Soil Sample Science Report

Since last night I have been working on soil samples. I looked for color, grain size, rounding, and sorting.

To decide the type of color I had I was given a color chart (like ones used for painting a house). The colors seen were types of red, grey, black, light yellow, and white.

When I look for grain size I do not measure the size of the grains with a ruler or balance but rather by determining if the grain of soil is a: boulder, cobble, gravel (coarse or fine), sand (coarse, medium, or fine, or fines (silts or clays). I found gravel (coarse and fine), sand (coarse, medium, and fine), and fines (silts and clays).

Rounding is checking for how round a grain of soil is. If the grain of soil is round with no edges it is rounded. If the grain of soil is round with a few edges it is rounded. If the grain of soil is round with many edges it is sub rounded. If the grain of soil is almost a circle, but not quite with lots of edges, it is considered sub angular. If the grain of soil is oddly shaped and even less like a circle it is angular. If the grain of soil is as far from being a circle as possible it is very angular. The grains were rounded, surrounded, sub angular, angular, or very angular. None of the grains of soil were very rounded.

Sorting is the amount of similarity between the grains of soil. Some soil was poorly sorted (not much similarity between the grains), others were pretty well sorted (much similarity between the grains), and of course there was the moderately sorted soils (some similarity between the grains).

Each soil sample was in a separate container. I took each individual container to analyze it one at a time. To a small sample from each container I would use a scoop and place it on a piece of toilet paper. The white toilet paper made contrast that allowed for me to analyze color, size, rounding, and sorting. If the soil had too light of a color to see on the toilet paper, I would then place the sample on a dark blue surface. I then used a magnifying glass of ten times to analyze the color, size, rounding, and sorting.

After I was done with the soil I would throw away the soil sample and the toilet paper to prevent cross contamination. I also cleaned off the scoop each time right before use to prevent cross contamination. Any questions I had I asked the geologists, who also taught me how to analyze the soil.

I recorded the information for each sample in an organized fashion. The point of analyzing the soil was to be able to correlate these characteristics with soil moisture and temperature. This is only a small part of a large project. I am happy to report that NASA will be using these data to help them. I will be passing the project off to Shannon for completion, She will analyse the results.