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Nininger Moment #10
How To Recognize Meteorites
Harvey H. Nininger published a number of papers during his career
as both a professor at McPherson College and during his long and
distinguished career of meteoritic research. According to the
Published Papers of H.H. Nininger, he published a total of 162
papers on meteorites in a 47 year span of time. These papers often
dealt with meteorite recovery, his ideas on meteorites in general
and preservation of meteorites. Nininger certainly bridged the gap
of science at the time when meteorites went largely unnoticed by the
universities and colleges of the time. His papers were distributed
over a large range of publications as the American Journal of
Science to state and local natural science publications. Here is an
edited version of one of his published papers.
--AL
Curator of Meteorite Dept.
Colorado Museum of Natural History
A survey during recent years has demonstrated that on the average
less than one person in a thousand is able to recognize meteorites
in their natural state. Hence this Leaflet. What Meteorites Are Not
1. Meteorites are not light porous rocks. They are often marked by
shallow pits but aren't porous.
2. They are not round like a ball. At least no round one is yet
known.
3. They are not hollow.
4. Meteorites do not come to the ground in a burning condition. They
do not set fires. They burn while in flight high in the air but
generally cease burning about 5 to 20 miles up. A few have been know
to frost over after landing from their natural cosmic coldness from
space.
5. They do not look like cinders
What Meteorites are Like
1. Meteorites are much heavier than ordinary rocks.
2. They are generally irregular in shape. They are generally pitted
more or less. The corners and edges are notably rounded or dulled
from atmospheric flight. A few meteorites are conical in shape.
3. Meteorites are usually covered with a thin fusion crust due to
the burning during flight in the atmosphere. This crust is nearly or
quite black in most meteorites at the time of the fall. Later it
becomes brown from rust if exposed to the weather.
4. Meteorites nearly always contain an alloy of nickel-iron. This
metal may be in small grains or it may compose most of the
meteorite. In either case it can be detected by grinding a corner of
the suspected specimen (where it won't detracted from the beauty of
the specimen) against the edge of an emery wheel which will reveal
bright white metal. Meteorites are important for research purposes
and good prices are paid for them. Any specimen which conforms to
the above description and meets the emery wheel test should be
submitted for other more exhaustive tests at the hands of a
specialist. The Nininger Laboratory makes such tests free of charge
if only postage is sent for reply. Several pictures accompanied the
article showing the surfaces of stones and two pictures showing the
face of a cut stony meteorite and a cut and polished iron with a
pattern etched in.
The Nininger Moments are articles or books written originally by
Harvey Nininger and put into a consolidated form by Al Mitterling. Some of
the items written in the moments might be old out dated material and
the reader is advised to keep this in mind.
--AL Mitterling
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