SNC1D EARTH & SPACE: BILL NYE (ASTEROIDS & COMETS) WS#5

Complete the following questions while watching the Bill Nye video “ASTEROIDS & COMETS”.

1. When you see a streak of light in the sky, that’s a chunk of rock burning up in the atmosphere: a .

2. When you see a star with a fuzzy tail, that’s a dusty chunk of ice heated by the Sun: a .

3. Comets & meteors are all through the solar system & they:

4. (meteorites the size of grains of sand) are so common that hundreds of millions of these

fall to the Earth everyday. They can be found in & your backyard.

5. 12 to 20 billion years ago a huge explosion occurred which scientists call the . Within minutes tiny

particles came together to form gases like & helium. brought these together

to form stars. About billion years ago many of these stars also exploded, called a .

This material drifted through space and eventually gravity brought it together to form our & planets.

At the same time the comets, asteroids & were formed.

6. Why isn’t the Earth covered with craters like the moon?

7. It’s that makes a comet different from asteroids & meteoroids. As a comet gets near the Sun the

heat of the sun vaporizes the ice & makes a stream of charged gas particles we call the tail. At the

same time little bits of rocks embedded in the ice get blown into space & form a 2nd tail called the

tail. Comets contain material that’s been around since the solar system was formed.

8. An is a big chunk of rock in space that never became part of a planet. A small asteroid is

called a . If a rock from outer space enters Earth’s atmosphere & begins to burn up we call it

a . If a piece of that rock lands on Earth we call it a .

9. are formed when meteors collide with a planet.