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Investigate the History of the Solar System ARTHUR ROSS HALL OF METEORITES Grades 9-12 Investigate the History of the Solar System Overview Correlations to Standards Students will learn about meteorites and how scientists use these space rocks NY ES4 1.2C: Our solar system formed to investigate how the solar system formed and evolved. about five billion years ago from a giant cloud of gas and debris. Gravity caused • Before Your Visit: Students will complete a formative assessment probe, Earth and other planets to become and read and discuss a text about how and why scientists study meteorites. layered according to density differences in their materials. • During Your Visit: In the Arthur Ross Hall of Meteorites, students will observe meteorite samples to uncover the story of the formation and evolution of the solar system. Then, in the Gottesman Hall of Planet Earth, students will learn more about the formation of the Earth-Moon system, and search for impact craters on Earth and the Moon. • Back in the Classroom: Students will produce an illustrated text that describes the history of the solar system and explains how meteorites help scientists uncover this history. Background for Educators Meteorites are space debris that has fallen to Earth. They’re called meteoroids when still in deep space, meteors (or “shooting stars”) when falling through the atmosphere, and meteorites after they land on Earth. Meteorites range in size from microscopic to kilometers in diameter. They all originate inside our solar system. Most are fragments of small rocky and metallic bodies that broke apart long ago and orbit the Sun in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Many orbit for millions of years before colliding with Earth. Meteorites from a planet or moon are rare but not unknown. Meteorites contain a record of the conditions under which the early solar system formed some 4.6 billion years ago. By studying meteorites, we can learn details about how our solar system evolved into our Sun and planets, and how meteorite impacts could affect our future. Before Your Visit Prior to your visit, tell Activity: Shooting Star Probe students that they will be (15 minutes) selecting meteorites and In this activity, students will participate in a short astronomy activity about the nature of recording their stories, in- cluding formation, recovery, “shooting stars,” where they will be challenged to pick one of three possible and scientific study. If appro- explanations for this astronomical phenomenon. priate, encourage students to take photographs with Distribute the handout, and have students work in teams and then share their answers cameras or cell phones. with the class. This activity is an ideal introduction to meteorites, and allows teachers to conduct formative assessment. Activity: Reading (30 minutes) Have students read “New Meteorite Suggests that Asteroid Surfaces More Complex Than Previously Thought” independently. Ask them to use the large margin on the right-hand side of the page for note taking as they read. For example, ask them to underline and star key passages in the text and use the margin space to paraphrase the information they think is the most important. They may also use the space to draw diagrams of the processes they are reading about, or to write down questions about part of the text they don’t understand. © 2013 American Museum of Natural History. All rights reserved. amnh.org/meteorites ARTHUR ROSS HALL OF METEORITES Grades 9-12 Then use the prompts below to guide a class discussion: • What are meteorites? • What are asteroids? • What did the scientists in this article do with these meteorites after finding them? • What tools and techniques did these scientists use? • What did the scientists learn from these meteorites? Invite students to share their thoughts. It may be helpful to create a vocabulary list with some of the more technical words from the article. During Your Visit Arthur Ross Hall of Meteorites 1st floor (60 minutes) Working in small groups, students will collect information about meteorites and the evolution of the solar system. Using the simple data-collection table on the worksheets, have students record the story of specific meteorites, including formation, recovery, and scientific study. Encourage students to photograph each meteorite. Gottesman Hall of Planet Earth 1st floor (15 minutes) Students will investigate the formation of our planet and the Moon. Find the diagram that shows the formation of the Earth-Moon system. Use the following questions to facilitate an exploration of the diagram: • How can meteorites help scientists study the early Earth-Moon system? (They contain a record of the conditions of the early solar system.) • Why don’t ordinary Earth rocks preserve the early history of our planet? (Although the planet is ancient, Earth rocks have been recycled by plate tectonics and weathering.) • Lunar meteorites are extremely rare; how else can scientists study the Moon’s history? (The Moon is close enough for astronauts to have traveled to it, collected samples, and made observations. Many spacecraft have visited the Moon with scientific instruments.) You can also divide students into two teams: an Earth team and a Lunar team. Each team will visit either the bronze Earth globe or the bronze Moon globe (located just outside the Gottesman Hall of Planet Earth, near the exit to the Cullman Hall of the Universe). Have students search for impact craters and report their observations. Challenge teams to explain why there are so many craters visible on the Moon, and so few on Earth. (The surface of the Moon does not erode rapidly, so it preserves billions of years of impact history. The crust of Earth, on the other hand, is constantly being eroded and reworked by tectonic forces and water. Both bodies have experienced a comparable number of impacts; the Moon does not significantly shield Earth from meteorites.) © 2013 American Museum of Natural History. All rights reserved. amnh.org/meteorites ARTHUR ROSS HALL OF METEORITES Grades 9-12 Back in the Classroom Activity: Write an Illustrated Text Using what they’ve learned from the pre-visit reading and their Museum visit, have students create an illustrated text that answers the following question: • How do scientists use meteorites to learn about the formation and evolution of the solar system? They should explain how meteorites form and how their composition reflects the time, location, and conditions of formation. Most importantly, this text should explain how meteorites tell the story of the solar system. Students should include information about: • The various types of meteorites • How larger bodies form from collisions • The process of differentiation • Scientific techniques used to study meteorites • Specific meteorites Provide the following prompt: Using information gathered during your Museum visit, tell the story of the formation and evolution of the solar system in the style of a comic with at least five panels. Each panel should contain an illustration and explanatory text. Be sure to include specific meteorite examples, and how each contributes to what we know about our solar system. Start with the very early solar system, and end with meteorites that have collided with Earth. © 2013 American Museum of Natural History. All rights reserved. amnh.org/meteorites ARTHUR ROSS HALL OF METEORITES Grades 9-12 Activity: Shooting Star Probe Three friends are scanning the night sky. As they look for familiar constellations, one shouts “A shooting star!”The others turn in time to catch a bright light streak across the sky. This starts a conversation, with each friend coming up with a different explanation for what they had seen. Alexander: “I think shooting stars are actually comets that are close to the Sun.” Veronica: “I think shooting stars are distant stars that fall out of the sky.” Emily: “I think that shootings stars are rocks from space that burn brightly for a moment.” 1. What answer do you think is the most accurate? 2. Explain why you think this is the correct answer, and why the others are not correct. © 2013 American Museum of Natural History. All rights reserved. amnh.org/meteorites ARTHUR ROSS HALL OF METEORITES Grades 9-12 Student Reading December 20, 2012: New Meteorite Suggests That Asteroid Surfaces More Complex Than Previously Thought Scientists Around the World Work Together on Speedy Space Rock Analysis A small asteroid — the name for a space rock larger than about 10 meters in diameter — entered the atmosphere over California and Nevada. This asteroid created a flash of light before shattering into many small pieces. The small pieces, called meteorites, fell to the ground where scientists were able to collect them. These meteorites — space rocks that have landed on Earth — are showing scientists just how complex an asteroid surface can be. A new study published in Science this week by an international team of researchers describes the speedy recovery of the meteorites and reports that this space rock is an unusual example from a rare group known as carbonaceous chondrites, which contain some of the oldest material in the solar system. The study of these meteor- ites and others like them could hold answers to unsolved mysteries about the origin of life on Earth as they contain molecules such as water and amino acids. “We found that this meteorite is a ‘breccia,’ a mixture of different rocks that accumulated at the surface of a larger asteroid, and those surfaces can be more diverse than we thought before,” said co-author Denton Ebel, chair of the Division of Physical Sciences at the American Museum of Natural History. About eight months ago, several Doppler weather radars detected a hail of rocks following a fireball traveling at a record-breaking 28.6 kilometers per second (about 64,000 miles per hour) over the Sierra Nevada in northern California.
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