Making craters and how dinosaurs became extinct

When we were finding out about planets we discovered that there are lots of craters on Mercury, on the moon and on some of the other planets.

This is because asteroids and meteoroids sometimes hit the planets (especially the ones with no atmosphere like Mercury).

We tried making craters ourselves.  We were wondering do large asteroids make large craters and smaller asteroids make smaller craters?  We decided to test this.

We dropped different sized balls (asteroids) from the same heights and then looked at the craters they made.

We were right...smaller asteroids make smaller craters and bigger asteroids make bigger craters!

So, what has this got to do with dinosaurs?

Teacher told us the very sad story about how the dinosaurs all became extinct.

The dinosaurs were happily living on earth (as you can see), until the earth was hit by a large meteoroid or asteroid.  This fell to earth and landed, making a huge crater (and probably landing on some poor dinosaurs who died).  The rest of the dinosaurs were ok until the dust from the meteor rose into the air (killed some more dinosaurs) and blocked out the sun.  The earth became very cold and the poor dinosaurs died of the cold or of starvation because there was nothing to eat under all the ice!

This story actually is a true story!

Here's what happened in Ms.O'Connors Class:

CRATERS!

We talked about dinosaurs and discussed one of the reasons why we think they became extinct: Possibly hit by showers of asteroids.

We placed mini dinosaurs on the sand and then dropped various sized balls from a height into the tin of sand. Each ball created a crater in the sand when dropped. We found out that small marbles create a small crater and large ball creates a much bigger crater.

We saw the imprint of the balls in the sand.