The Change in Velocity of Meteorites

by Keir Sanatan

Submitted : Fall 2011

Meteors interact with the Earth several times a day. Most of these are small and completely disintegrate in the Earth’s atmosphere. However, some of these meteors are large enough to withstand atmospheric penetration and do impact the surface of the Earth even after a significant portion of their mass is lost. These large meteors decrease in velocity as they travel through the atmosphere. This decrease in velocity is in part due to the density of the different layers of the atmosphere wich increase with decreasing altitude. This project serves to show how the rate of change of velocity changes as a meteor travels through the atmosphere based on the meteoroid deceleration equation as presented by Bland and Artemieva, 2006.

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