Take a handful of sand
and fill a 100
ml
measuring cylinder
1 00 ml
measuring cylinder
31 -
18.
SAND GRAIN STUDY
Purpose
We have all built sand castles at some stage in our lifetime and have noticed that sand grains are of
differnt sizes. Do you know where the biggest grains are and why they are found their? The
purpose of this project is to investigate these questions.
The aims of this project are to:-
(a) have you collect and sieve sand samples from various parts of the beach.
(b) calculate and plot percentages of big and small grain sizes
(c) suggest some reasons for differnt grain sizes
Research methods
You will need:
Sample bottle to collect sand sample
Seive for different sand sizes
Collection dish (empty margarine container)
100 ml measuring cylinder
What to do
Note that on Australian beaches, different sand types are found. On coral barrier reef
islands, the sand is much courser and will require a different seive size than say a beach in
New South Waleswith fine sand. A number of seives should be taken so that the
equipment will match the sandsizes for the particular beach under investigation.
1.
Start at the bottom of beach and collect a
handful of wet sand from the waters edge.
Now collect another a metre up the beach and
take these to the top of the beach and lay
them out on the piece of plastic to dry in the
sun. They will be the last samples to seive and
must dry.
2.
Now start at the top of the beach. Take a sand
sample in you hand and fill the 100m1
measuring cylinder. This sample is the first and
so is called
the datum point
sample.
