Chapter 7: Impact Cratering
Learning Objectives
By reading this chapter, attending lecture, and reviewing lecture content, you will be able to:
- Define impact cratering and describe the main stages
- Describe the relationship between escape velocity and impact velocity (on the simplest level)
- Explain the consequences of impacts behaving like explosions
- List some products (or evidence) of impact cratering and describe how they form
- Explain the relationship between crater size and impactor speed, mass, and angle
- Compare and contrast the different crater morphology categories and discriminate between them in images
- Define space weathering and how scientists use it to learn about the age of a planetary surface
- Describe how we are protecting humanity from a future impact event and what we might do to deflect an impending collision
- Explain how impact craters can be used to determine the age of a planetary surface
