The purpose of this lab is to examine impact craters. Impact craters occur when a high velocity object collides with a larger body

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John Paul Chunga

Mr. Arce-Larreta

1st Black

IB Physics SL Lab

Internal Assessment

Introduction

The purpose of this lab is to examine impact craters. Impact craters occur when a high velocity object collides with a larger body. The collision results in a circular depression crater into the larger body. Craters like these described are results of meteor strikes on planets and can yield depressions that are quite large.  The craters occur on our planet along with the moon and all other planets in our solar system. The physical world involves craters and should thus be explored.

Therefore an investigation must be done in the formation of craters.  This formation will be examined through the basic properties, which they are formed. The energy from the object coming into impact can be compared to the volume of the crater create since deformation of the surface is the dominant process. Therefore since the volume of the crater is equal to the diameter cubed, the diameter cubed is set equal to the kinetic energy produced from the collision. This representation is then solved to find the diameter and yields the equation:

Still, the material ejection absorbs most of the kinetic energy and is thus converted to gravitational energy needed to lift a volume to a height approximately equal to the crater depth. As a result, this increases the diameter by an additional diameter factor, and get

And can be further clearly written as

with mass and gravity being constants.

This will be the main method that will be taken into account when evaluating the formation of the craters, since it yields a dependent and independent variable that leads to a research question.

Research Question

How is crater size affected by the energy provided?


Independent Variable

Height of the “meteor”

Dependent Variable

Resultant Crater Diameter

Controls

Mass of the meteor, surface of impact, gravity

Hypothesis

Applying the kinetic energy equation will show that the diameter will increase as the energy increases because the object can accelerate and gather more force for the collision.

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Method

Procedure

  1.  Attach the meter-stick to the table clamp with tape so that the height from which the “meteor”, in this case a golf ball, is dropped.
  2.  Fill the plastic food containers with .500 kilograms of sand.
  3.  Fill each one with a different amount of water (0 mL, 350 mL, and 700 mL) to represent different surfaces of planets and allow this to sit over two days.
  4.  Measure the weight of the golf ball and record the weight.
  5.  With the simply sand container, place it underneath the table clamp where the golf ball will be dropped. ...

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