ABSTRACT
The formation of soil is a long and complex process. Soil generally is composed of all the unconsolidated materials above the bedrock of a given geological region.
Thus, its intrinsically complex nature provides means for its characterization, classiÞcation, and comparison. While the nature of soil is complex, most soil samples contain only four or Þve minerals combined with vegetation and miscellaneous debris. Murray, et al. point out that although thousands of minerals exist in nature, only about twenty are common in soil specimens and only three to Þve of the twenty are found in a given soil sample.
