Grounded! Amazing Classroom Demonstrations in Soil Mechanics

The perfect manual for teaching soil mechanics in engineering. Although these experiments might make you laugh and might not be the best for the more serious members of the industry, relax a little and let the learning take over! You’ll discover how different soils behave and how they can react to different situations and climates.

Table of Contents

1. Exploding Soils (Extreme Slaking)
2. Rice is Nice (an Exercise in Pile Capacity)
3. Break that Block (the Power of Bentonite)
4. A Retaining Wall Made of Paper
5. Slip Slidin’ Away with Effective Stress
6. Magic Breaker (Sand Defies Gravity)
7. Effective Potato Chips
8. Foam Balls in a Pipe (Soil Arching)
9. Geotechnical Rorschach Test (Water Flows around a Drain, instead of into the Drain)
10. Hairy Soil
11. Sand Cylinder Hoisting
12. Water That Won’t Go Through a Sieve (and Water that Does)
13. Dilation in Someone’s Hand (Silty Soil Identification)
14. Piping Under a Sheetpile Dam
15. Jar of Rocks (Soil Void Ratio, Porosity, Unit Weight, and Water Content of Soils)
16. Liquefication by Upward Gradient
17. Blow it Out (Critical Hydraulic Gradient) and Flowliness
18. Relative Density of Soil in a Graduated Cylinder
19. Soil Filter Demonstration Using Marbles
20. Sand in a Jar (Strong as you are)
21. Slinky Shear and Compression Waves
22. Soil Bridge in a Tube
23. Capillarity and Cotton Balls (Bonus: Nonwoven Geotextile Strength Demonstration)
24. Stick-Slip Behavior
25. Tilt Me Up Scotty (Interface Friction)
26. Soils Relaxing (the Angle of Repose)
27. Falling Head over Heels for Permeability (the Permeability of Oobleck)
28. Bulking of Soils (AKA: Less Soil for your Money)
29. Geotextile Puncture Test
30. Soil Dilation and Compaction Using Ping Pong Balls
31. Campus Geology Tour
32. Settlement Rates of Soils in jars
33. Bearing Capacity (Bigger is Better)
34. Retailing Wall in a Box
35. Rockfall Simulator Lab

Bibliography

Index

About the Author

Demonstration Videos