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INTERMEDIATE SCIENCE 9
UNIT 1: SPACE
WORKSHEET # 8: SPACE ROCKS
1) Comets:
- Dirty snowballs” composed of ice, rock and gas that originate from the Kuiper belt and Oort Cloud
- Travel in long elliptical orbits around the sun that change due to the gravitational pull of planets
- Famous comets: -Halley’s Comet is visible approximately every 76 years -Shoemaker-Levy 9 was torn apart by Jupiter in 1992
Parts of a Comet:
Tail is composed of gas and dust emitted from the nucleus
Nucleus is the solid, central part of a comet. it is a combination of ice, dust and rock
Coma is a large, dusty atmosphere surrounding the nucleus, made up of sublimated gas mixed with dust.
2) Asteroids
- Asteroids are rocky-metallic objects which range in size from about the size of pebbles to around 1,000 km across.
- An irregularly shaped rocky object in space (like a space potato
- May be the shattered remains of objects left over from the time when the planets were formed
- Most asteroids in our solar system are in the Asteroid Belt located between Mars and Jupiter
3) Meteoroid, Meteors and Meteorites
Meteoroids are pieces of rock (i.e. chunks of asteroids or planets) floating through space
Meteors are “shooting stars” or meteoroids that are burning up through the earth’s atmosphere
Meteorites are meteors that actually reach the earth’s surface (must have been large meteors to survive)
Impact sites is the place where a relatively small object (meteorite) has collided with a larger object (planet) to produce a fairly circular depression on the surface of the larger object. The impact site is often referred to as an impact crater due to the circular depression that was formed.
Near-Earth Objects (NEOs) are comets and asteroids that have been nudged by the gravitational attraction of nearby planets into orbits that allow them to enter the Earth's neighborhood
PART B: Use the notes from class and the information from Bill Nye - Comets and Meteors Video to answer the following questions.
- Which of the following best describes the material which makes up the nucleus of a comet?
(A) rock (B) gaseous (C) dirty ice (D) metallic crystals
- What are comets mostly made of?
(A) Hydrogen (B) Ice (C) Iron (D) Rock
- What is the glowing head of a comet called?
(A) Coma (B) Crater (C) Head (D) Maria
- What is the Oort cloud?
(A) a cluster of asteroids (B) a swarm of comets far from the sun (C) the cloud that a meteoroid produces in the atmosphere (D) the same as the coma of a comet
- Most of the asteroids are located between the orbits of
(A) Venus and Earth (B) Earth and Mars (C) Mars and Jupiter (D) Jupiter and Saturn
- What is the main difference between meteoroids and asteroids?
(A) Meteoroids are generally bigger than asteroids (B) Asteroids are only found in the "belt" between Mars and Jupiter (C) Asteroids are generally bigger than meteoroids (D) Asteroids are pieces of comets, whereas meteoroids are pieces of space debris
- The particles which produce meteor showers come from
(A) impacts of meteoroids with the moon (B) dead comets (C) collisions of asteroids with each other (D) interstellar space
- What is a meteorite?
A) a streak of light caused by a star moving across the sky B) a streak of light caused by a small particle from space burning up in Earth's atmosphere (C) a fragment of an asteroid from the solar system that has fallen to Earth's surface (D) a small moon that orbits one of the giant planets
- We have found meteorites that come from Mars.
(A) True (B) False
- Every planet and moon in the Solar System has been hit by meteorites.
(A) True (B) False
- When a rock is in the atmosphere, what is it called?
(A) asteroid. (B) meteor. (C) meteoroid (D) meteorite.
- Comet Hale-Bopp was discovered by an astronomer name Hale and another named Bopp.
(A) True (B) False
- What makes comets different from asteroids and meteoroids?
(A) Rock (B) Volume (C) Size (D) Ice
Match the term with its definition
____ 23. Asteroid
____ 24. Meteoroid
_____ 25. Meteor
_____ 26. Meteorite
A. This is a small rock that enters the atmosphere and leaves a bright streak in the sky.
B. Another name for a small asteroid.
C. A piece of rock that hits the Earth's surface.
D. A big chunk of rock in space that never became a planet.
- Place an “X” in the appropriate boxes to indicate characteristics of asteroids, coments, and meteors.
.
Asteroid Comet Meteor
appears as a streak in the sky
frozen ball of dust
made up of rock
orbits the Sun
orbits between Jupiter and Mars
often called “Shooting Stars”
usually burns up the Earth’s atmosphere
