We did an experiment in grade school by hanging an old sheet over clothes lines for several days. We then dragged a magnet over the sheet and picked up a small smattering of powdery iron, meteorite debris! The Earth grow heavier by several hundred tons every day. It's amazing.

As for a large object, scores of feet in diameter breaking up, and the common "shooting star" or meteoroid (meteorite if it reaches the ground intact), as the large object breaks up it will not all be homogeneously the size of sand particles like the common meteoroid. There will be some very large chunks that potentially could do some major damage. Should it be a nickle-iron meteor or asteroid, chances are that it will hang together for it's trip through the atmosphere. That, or convert to highspeed metallic plasma. The latter is the same substance the military uses to destroy heavily armored targets.

Trajectory has a big part in the event also. If the object is coming straight in it is more apt to remain in one piece. The first 100 mile of atmosphere is virtually vacuum. The next forty or so is thin air and only the last five miles is heavy, dense atmosphere. If it comes in at an angle it will travel thorugh a much wider swath, burn and break up more. Bad news here is that it will still be traveling at an incredible speed when it impacts plus heating the atmosphere as it enters.

All in all the big ones are to be avoided if at all possible, as no good for humakind can come from it-other than from a scientific perspective.