ARTHUR ROSS HALL OF METEORITES Grades 9-12 Investigate the History of the … · They should explain how meteorites form and how their composition reflects the time, location, and

Investigate the History of the Solar System

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ARTHUR ROSS HALL OF METEORITES Grades 9-12

© 2013 American Museum of Natural History. All rights reserved.

OverviewStudents will learn about meteorites and how scientists use these space rocks to investigate how the solar system formed and evolved.

• Before Your Visit: Students will complete a formative assessment probe, and read and discuss a text about how and why scientists study meteorites.

• During Your Visit: In the Arthur Ross Hall of Meteorites, students will observe meteorite samples to uncover the story of the formation and evolution of the solar system. Then, in the Gottesman Hall of Planet Earth, students will learn more about the formation of the Earth-Moon system, and search for impact craters on Earth and the Moon.

• Back in the Classroom: Students will produce an illustrated text that describes the history of the solar system and explains how meteorites help scientists uncover this history.

Background for EducatorsMeteorites are space debris that has fallen to Earth. They’re called meteoroids when still in deep space, meteors (or “shooting stars”) when falling through the atmosphere, and meteorites after they land on Earth. Meteorites range in size from microscopic to kilometers in diameter. They all originate inside our solar system. Most are fragments of small rocky and metallic bodies that broke apart long ago and orbit the Sun in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Many orbit for millions of years before colliding with Earth. Meteorites from a planet or moon are rare but not unknown. Meteorites contain a record of the conditions under which the early solar system formed some 4.6 billion years ago. By studying meteorites, we can learn details about how our solar system evolved into our Sun and planets, and how meteorite impacts could affect our future.

Before Your VisitActivity: Shooting Star Probe (15 minutes)

In this activity, students will participate in a short astronomy activity about the nature of “shooting stars,” where they will be challenged to pick one of three possible explanations for this astronomical phenomenon. Distribute the handout, and have students work in teams and then share their answers with the class. This activity is an ideal introduction to meteorites, and allows teachers to conduct formative assessment.

Activity: Reading (30 minutes)

Have students read “New Meteorite Suggests that Asteroid Surfaces More Complex Than Previously Thought” independently. Ask them to use the large margin on the right-hand side of the page for note taking as they read. For example, ask them to underline and star key passages in the text and use the margin space to paraphrase the information they think is the most important. They may also use the space to draw diagrams of the processes they are reading about, or to write down questions about part of the text they don’t understand.

Correlations to StandardsNY ES4 1.2C: Our solar system formed about five billion years ago from a giant cloud of gas and debris. Gravity caused Earth and other planets to become layered according to density differences in their materials.

Prior to your visit, tell students that they will be selecting meteorites and recording their stories, in-cluding formation, recovery, and scientific study. If appro-priate, encourage students to take photographs with cameras or cell phones.

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Then use the prompts below to guide a class discussion:

•Whataremeteorites? •Whatareasteroids? •Whatdidthescientistsinthisarticledowiththesemeteoritesafterfindingthem? •Whattoolsandtechniquesdidthesescientistsuse? •Whatdidthescientistslearnfromthesemeteorites?

Invite students to share their thoughts. It may be helpful to create a vocabulary list with some of the more technical words from the article.

During Your Visit Arthur Ross Hall of Meteorites 1st floor (60 minutes)

Workinginsmallgroups,studentswillcollectinformationaboutmeteoritesandtheevolutionofthesolarsystem.Using the simple data-collection table on the worksheets, have students record the story of specific meteorites, including formation, recovery, and scientific study. Encourage students to photograph each meteorite.

Gottesman Hall of Planet Earth 1st floor (15 minutes)

Students will investigate the formation of our planet and the Moon.

Find the diagram that shows the formation of the Earth-Moon system. Use the following questions to facilitate an exploration of the diagram:

•HowcanmeteoriteshelpscientistsstudytheearlyEarth-Moonsystem? (They contain a record of the conditions of the early solar system.)

•Whydon’tordinaryEarthrockspreservetheearlyhistoryofourplanet? (Although the planet is ancient, Earth rocks have been recycled by plate tectonics and weathering.)

•Lunarmeteoritesareextremelyrare;howelsecanscientistsstudytheMoon’shistory? (The Moon is close enough for astronauts to have traveled to it, collected samples, and made observations. Many spacecraft have visited the Moon with scientific instruments.)

Youcanalsodividestudentsintotwoteams:anEarthteamandaLunarteam.Eachteamwillvisiteitherthebronze Earth globe or the bronze Moon globe (located just outside the Gottesman Hall of Planet Earth, near the exit to the Cullman Hall of the Universe). Have students search for impact craters and report their observations. Challenge teams to explain why there are so many craters visible on the Moon, and so few on Earth. (The surface of the Moon does not erode rapidly, so it preserves billions of years of impact history. The crust of Earth, on the other hand, is constantly being eroded and reworked by tectonic forces and water. Both bodies have experienced a comparable number of impacts; the Moon does not significantly shield Earth from meteorites.)

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Back in the ClassroomActivity: Write an Illustrated Text

Using what they’ve learned from the pre-visit reading and their Museum visit, have students create an illustrated text that answers the following question:

•Howdoscientistsusemeteoritestolearnabouttheformationandevolutionofthesolarsystem?

They should explain how meteorites form and how their composition reflects the time, location, and conditions of formation. Most importantly, this text should explain how meteorites tell the story of the solar system. Students should include information about:

•Thevarioustypesofmeteorites•Howlargerbodiesformfromcollisions•Theprocessofdifferentiation•Scientifictechniquesusedtostudymeteorites•Specificmeteorites

Provide the following prompt:

Using information gathered during your Museum visit, tell the story of the formation and evolution of the solar system in the style of a comic with at least five panels. Each panel should contain an illustration and explanatory text. Be sure to include specific meteorite examples, and how each contributes to what we know about our solar system. Start with the very early solar system, and end with meteorites that have collided with Earth.

Activity: Shooting Star Probe

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1.Whatanswerdoyouthinkisthemostaccurate?

2. Explain why you think this is the correct answer, and why the others are not correct.

Three friends are scanning the night sky. As they look for familiar constellations, one shouts “A shooting star!”The others turn in time to catch a bright light streak across the sky. This starts a conversation, with each friend coming up with a different explanation for what they had seen.

Alexander: “I think shooting stars are actually comets that are close to the Sun.”

Veronica: “I think shooting stars are distant stars that fall out of the sky.”

Emily: “I think that shootings stars are rocks from space that burn brightly for a moment.”

Student Reading

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December 20, 2012: New Meteorite Suggests That Asteroid Surfaces More Complex Than Previously ThoughtScientists Around the World Work Together on Speedy Space Rock Analysis

A small asteroid — the name for a space rock larger than about 10 meters in diameter — entered the atmosphere over California and Nevada. This asteroid created a flash of light before shattering into many small pieces. The small pieces, called meteorites, fell to the ground where scientists were able to collect them. These meteorites — space rocks that have landed on Earth — are showing scientists just how complex an asteroid surface can be.

A new study published in Science this week by an international team of researchers describes the speedy recovery of the meteorites and reports that this space rock is an unusual example from a rare group known as carbonaceous chondrites, which contain some of the oldest material in the solar system. The study of these meteor-ites and others like them could hold answers to unsolved mysteries about the origin of life on Earth as they contain molecules such as water and amino acids.

“Wefoundthatthismeteoriteisa‘breccia,’amixtureofdifferentrocksthataccumulated at the surface of a larger asteroid, and those surfaces can be more diverse than we thought before,” said co-author Denton Ebel, chair of the Division of Physical Sciences at the American Museum of Natural History.

About eight months ago, several Doppler weather radars detected a hail of rocks following a fireball traveling at a record-breaking 28.6 kilometers per second (about 64,000 miles per hour) over the Sierra Nevada in northern California. An immediate search-and-recover mission, led by NASA Ames Research Center, the SETI Institute, and the University of California, Davis, resulted in the retrieval of 77 meteorites. The fragments, which were in pristine shape despite entering the atmosphere at a speed twice as fast as a typical meteorite fall, were collectively called the Sutter’s Mill meteorite after the nearby historical site that started the California Gold Rush.

“From the loud sonic boom, we quickly realized that this was an asteroid several meters in size, the biggest object to hit over land since the impact of asteroid 2008 TC3 in the north of Sudan in 2008,” said lead author and meteor astronomer Peter Jenniskens of NASA Ames and SETI. “That asteroid proved to be a mixed bag of different types of meteorites, and we realized it would be very interesting to find out how diverse the Sutter’s Mill meteorites were.”

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Several fragments were sent to laboratories around the world for simultaneous analysis of the meteorite’s mineralogy and structure. The Sutter’s Mill meteorite was classified as a CM chondrite, C standing for carbonaceous — high in carbon content — and M standing for the group’s type specimen, the Mighei meteorite that fell in Ukraine in the late 1800s.

Ebel received five Sutter’s Mill meteorites to study using x-ray computed tomog-raphy (CT), an imaging technique that takes pictures of the inside of a specimen without destroying it. The Museum’s scanner takes more than 1,000 x-ray images of the object as it rotates inside of the machine. The data collected from these x-rays are then converted by computers to form a 3-D image of the specimen’s interior, one slice at a time, to understand the components of the meteorite.

“In the same way that medical tomography, called CAT scanning, is used to image the interior of the human body, CT scanning in a research laboratory allows us to obtain images of the interiors of solid objects, but with a much higher resolution,” Ebel said. “This is a fundamentally important tool not just for looking at rocks but for curating them and figuring out whether anything interesting is inside.”

CT scans at the Museum, and at the University of California, Davis in an effort led by cosmochemist Qing-Zhu Yin, revealed that no two Sutter’s Mill meteorites are the same. The meteorites contained angular pieces of different composition and density. They showed diversity on millimeter scale.

“This was the first time that a CM chondrite was found to be clearly a breccia,” Yin said. “The rocky fragments came together following impacts on the parent asteroid, which implies that this meteorite originated from near its surface.” Analyses performed using different techniques at other institutions were in agreement: the mineralogy and other geochemical features of these fragments are unexpectedly diverse and complex. This suggests that the surface of the asteroid that spawned the CM chondrites, their “parent body,” is more complex than previously thought.

“This meteorite is special because it records many collisional processes and mixing thatwe,oddly,don’tseeveryoften,”Ebelsaid.“Maybetherealquestionis‘whydon’tweseemoreofthis?’Itcouldbethatmostofthesampleswe’veworkedwith in the past didn’t hold up very well as they entered the atmosphere. Or that we’re just seeing a small segment of what’s really out there because we don’t have meteorite records of what fell to the Earth thousands or millions of years ago. Westillhavealotofworktodotofigureoutwhat’sreallygoingoninthe asteroid belt.”

New Meteorites Suggest... page 2

Student Worksheet

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Meteorites tell the story of the formation and evolution of the solar system. As you explore the Arthurs Ross Hall of Meteorites, you will follow and record this story. This story begins at the front of the hall, and continues clockwise along the outside wall. At each stop, you will be asked to read text and record information.

Stop 1: Meteorites•Readthelabelthatstartswith“Forthousandsofyears…”•Whatisameteorite?Whyaremeteoritesusefultoscientists?

Stop 2: Origins of the Solar System•Readthelabelthatstartswith“Theblue-whitefireballstreakedacrossthedarkskies…”•RecordtheAllendemeteoriteinyourdatatable.•WhatdoesAllendetellsusabouttheearlysolarsystem?Whyisitsoimportant?

Stop 3: Chondrules: Drops of Fiery Rain•Readthelabelthatstartswith“Whenoursolarsystembegantotakeshape…”•Whatisachondrite?•Whatisachondrule?

Stop 4: CAIs: The Oldest Rocks•Readthelabelthatstartswith“Asolarsystemsuchasourownbeginswhen…”•Howdidtheearlysolarsystemchangeovertime?

•WhatisaCAI?•LookatthemeteoritesampleofAllende.DescribetheCAIsthatyoufind.

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Stop 5: Parent bodies: A Meteorite Family Tree•Readthelabelthatstartswith“Injustafewthousandyears…”•Whatdoesitmeantosaythatmeteoritescomefrom“parentbodies?”

•Continuereading“Meettheparents”insidetheplasticdisplaycase.•Howdoscientiststellmeteoritesapart?Whatkindsofthingsdotheymeasure?

Stop 6: Planetesimals: Building Blocks of the Solar System•Readthelabelthatstartswith“Thesmallparticles…”•Howdidgiantplanetsgrowfromtinydustparticles?•Findthemeteoritecalled“Paragould”andrecorditinyourdatatable.•Whatevidenceofimpactsdoesthismeteoritecontain?

Stop 7: Building Planets•Readthelabelthatstartswith“Thefarmlandnear…”•HowistheBrenhammeteoritedifferentfromalltheothersyouhaveseensofar?

•RecordtheBrenhammeteoriteinyourdatatable.

Stop 8: Crust•Readthelabelthatstartswith“Asthesolarsystemformed…”•Whatkindsofsolarsystembodiesdevelopedacrust?Describehowalargesolarsystembodyseparatesintoa

core, mantle, and crust.

•FindtheJohnstownmeteoriteandrecorditinyourdatatable.

Student Worksheet - Page 2

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Stop 9: Mantle: Jewels from Space•Readthelabelinsidetheplasticdisplaycasethatstartswith“Whennewlyformed…”•Whatpartofaplanetarybodyisthemantle?

•FindtheEsquelmeteoriteandrecorditinyourdatatable.

Stop 10: Core: Iron from Asteroids •Readthelabelintheplasticdisplaycasethatstartswith“Mostironmeteorites…”•Whatpartofaparentbodydometallicmeteoritescomefrom?

Stop 11: Cape York

•AtthecenterofthehallthereisalargepieceoftheCapeYorkmeteorite.Thispieceissometimescalled Ahnighito. Record this meteorite in your data table.

•Whattypeofmaterialisthismeteoritemadefrom?•Whatdoesthecompositionofthismeteoritetellscientistsaboutitsparentbody?•Couldthismeteoritehaveformedintheveryearlysolarsystem?Explain:

Student Worksheet - Page 3

Data Table

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Allende

Paragould

Brenham

Johnstown

Esquel

Bella Roca

Cape York (Ahnighito)

Name of meteorite

Date and location recovered Sketch of meteorite Useful information

Activity: Shooting Star Probe

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1.Whatanswerdoyouthinkisthemostaccurate?

2. Explain why you think this is the correct answer, and why the others are not correct.

Three friends are scanning the night sky. As they look for familiar constellations, one shouts “A shooting star!”The others turn in time to catch a bright light streak across the sky. This starts a conversation, with each friend coming up with a different explanation for what they had seen.

Alexander: “I think shooting stars are actually comets that are close to the Sun.”

Veronica: “I think shooting stars are distant stars that fall out of the sky.”

Emily: “I think that shootings stars are rocks from space that burn brightly for a moment.”

Answer Key

(The answer provided by Emily is the most accurate. Shooting stars, or meteors, are the flashes of light cre-ated when a space rock enters the atmosphere at extremely high speeds.)

(The other two answers are not correct. Alexander: Comets do not appear to move rapidly in the way that meteors do, instead they take days or even weeks to move noticeably across the sky. This is because they are extremely far away. Planets also appear to move slowly in a similar fashion. Although all of these objects move quickly, they are too far away to streak across the sky in a matter of seconds. If they did, they would be so close as to be devastating to life on Earth. However, dust particles that are blown off of comet surfaces into deep space can collide with Earth’s atmosphere and create a meteor. Meteor showers are formed when a large amount of comet dust crosses Earth’s orbit. However, the parent comet is far away from Earth at this time and almost always invisible. Veronica: Shooting stars cannot be actual stars, the common name for a meteor notwithstanding, because actual stars cannot fall from the sky. Falling from the sky refers to an object falling into the atmosphere of Earth and towards the ground. Distant stars are exceptionally large and massive; they are all far larger than Earth itself. In the unlikely event of a collision, Earth would be said to fall into the star, rather than the star into Earth simply because of this size difference. The distance to even the nearest stars is several light years, far greater than the size of the Solar System. For this reason, it is highly unlikely that a star will ever collide with Earth, even after billions of years. If this extremely unlikely collision were to occur, it would also be devastating for Earth and would be far more dramatic than a simple meteor.)

Student Worksheet Answer Key

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Meteorites tell the story of the formation and evolution of the solar system. As you explore the Arthur Ross Hall of Meteorites, you will follow and record this story. This story begins at the front of the hall, and continues clockwise along the outside wall. At each stop, you will be asked to read text and record information.

Stop 1: Meteorites•Readthelabelthatstartswith“Forthousandsofyears…”•Whatisameteorite?Whyaremeteoritesusefultoscientists? (Meteorites are rocks from space that have landed on Earth. Scientists use meteorites to learn about the formation and evolution of the solar system.)

Stop 2: Origins of the Solar System•Readthelabelthatstartswith“Theblue-whitefireballstreakedacrossthedarkskies…”•RecordtheAllendemeteoriteinyourdatatable.•WhatdoesAllendetellsusabouttheearlysolarsystem?Whyisitsoimportant?

(Allende is one of the oldest meteorites ever recovered. It tells scientists that the solar system is about 4.57 billion years old. Allende also tells scientists about the chemical makeup of the early solar system.)

Stop 3: Chondrules: Drops of Fiery Rain•Readthelabelthatstartswith“Whenoursolarsystembegantotakeshape…”•Whatisachondrite?•Whatisachondrule?

(Chondrites are extremely old meteorites that have not changed much since the early solar system. Chondrules are small pieces of partially melted rock that are found inside of some chondrites.)

Stop 4: CAIs: The Oldest Rocks•Readthelabelthatstartswith“Asolarsystemsuchasourownbeginswhen…”•Howdidtheearlysolarsystemchangeovertime?

(The early solar system was full of debris left over from the pre-solar nebula, a collection of gas and dust. This de-bris formed a disk around the young Sun, and most of these particles were small. Today, there is much less debris in orbit around the Sun, and eight large planets and several other large bodies contain most of the mass that is not in the Sun.)

•WhatisaCAI?•LookatthemeteoritesampleofAllende.DescribetheCAIsthatyoufind.

(CAIs are Calcium-Aluminum Inclusions. These are small particles that formed 4.567 billion years ago in the very early Solar System. They tell us that a meteorite is extremely old. Allende has several CAIs inside of it, including a large round one. These CAIs are grey in color.)

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Stop 5: Parent bodies: A Meteorite Family Tree•Readthelabelthatstartswith“Injustafewthousandyears…”•Whatdoesitmeantosaythatmeteoritescomefrom“parentbodies?”

(Aparentbodyisalargerobject.Whenitisshatteredinacollision,itreleasesmanysmallerobjectsintospace.Meteorites that formed together in a larger “parent body” share unique properties.)

•Continuereading“Meettheparents”insidetheplasticdisplaycase.•Howdoscientiststellmeteoritesapart?Whatkindsofthingsdotheymeasure?

(The chemical composition of a meteorite helps scientists better understand where it fits in and how it formed. Sometimes scientists look at the ratios between different elements to classify meteorites.)

Stop 6: Planetesimals: Building Blocks of the Solar System•Readthelabelthatstartswith“Thesmallparticles…”•Howdidgiantplanetsgrowfromtinydustparticles?•Findthemeteoritecalled“Paragould”andrecorditinyourdatatable.•Whatevidenceofimpactsdoesthismeteoritecontain?

(Frequent collisions in the early solar system helped smaller objects combine into larger objects. Once these objects grew large enough, their gravitational pull attracted material around them, greatly increasing their rate of growth. The meteorite Paragould contains fragments of rock that have been broken and cemented together by pressure and heat from impacts.)

Stop 7: Building Planets•Readthelabelthatstartswith“Thefarmlandnear…”•HowistheBrenhammeteoritedifferentfromalltheothersyouhaveseensofar?

(This meteorite has a large amount of pure metal in it. The others were mostly stone.)

•RecordtheBrenhammeteoriteinyourdatatable.

Stop 8: Crust•Readthelabelthatstartswith“Asthesolarsystemformed…”•Whatkindsofsolarsystembodiesdevelopedacrust?Describehowalargesolarsystembodyseparatesintoa

core, mantle, and crust.

(Only large parent bodies developed a crust, which formed when the lightest material floated towards the outside. When large solar system bodies were young, they were also extremely hot. This allowed dense materials to sink towards the center forming a dense core, and lighter rock to slowly move upwards forming the mantle and crust.)

•FindtheJohnstownmeteoriteandrecorditinyourdatatable.

Student Worksheet - Page 2 Answer Key

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Stop 9: Mantle: Jewels from Space•Readthelabelinsidetheplasticdisplaycasethatstartswith“Whennewlyformed…”•Whatpartofaplanetarybodyisthemantle? (The central part of a parent body is the mantle, which formed between the lightest and densest materials. It is a region of medium density.)

•FindtheEsquelmeteoriteandrecorditinyourdatatable.

Stop 10: Core: Iron from Asteroids •Readthelabelintheplasticdisplaycasethatstartswith“Mostironmeteorites…”•Whatpartofaparentbodydometallicmeteoritescomefrom?

(Metallic meteorites come from the cores of large parent bodies that later shattered. Only a large, molten body with strong gravity could separate metals like iron and nickel from other lighter rocks.)

Stop 11: Cape York

•AtthecenterofthehallthereisalargepieceoftheCapeYorkmeteorite.Thispieceissometimescalled Ahnighito. Record this meteorite in your data table.

•Whattypeofmaterialisthismeteoritemadefrom?•Whatdoesthecompositionofthismeteoritetellscientistsaboutitsparentbody?•Couldthismeteoritehaveformedintheveryearlysolarsystem?Explain:

(Cape York was formed in a large parent body because it is almost pure metal, and must have formed in an environment with a great deal of heat and gravity. This is part of the core of a large object that shattered as a result of an impact, releasing many smaller pieces into space. Although the parent body is gone, scientists can still learn about it by recovering these pieces if they land on Earth. This type of meteorite could not have formed in the very early solar system because it is the product of a great deal of processing over time.)

Student Worksheet - Page 3 Answer Key

Data Table

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Allende

Paragould

Brenham

Johnstown

Esquel

Bella Roca

Cape York (Ahnighito)

(1969Pueblito de Allende, Mexico)

(1930Greene County, Arkansas)

(1933Brenham, Kansas)

(1924Weld County, Colorado)

(1951Chubut, Argentina)

(1888Durango, Mexico)

(Greenland)

(Oldest meteorite known, gives chemical composition of the early solar system.)

(Contains rocks shattered and heated by impacts, these pieces were cemented together again by melted rock.)

(A mix of metal and rock, this meteorite slice is partially transparent. This mete-orite probably comes from the boundary between the core and mantle.)

(Large crystals inside this rocky mete-orite, this is crust material from a large object, possibly the asteroid Vesta.)

(This meteorite shows evidence of liquid metal moving among and between crystals of stone. This is also from the boundary between the core and mantle.)

(This all-metal meteorite contains many crystals. This meteorite comes from the core of a large solar system object. There is a nodule of sulfur that got pushed aside by growing crystals of iron.)

(This is the largest meteorite on display in any museum. It weighs about 34 tons. This meteorite is almost all metal, mostly iron. This means it formed in the core of a large solar system body.)

Name of meteorite

Date and location recovered Sketch of meteorite Useful information

Answer Key

Documents

ARTHUR ROSS HALL OF METEORITES Grades 9-12 Investigate the History of the … · They should explain how meteorites form and how their composition reflects the time, location, and