(meteorobs) Falling Meteors

[Chris Peterson]

Hi Josh-

The answer to your question depends on just what you mean by "falls". 
The speed that a meteoroid (the body that produces a meteor) enters the 
atmosphere is unrelated to its mass (weight). However, once it is 
traveling through the atmosphere, it experiences drag- air resistance is 
trying to slow it down. The greater the mass, the harder it is for air 
resistance to do this. So while all meteors that don't completely burn 
up eventually reach the same speed (they lose all of their original 
velocity, although Earth's gravity causes them to fall downwards), how 
long it takes them to lose their velocity depends strongly on their 
original mass.

Once they lose their original velocity, and are simply free falling, 
they fall at a speed that is related to their mass, size, and shape. You 
might have learned about Galileo and his famous experiment where he 
dropped objects with different weights and observed that they landed at 
the same time. But that really only happens in a vacuum. On Earth, the 
air makes any object "fly" a little, so the weight and shape do affect 
how fast something will land. A dense meteorite that is shaped like a 
golf ball will probably hit the ground several times faster than a low 
density meteorite shaped like a Frisbee. But in either case, that speed 
will have nothing to do with the original mass of the meteoroid (most of 
which will have burned up high in the atmosphere minutes before anything 
hits the ground).

Chris

*****************************************
Chris L Peterson
Cloudbait Observatory
http://www.cloudbait.com


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Harding" <earlandmindy at mindspring.com>
To: <meteorobs at meteorobs.org>
Sent: Friday, March 07, 2008 3:56 PM
Subject: (meteorobs) Falling Meteors


>I am doing a science project and I am in the 4th grade.  I read what 
>you
> said about how fast meteors fall.  But does the weight of the meteor 
> affect
> how fast it falls?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Josh