Meteor Impact Demo Modifications

Years ago I learned a meteor impact demo from NASA.  In that demo, a layer of dark colored powder is placed over a layer of light colored powder.  A rock or marble "meteor" is dropped into the powder, which splashes the light colored powder up over the dark powder and makes ray patterns like meteor impacts on the moon (terrestrial impacts, like the one in Odessa, Texas, also show evidence of rock layers being bent up and over each other).  This is a fun demo to do, but with powdered layers it is hard to show the demo to a large audience, because you cannot easily tilt the layers to show the spectators without the layers collapsing.  I have been working on various approaches to solving this problem, and recently came up with using a dark cloth (rather than a dark powder layer) over a layer of light-colored flour.  The marble "meteor"cannot penetrate the cloth, so a hole must be made in the cloth.  To guide the marble to the fabric hole, it is dropped down a tube rather than simply through the air.  The tube (a plastic tube used to cover fluorescent light bulbs) can be held vertically or at an angle to show the effects of different impact angles. The flour splashed up from the hole fans out on the fabric.  The powder is held by the roughness of the fabric sufficiently well that the fabric can be carefully lifted up, but also loosely enough that the flour can be shaken out of the fabric to repeat the demonstration.  Thanks to my daughter Katie for helping with the demonstration.