A special set of meteorites visit Walton High
I took an unusual and rather special collection of meteorites to Walton High (Walnut Tree, Milton Keynes), not the usual collection taken to OUTREACH events, which was as exciting for me as for the pupils! A piece of the infamous Chelyabinsk meteorite, Campo del Cielo, lunar and Martian samples and a huge 12 kg, as yet unclassified, ordinary chondrite from North West Africa were amongst the specimens shown. I took the pupils through the formation of asteroids and planetesimals, explained how we get metal, metal/rock and rock meteorites, the types of analysis performed on them and even discussed the origins of life from carbon rich (organic compound) meteorites such as Ivuna and Murchison. We are very grateful to Graham Ensor of the British and Irish Meteorite Society (BIMS) for the loan of these exciting specimens.
Roy Adkin
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