Moon Crater Experiment

We read an adorable book about the moon and this moon crater experiment was a great way to continue the adventure from the book.

The book: 

This was one of the books The Dragons picked off the shelf.  Our theme for preschool this week was space, this book has a big moon on the front so they picked it out.  It looked like an adventure book as well so it was very fitting for the week. 

Opening up this book was an adventure all right! I enjoyed reading it and The Dragons enjoyed listening. They were very intrigued with the man who kept coming into the boy's room.  He was so mysterious.  In the end of the book the little boy goes to the moon to have his own adventure.  The pictures in this book were big and beautiful.  

The pictures of the moon showed the craters.  In other moon books it is a glowing ball so this was perfect for out experiment. 

Set up
Materials: 

• small pan or bin
• flour
• marbles or jaw breakers
• imagination

For this experiment you only need to cover the bottom of the bin or pan you are using with flour. 

I put a bit extra in because I knew The Dragons would be playing in it afterwords. 

Before we started dropping the marbles we had to engage our imaginations for the adventure.  I told The Dragons we were giants up in space and the marbles were our asteroids.  The bin was the moon and we were going to make big craters in the moon with our asteroids.  They agreed this was the best was way to conduct the experiment. 

Using marbles The Dragons first dropped them in one at a time while sitting down

We observed the craters

Next they dropped them in standing up

And observed the craters

What is different about the craters? 

• The craters made while sitting down were smaller and the marbles stayed in place. 
• The craters made while standing were bigger and deeper.  The marbles also bounced to make multiple craters sometimes. 

Why would this happen? 

There were many ideas that I don't remember now, some made sense some were very silly.  We did discuss the ideas through the end to discover if they were possible.  

Then I explained when a meteor is coming from farther away it has more speed thus the impact is greater. 

When a meteor is closer to the moon and hits it it is traveling slower so the impact or impression is smaller. 

They reexplained this concept to Jerry during lunch, which was neat to see them understand and excited about science! 

Then it was time for the giants to play in the dust of the moon :)

To see more of our adventures during adventure week click here.