Sixth Grade
Worksheets
The Crater of Doom
Artist's impression of the meteor impact 65 million years ago. Photo courtesy of Donald E. Davis, artist, and NASA
Have you ever seen a shooting star? Shooting stars, also called meteors, are pieces of dust and rock that burn as they fall through Earth's atmosphere. Many of them are as small as a grain of sand. Larger chunks that don't burn up completely are called meteorites when they land on Earth's surface. Earth gets many of these surprise visitors each day!
How many? Thousands of tiny, sand-grain-sized meteorites fall on Earth's surface every day. About 100 larger ones, maybe the size of a soccer ball, fall every year. On average, one meteorite about the size of a house hits the Earth about every 100 years. These make pits in the ground called craters. At different times in Earth's past, a really big meteorite has hit the Earth. One of these is thought to have caused the extinction of the dinosaurs about 65 million years ago.
