allows students to
create impact craters in plaster
of Paris or layered dry
materials. They perform
controlled experiments by
varying the velocity or mass
of an object and observing
and measuring the effects.
Searching for Meteorites
Water balloons filled with
flour and pebbles help
students model the distribution
of materials after meteorite
impacts. The flour simulates
the ejected crater material and
the pebbles represent the
meteorite fragments.
Students will use the model to
draw conclusions about where
it would be easiest to find
meteorites.
Crater Hunters
After viewing images of craters
on other planets, the Moon,
and Earth, students will locate
impact craters on Earth using
longitude and latitude and
various maps. Students will
locate potential sites of impacts,
and plan the necessary
research to verify their observations.
Mud Splat Craters
Students observe crater formation in mud and identify the distinctive
features of impact sites.
What Can Craters Tell Us About a Planet
Students examine images of Martian craters and
speculate about what caused them, then they
model the formation of an impact crater, examining
the effects of each impact and the features each
impact creates. Student create
hypotheses to try to explain a feature not seen in
their models, a mud-flow-like ejecta blanket.
