Appropriate grades or age groups:
4th and up

Estimated time to complete this project:
24 hours to 1 week (longer = better results)

Materials:
Plastic tarp 6x6 or larger, strong magnet from harbor freight, radio shack, hardware or crafts store etc., ziplock bags. Plain white paper plate, Scotch tape. Around $10 to complete. Viewing requires strong magnifier, microscope, or flatbed scanner/printer (you can do this part easily at a local Kinkos if you don't have the other magnification tools at home or school).

What is the hypothesis of this science project? What does the experiment aim to prove?
Tons of micrometeorites from space fall on us every day, but they are small as dust. This trap catches samples of some of them for you to examine. The two most common kind are stony and iron meteorites. We'll catch iron-based samples with a magnet.

Instructions:
Spread a clean, new plastic tarp out in your backyard in the morning, after the dew is off the grass. Actually, this will work in winter as well, but snowfall can interfere. Use tent pegs, rocks, chairs, or any handy objects to raise the edge of the tarp so as to make a large funnel shape.

Place a powerful magnet inside a ziplock bag, place the bagged magnet in the center of the funnel. Wait a day or longer. Bigger tarps do the job faster.

Carefully pick out the bagged magnet and bring it indoors. Hold the bagged magnet low over a white paper plate or any white paper. Carefully remove the magnet, and any magnetic material that was clinging to the outside of the bag now falls onto the paper plate.

Move the magnet uder the paper plate, and see little tiny iron particles come to life: use the magnet under the plate, or your finger, to steer these magnetic particles to one side, capture them by lightly pressing and lifting them with a piece of scotch tape. Use the scotch tape like a glass slide under a microscope at home or at school to examine for mirometeorites. We used our flatbed scanner, set to maximum dots-per-inch, with automatic scratch and dust removal turned OFF, and saved a tightly cropped scan of the piece of tape as a high-quality TIF file. You can do this part at any local Kinkos for a buck or two if you don't have a scanner at home or school. You are looking for tiny round particles that look like ball bearings. They are shaped that way from their firey entry and fall into our atmosphere. Other shapes, like flakes, are likely from coal powerplants or iron foundries upwind of your house.

Other comments or suggestions:
Alternate method to the tarp:
Drag the bagged magnet thru your home's roof gutters, or park it at the bottom of the downspout/splash block for a week when it's raining, or snow is melting off the roof: your roof collects the micrometeorites, they concentrate in the gutters and downspout. Do rest of the experiment as before. Google search for images to compare with your samples: visit NASA's site for more details.