A simple experiment suitable for introductory physical science laboratory instruction involves forming impact craters by dropping spherical objects into a bed of unconsolidated granular material. The experiment is straightforward, and laboratory results for different impact energies, spheres, and granular materials may be collapsed to a single power-law using parametric scaling determined from dimensional analysis. The resulting power law is extrapolated over more than 16 orders of magnitude to produce an estimate of the impact energy that formed the 1.2-km-diameter Barringer Meteor Crater in northern Arizona.
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See pictures at <http://www.solarviews.com/cap/earth/meteor.htm/> for example.
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© 2013 American Association of Physics Teachers.
2013
American Association of Physics Teachers
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