Lecture 44: Comets

Comets are chance visitors from the icy reaches of the outer Solar System. In this lecture I describe the properties of comets, their historical importance, and introduce the "dirty snowball" model of a comet nucleus. At the end of class I created a model of a comet nucleus from common household and office materials, unfortunately I could not arrange for a videographer in time. Recorded 2007 Nov 28 in 1000 McPherson Lab on the Columbus campus of The Ohio State University.