Two boys, aged 9 and 13, stood in one's front yard after riding bikes during the summer of 1991 when they heard a low-pitched whistle getting louder. Then they saw a rock whistle past them and land on the ground about 4 meters away making a hole about 5 centimeters deep. They looked around but could find no evidence that anyone had thrown the rock. When they picked up the rock it felt warm. What was it? Where did it come from? Why was it warm? How fast was it going to make such a hole in the ground? How did it form? How did it get here? Were the boys in danger? So many questions and no answers yet. What should happen next? What questions do you have about the event? How might these questions be investigated? Part 4 uses free on-line GIS to map real impact craters on Earth, plan an expedition to a potential impact site, create and present a final report to the class.
| Lesson Resources for Impact Craters - Parts 1-4 |
| File Type/Link | Description |
| PowerPoint-pptx |
Annotated and scripted introductory slides for NASA's Exlporing Meteorite Mysteries, 475KB |
| Document-pdf |
Complete lesson plan cycle with support materials - NASA's Exploring Meteorite Mysteries, 6.33MB |
| Image-gif |
For Part 4: Outline world map with imapct crater sites marked, 11144x839, 22KB |
| Data.csv |
For Part 4: Impact crater site data in comma delimited text file, 1KB |
| Spreadsheet-xlsx |
For Part 4: Impact crater site data in Excel spreadsheet, 15KB |
| PowerPoint-pptx |
For Part 4: Annotated and scripted slides from NASA's Exploring Meteorite Mysteries, 2.1MB |