1. Consider an asteroid of radius 2 km and density 2,500 kg/m^3 impacting the Earth. When it collides with the surface its kinetic energy is, to a large extent, dumped into the environment, some as heat vaporizing rock and some as mechanical energy throwing rock to great distance and height. If the asteroid is released from rest a great distance from Earth (you can assume this is infinite) and falls under Earth's gravity, find its kinetic energy at impact.

Express your result in megatons.

2. Consider the same asteroid initially in the asteroid belt at a distance 3 AU from the Sun and 2 AU from Earth. As it falls towards Earth, it acquires kinetic energy (neglect its initial motion) both by being accelerated towards the Sun and towards the Earth. In Question 9 we neglected the effect of Solar gravity. Now, ignoring Earth's gravity, find the change in the potential energy of the asteroid due to the Sun’s gravitational force, in megatons.

1 answer

Erm...I don't think we're going to solve all these problems for you you need to at least make some effort