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Conceptual Physics

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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 .

We can see from our lecture notes that an Asteroid’s energy per gram is 165 times that of TNT.

Therefore:

This is a huge amount of energy! This energy is released in the form of heat and light as the asteroid enters the earth’s atmosphere due to the friction of the atmosphere slowing the asteroid down. The density of the gas molecules in the atmosphere causes this friction. This rapid release of heat energy is enough to cause an explosion! Also a lot of the time these asteroids contain ice or frozen carbon dioxide. If this is rapidly heated up, it can boil and pressure can build internally and can cause an explosion from inside the asteroid. All of these factors can account for an asteroid exploding. Overall it is all down to the Principle of Conservation of Energy. The energy is converted from chemical energy into vast amounts of light and heat causing the rapid release of energy in the form of an explosion.

Conceptual Physics Why if a stick of dynamite was detonated at the front of a packed lecture theatre, there may not be any deaths; while if a powerful grenade was detonated it would lead to many fatalities?

When a stick of dynamite is detonated, it is basically the stored chemical energy within the dynamite being rapidly converted into light, sound and heat energy. This heat energy is in the form of a rapidly expanding hot gas.

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