It's crazy to think that the majority of the meteors we see in the sky range between the size of a grain of sand and a small pebble. Of course, some are bigger. Meteor refers to the the trail of light that is created, the actual object is called a Meteoroid and whatever happens to make it to the surface of earth is called a Meteorite. They enter the atmosphere at 7-45 miles per second. This speed is no problem in the vacuum of space but since the atmosphere is full of matter it causes a massive amount of friction which can generate heat as high as 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit which raises the meteoroids surface to the boiling point and it vaporizes layer by layer. The friction breaks the molecules of the meteoroid and the molecules of the atmosphere into glowing ionized particles which then recombine to form light energy. A grain sized meteoroid can produce a beam of light a meter wide and because of its speed it can be many miles long.
Meteoroids can range in size from anything bigger than a molecule and smaller than 330 feet. Anything bigger is classified as an Asteroid. Most of the debris the Earth comes in contact with is dust shed from comets in the solar system.
Thank you internet!
