Make your own craters
A safe experiment with flour and marbles. Print it out, or ask a grown-up to print it for you.
Make your own craters
Name: ____________________You need: A deep tray, plain flour, a spoonful of cocoa powder, two or three marbles or small balls of different sizes, a ruler. Do this with a grown-up, and do not eat the flour.
- Fill the tray with flour about 3 centimetres deep and smooth it flat.
- Sprinkle a thin layer of cocoa powder over the top. It shows where the flour is thrown.
- Hold a marble at 20 centimetres high and let it drop. Do not throw it.
- Measure the crater's width with the ruler, then carefully lift out the marble.
- Try other heights and other marbles. Which make the biggest craters?
| What I dropped | Height dropped from (cm) | Width of crater (cm) | What happened to the flour? |
|---|---|---|---|
True fact: Real space rocks hit the ground much, much faster than a dropped marble, so they make craters many times wider than themselves.
Howardites Kids' zone · free to print and copy for home and school
The sheet prints on one A4 page. Pictures are drawn as clean outlines, so they print sharply at any size.