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Conceptual Physics
Assignment 1
Part 1: Essay Style Question:
Why does an asteroid explode when it hits the earth?
This is simply an application of the laws of physics. It is caused by the large amount of mass
contained in an asteroid, moving at such a high velocity with an enormous amount of kinetic energy.
For example: and the
.
Take an example radius of 10km. Therefore the
and the
We can then calculate the Kinetic Energy of the Asteroid using:
Taking an example velocity of 30 km/s this gives us a Kinetic Energy of .
