Sections Review
This material (including images) is copyrighted!.
See my copyright notice for fair use
practices.
Vocabulary
carbonaceous meteorite | chondrules | differentiated |
half-life | isotope | meteorite |
primitive | radioactive dating |
- Where are most of the asteroids found?
- Why are spacecraft able to pass through the asteroid belt without getting hit?
- What are the three types of asteroids and what are they made of?
- Why are more meteors seen after midnight?
- What are the proportions of the three types of meteorites and what are they made
of?
- What type of asteroid does each type of meteorite correspond to?
- Which meteorites are primitive and why are they particularly important
for understanding the origin of the planets?
- What makes carbonaceous meteorites so special?
- Why are chondrules especially important for solar system formation
models? What type of meteorite are they likely to be found in?
- How old are the various types of meteorites and why are they used to
find the age of the solar system?
- Why do iron meteorites make up 40% of the ``finds'', but are only 2 to 3% of the
total meteorites? What causes the biasing of the ``finds''?
- Why is Antarctica a good place to get an unbiased sample of meteorites?
- What makes SNC meteorites so unique and how are they different than other types
of meteorites?
- Why are iron and stoney-iron meteorites thought to come from a
differentiated body?
- Does radioactive dating give us relative or absolute ages for rocks?
What type of ``age'' does it tell us?
- How do you use the half-life to find the age of radioactive rocks?
- If the half-life of a radioactive sample is 1 month, is a sample of it
completely decayed after 2 months? If not, how much is left?
- Uranium-235 has a half-life of 700 million years. How long will you have to
wait until a 1-kilogram chunk decays so that only 0.0625 kilograms (1/16 kg) is left?
- How are the very old ages derived for some radioactive rocks known to be correct?
- If a large asteroid were to hit Earth, how much of the Earth's surface would
be affected?
- What would be the effects on Earth of an impact by an asteroid a kilometer or larger in diameter?
- What are the current and proposed future programs to search for Near-Earth Objects?
- What are possible ways of effectively preventing an asteroid impact with Earth?
Go back to previous section --
Go to next section
last updated:
March 25, 2013
Is this page a copy of Strobel's
Astronomy Notes?
Author of original content:
Nick Strobel