Earth Science help please...?

Question

hi all,
i've got a question on my sheet asking me to identify the three types of meteorites that allow us to hypothesize about the composition of ear's internal layers - Mantle, Outer and inner core..


I have a feeling its Iron , Nickel and Iridium meteorites but i am not sure at all...please help me out

Answer 1

Compositional Layering

Crust - variable thickness and composition
Continental 10 - 70 km thick

Oceanic 8 - 10 km thick

Mantle - 3488 km thick, made up of a rock called peridotite.

Core - 2883 km radius, made up of Iron (Fe) with some Nickel (Ni)
Lithosphere - about 100 km thick (up to 200 km thick beneath continents), very brittle, easily fractures at low temperature.

Asthenosphere - about 250 km thick - solid rock, but soft and flows easily (ductile).

Mesosphere - about 2500 km thick, solid rock, but still capable of flowing.

Outer Core - 2250 km thick, Fe and Ni, liquid

Inner core - 1230 km radius, Fe and Ni, solid

Answer 2

Stony, stony-iron, and iron. The assumption we derive is that as bodies coalesced in the primordial solar system, the solid bits became one of these three types. Iron is common (as elements go) because it's the lowest energy point on the fusion-fission scale -- that is, it takes energy to split an iron atom, and it takes energy to make it fuse with another nucleus. Fusion and fission both run downhill to iron.

The stony meteorites are various oxidized elements (I'm oversimplifying a bit). The iron, and to a lesser extent nickel, is what was left over when the oxygen ran out.