Making an impact

Open Meteorites / May 17, 2016

Simon Sheridan visited Woodford Green Primary School on Friday as part of the Tim Peake Primary Project. Simon’s presentation not only involved showing students the outreach meteorite collection, but also included a crater-making activity. Simon made quite an impact himself, with the Year 5 class teacher Mrs Jones quoted in the Guardian* as saying: “It was a real once in a lifetime opportunity for the children to speak to someone like Dr Sheridan who makes space robots and can show them what Mars looks like. It’s really got them thinking seriously about science – I had one Year 4 pupil come up to me afterwards and say ‘I’m going to work really hard in maths so I can be an astronaut when I’m older.”

Read more about Simon’s visit in the Guardian’s website.

Picture credit: Epping Forest Guardian*

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Double Act

Open Meteorites / April 5, 2016

The outreach meteorites made two visits to Ware, Hertfordshire in the last couple of weeks, supporting presentations given by Michael Goodyear. One of Michael’s talks was for the University of the Third Age (U3A) and the other to a local geology club.  In both cases, the talks were not specifically about meteorites, but about what meteorites can tell us about the origin and structure of the Earth.  The U3A talk examined how the Earth formed and so Michael used the meteorites to show what the primitive raw materials from which our planet formed may have looked like. He also gave a basic introduction to meteorites e.g. types, jargon etc.  His talk to the East Herts Geology Club was on the structure of the Earth and so again, he used the meteorites to illustrate how we have access to material that made up the early Earth, and also how iron meteorites can provide an approximate sample of core material.

Image: Ware, Hertfordshire. Gazebos from the south bank of the River Lea (Wikipedia)

 

 

Parliamentary Showcase

Open Meteorites / March 14, 2016

The OU’s outreach meteorite collection was one of the star attractions at The Open University’s Parliamentary Showcase in the House of Commons on Wednesday 9 March. The event, attended by MPs, Lords and Senior Civil Servants was an opportunity to showcase the science and education benefits of space science research at the Open University. The event proved to be a big success, with lots of positive feedback from everyone who came to talk to us about our ongoing research activities.

Image (Top): Open University Vice-Chancellor Peter Horrocks (centre) chats to Iain Gilmour (left) and Ross Burgon (right) at the Parliamentary Showcase

Images (below): Professor Sally Jordan talking to visitors at the Parliamentary Showcase

 

Comets and Meteorites in Norwich

Open Meteorites / December 8, 2015

On Friday 27 November Simon Sheridan gave a talk about the Rosetta Mission to the Norwich Astronomical Society at their Seething Observatory. There were well over 100 people in the audience and after the talk he had a very lively hands-on session with the Open University outreach meteorite collection. The audience were extremely enthusiastic and the questions came thick and fast. Simon and his audience had a very enjoyable evening.

Simon Sheridan talks Rosetta to members of the Norwich Astronomical Society

More pictures and comments are available here:

https://storify.com/chris_greenf/a-great-evening-at-seething

 

Visit to Porchester Junior School

Open Meteorites / November 25, 2015

On Monday 16 November Dr Simon Sheridan was invited back to his Junior School in Nottingham to talk to the current children about space science and jobs in the space industry.He ran three, hour-long workshops where the children performed experiments to investigate the effect of impacts on the Earth.  The sessions ended with the children being able to look at and handle the Open University outreach meteorite collection.

Students at Porchester Junior School examine the Gibeon iron meteorite

 

You can watch a video about the visit by clicking on the link below:

NOW WATCH THE VIDEO HERE

You can also visit the school website and scroll down to the 16th November 2015 entry to read a short account of the visit by Miss Moore the Class 6 teacher and also read some of the students comments: http://www.porchester.notts.sch.uk/

 

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A New Arrival

Open Meteorites / October 2, 2015

The Chelyabinsk “superbolide” exploded over Russia at 9.20am on 15th February 2013, causing extensive damage and making news headlines across the globe.Huge amounts of extraterrestrial material were collected on the ground in the days that followed this massive explosion. This debris is officially classified as being from the Chelyabinsk meteorite, and has the composition of an LL5 ordinary chondrite.

The debris and vapour trail left after the explosion of the Chelyabinsk “superbolide” Image: Alex Alishevskikh/Wikipedia

But what does this material look like? Well now we have samples of the Chelyabinsk meteorite in our outreach collection. These consist of a 41g partly fusion-crusted stone and five small so-called Chelyabinsk “peas”.

The new Chelyabinsk samples (image: Richard Greenwood)

As can be seen from the image above, the larger stone is highly fractured with dark shock melt veins cutting across the specimen. These did not form as a result of the Chelyabinsk explosion, but are due to much earlier events. A recent paper by Righter et al (2015) suggests that Chelyabinsk shows evidence of up to eight distinct collisional events, ranging in age from 4.53 billion to 27 million years ago.The tiny “peas” are representative of much of the debris from the explosion, which resulted in massive scale fragmentation of the incoming meteoroid.

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A Visit from Wellingborough Schools

Open Meteorites / September 27, 2015

On 23rd September the Open University hosted the annual visit of sixth-formers and their teachers from the schools in the Ogden Trust Schools-University partnership. As in previous years the students visited various research labs and enjoyed a demonstration of meteorites by Roy Adkin

Roy Adkin talks meteorites to Wellingborough sixth-formers