What would happen if a meteorite hits Earth?

This week we have completed an investigation to answer this very interesting question. First we find out the difference between meteors and meteorites then we found out what they are made of. Then we made our ‘meteorites’ out of 50g of clay, rock (popcorn), iron (tin foil) and space dust (crushed up cereal). Our previous learning tells that large objects in space are spherical because of their own gravity but smaller objects can be other shapes. Meteorites come a variety of shapes. Now comes the fun bit! We measured the width of our meteorites and dropped them from 30 centimetres into a flour and cocoa powder bed. We found that the narrower (smaller surface area) meteorites made deeper craters. Regardless of width all the meteorites made a symmetrical pattern when they hit the ground and some of flour (deeper layers of the soil) came up to the surface and the top soil (cocoa powder) was mixed into the deep layer. 
 

We learnt that meteorites have to be over a kilometre wide to have worldwide effects and most meteorites are the size of pebbles. The moon and Mars do a great job protecting us from meteors damage. The last time a large meteorite hit us was over 50,000 years ago!