There's really no way for such a stone to be heated significantly by the
energy dissipated when crashing through a roof.
In all likelihood, the reason that observed falls are reported as hot is
because people expect hot, and confuse hot with cold. I don't think the
incidence of reports of heat is significantly higher for hammers than
for other falls.
FWIW, when you pull a nail the mass of the nail is very small, it has a
high surface area compared with its volume, it's thermally conductive,
the extraction is relatively slow, and the friction is very high.
Contrast that with a meteorite: much smaller surface area compared with
volume, low thermal conductivity, very high speed of impact, and very
little friction (with most of the surface never even contacting the roof).
Chris
*******************************
Chris L Peterson
Cloudbait Observatory
http://www.cloudbait.com
On 6/28/2016 2:29 PM, Peter Scherff via Meteorite-list wrote:
Hi Tom,
Yes, I think so. There are too many reports of meteorites being hot to the
touch. Those reports are almost always about meteorites that have punched
through something (building, vehicle or ground). I trust this mass of
anecdotal evidence. But we won't know for sure until some starts shooting
rocks through buildings for their doctoral thesis.
Thanks,
Peter
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