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Only something massive will survive atmospheric entry, and impact the Earth's surface at high velocity. Small mass objects have very little energy left once they've passed through the upper atmosphere, and therefore free-fall to the surface.
Also, it will have cooled almost completely by the time it thuds onto the ground. As stated earlier, many recent falls are discovered to be "frosty" from their passage through the very cold upper atmosphere.
For an object to hit the ground hot and hard it would need to have a large mass, in order to survive passage through the air, and an object like that won't leave only a little scar on a kid's hand!
This is all Meteoritics 101.
Last edited by Zaps; 13-06-2009 at 02:39 PM.
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