For a weight vs. mass comparison of piles of meteorites, go to your local rock quarry or aggregate plant and ponder a bit. Irons would be easier ascertained at a steel or scrap yard but for common (now there's a relative term) chondrites would be approximately equal to a lighter mass rock but for size~mass estimates, try a quarry and see dump trucks and front end loaders and ask about weight of specific rocks. Now is a slower season for most crusher operators/quarry operations and may provide a great excuse for a short local field trip. There are scales in engineering books to convert different materials from limestone (lighter wt.) to quartz (heavier wt.) to iron ores (much heavier wt.) so if you see a pile of a known material, you can use some math to get the tons in a pile. I can dig up a couple of formulas from my Pocket Ref by Thomas J. Glover (found in Ace Hardware stores nation wide for around $10). Don't leave home with out it.
Best main masses,
Dave F.
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Hi Bernd, Sara & List
One point I would like to make is that all anyone can do is estimate a number as Bernd has done. In writing the main section of "Meteorites from A to Z" I include TKW. I wanted to try to come up with numbers that were up to date. For Gibeon I added the TKW (based on adding distributions) of the Catalogue of 33000 kg and figured at least 17000 kg more had been recovered and were not reported. So I used the number 50000+ kg.
For Campo del Cielo I have 10000+ kg but already had a note to change to 50000+ kg for the next edition. My guess is it is over 60000 kg. If I were setting up a display I would recommend that one note it is an estimate no matter what number they use. For example 50 t estimated or ~ 50 t or >50 tonnes.
You might also remember the most people me included have no idea of what 10000 kg of a meteorite is in terms of size. So being off by 10000 kg or more does not mean too much. Probably the only reason to be as accurate as possible is to create a list of the largest falls by weight.
In case anyone is interested I have created a list of the largest 15 individuals by weight for the iron meteorites. It includes lots of pictures. Here is the URL if you want to check it out; http://jensenmeteorites.com/largestmeteorites.htm
Hope that helps.
Mike -- Mike Jensen IMCA 4264 Bill Jensen IMCA 2359 Jensen Meteorites 16730 E Ada PL Aurora, CO 80017-3137 303-337-4361
Dave Freeman wrote:
In my catalogue, I see no TKW for my favorite Gibeon iron
Hello All,
There is a table on page 592 of Buchwald's trilogy. Vagn Buchwald wrote that the total weight of the 77 specimens listed in the table was 21,000 kg. As many more masses have been found to date, we can assume a TKW of at least 21 tons!
Reference:
BUCHWALD V.F. (1975) Handbook of Iron Meteorites, Vol. 2, pp. 584-593).
Best wishes,
Bernd
______________________________________________ Meteorite-list mailing list [email protected] http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/meteorite-list
______________________________________________ Meteorite-list mailing list [email protected] http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/meteorite-list
______________________________________________ Meteorite-list mailing list [email protected] http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/meteorite-list
