[meteorite-list] Sutter's Mill/Lotus/? bolide physics at the time of breakup

[MexicoDoug]

Hi Mendy and Bob, Listees;

Yes, the "explosion", which is not an explosion in a chemical sense, 
does involve an altering of trajectory, rather than arbitrarily saying 
toward the ground, theory goes it is in a direction perpendicular to 
the trajectory due to energy of the differential pressure on front vs. 
back faces of fragments. But that is thought to be spent in theoretical 
cases at about 5-10 times the diameter of the bolide - and the 
downfield projection on the ground is the elliptical sectioning which 
has the added fractionation of heavier pieces having more momentum to 
carry further forward..

So in actuality the explosion might better be termed a "flowering".  
The so called kiloton "energy" widely quoted, has huge assumptions 
since each case is unique depending on the conditions of the meteoroid, 
but I think it is generally just some clever guess at how a pressure 
wave relates to size and how to estimate all of the 0.5mv^2 kinetic 
energy of the meteoroid projectile, which I doubt instruments can 
detect as an integrate whole, just a wild order of magnitude, and 
rather have to make assumptions how quickly the bolide-bud flowers.  
Just a guess, so hopefully someone who does can explain more.  But 
based on this theory, no provisions are for more than a symmetrical 
statistical distribution of fragments that I know.  Your question in a 
practical sense would be, is everything so uniform, or might a few 
outlying pieces get a disproportionate amout of energy to be sent out.  
I don't see why not.

kindest wishes
Doug




-----Original Message-----
From: Robert Verish <bolidechaser at yahoo.com>
To: Mendy Ouzillou <ouzillou at yahoo.com>
Cc: Meteorite-list Meteoritecentral 
<meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com>
Sent: Mon, Apr 30, 2012 11:47 am
Subject: Re: [meteorite-list] Sutter's Mill/Lotus/? bolide physics at 
the time of breakup


Strewn field workers have an arkane phrase for this phenomenon called,
"blow-back", which is used to explain anomalies such as reverse 
size-grading, or
exceptionally large fragments at the very "fine-end" of an otherwise 
well
size-graded strewn-field.

Bob V.

--- On Mon, 4/30/12, Mendy Ouzillou <ouzillou at yahoo.com> wrote:

> From: Mendy Ouzillou <ouzillou at yahoo.com>
> Subject: [meteorite-list] Sutter's Mill/Lotus/? bolide physics at the 
time of
breakup
> To: "'meteoritelist meteoritelist'" 
<meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com>
> Date: Monday, April 30, 2012, 8:21 AM
> I was curious to know if the primary
> bolide breakup event was explosive or
> "simple" fragmentation?
>
> By explosive I mean at the time of the breakup, energy is
> converted somehow
> that causes some pieces to alter their trajectory and
> "shoot" down to the
> ground instead of following a normal parabolic trajectory.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Mendy
>
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