meteorite
part of speech
noun (a meteorite, meteorites)
meaning for a pupil
A meteorite is a piece of rock or metal from space that has fallen through the air and landed on the Earth's surface. tree →
sense in the lessons
In science lessons about space, three words are taught together: a meteoroid is a small rock travelling in space; a meteor is the streak of light («shooting star») when it burns in our air; a meteorite is the piece that reaches the ground. Many meteorites are older than the Earth itself. A giant one hit the Earth about 66 million years ago and helped wipe out the dinosaurs. Meteorites are often heavy because they contain iron. Phrases: «meteorite impact», «meteorite crater», «iron meteorite».
examples
- The museum has a meteorite you can touch. tree →
- A meteorite made this huge crater in Arizona. tree →
- Most meteorites land in the sea, because most of Earth is water. tree →
- Scientists found meteorites on the ice in Antarctica. tree →
- The meteorite was heavy because it was made mostly of iron. tree →
- A meteor that reaches the ground becomes a meteorite. tree →
- Some meteorites came from Mars or the Moon. tree →
note
Plural «meteorites». Trap: meteor (the flash in the sky) vs meteorite (the rock on the ground) vs meteoroid (rock in space); the «-ite» ending is like «rock». Myth: most meteorites are cool or just warm when they land, not red hot.
In the corpora
- Tsunamis can also be caused by landslides, volcanic eruptions and, very rarely, meteorite impacts.
- Vesta is the second most massive asteroid, and a giant impact on it blasted off rock that still falls to Earth as meteorites.
- Most meteorites are chips of asteroids from the belt between Mars and Jupiter.
- A few hundred known meteorites were blasted off the Moon or Mars.
Trees and pragmatics
Every meaning and example of «meteorite» parsed by Mova, each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.