my crater project

[anglepose]

hi im investigating for school, crater charecteristics in reation to the material the meteorite lands in. i have just made "big bertha crater blaster" a catupult balista type thing for firing equally or at a certain power 10N 50N 100N 150N or 200N of power (its pretty powerfull lol) the ball bearings "meteorites" at the surface.

Got any predictions about what will happen when i fire will the crater be bigger for a softer sunstanse or harder sunstance??

my hypothesies is that the softer material will have a smaller crater as it will absorb the energy more and bend a bit but not shatter to form a crater unlike the hard material witch i think wil.

[munch]

I'd say yes, in general a harder substance will make a crater larger in area than a softer one. But the target's brittleness -- I'm thinking of Mohs' scale here -- will also have a large effect. Or is that what you were talking about?
If you're measuring crater volume, I have no idea. I'd lean towards the harder material, but that's a not-so-educated guess.

[pgrmdave]

That sounds interesting anglepose - when are you going to perform the experiment, so that we can know when we'll receive updates?

[Jay-qu]

Originally Posted by anglepose

my hypothesies is that the softer material will have a smaller crater as it will absorb the energy more and bend a bit but not shatter to form a crater unlike the hard material witch i think wil.

I guess that depends largly on the velocity of the impact. I have seen craters made with naught but baking flour, fairly impressive when magnified a hundred times! but I fail to see how a harder substance, say rock, will make a bigger crater. Maybe when the velocity is a lot higher the size of the flour crater will not increase, whereas the rock crater will increase greatly.

[UncleAl]

Google
cratering experiments 124,000 hits
"impact cratering" experiments 38,000 hits

[pgrmdave]

Wow everybody, look at that! Uncle Al knows how to use Google! Maybe next time he'll provide some useful information...

Uncle Al - I'm sure people know how to google for the information. If you don't want to actually contribute to a thread, you don't need to post anything.

[UncleAl]

Got any predictions about what will happen when i fire will the crater be bigger for a softer sunstanse or harder sunstance??

Google
cratering experiments 124,000 hits
"impact cratering" experiments 38,000 hits

Wow everybody, look at that! Uncle Al knows how to use Google!

Do you? If so, why didn't you? Six months in the lab will save you an afternoon in the library. Impactor, launch, substrate, atmosphere, effects - it's been done. How do you expect to do something original if you have no knowledge of the field? This isn't a creative writing class wherein subliteracy is lauded as creativity,

"Her face was acne-cratered like the moon, including surface powder."

[munch]

I don't remember creativity being a requirement for the assignment, Al. These forums are just a bit more... human... than Google. Plus it gives me something to do in my downtime. So lay off.

[Jay-qu]

Also Al some of our members are quite young and need a bit more guidence than just google. Original isnt really a requirement for a school project, its about learning something new.