Student Misconceptions

• Meteorites are hot when they hit the earth. In truth, small meteorites are cold when they hit Earth.
• A meteor’s great speed is enough to melt its outside layer, but any molten material will be quickly blown off, and the interior of the meteor does not have time to heat up because rocks are poor conductors of heat.
• Students often confuse the terms asteroid, comet, meteoroid, meteor, meteorite. (Shooting stars are meteors which burn up in the earth’s atmosphere & meteorites are meteoroids which impact the earth’s surface creating an impact crater.)