ABSTRACT
This chapter is not a laboratory manual. It is more concerned with the principles underlying the concepts of particle, size, and distribution, the relationships between them, and the methods by which they may be measured. There are now some 400 reported techniques for the determination of particle size (Barth and Sun, 1985; Syvitski, 1991), although the large body of measurements amassed by soil scientists has generally been made using simple methods and equipment, principally sieving, gravitational settling, the pipet, and the hydrometer. There is also a large body of experience in interpreting these data. However, there is still a surprising lack of uniformity in these simple procedures, and for that reason we consider them in some detail.
