he Effect of Size and Sorting on PorosityIntroductionThe objective of this lab was to find how

the size and sorting of beads (posing as sediment) affects porosity. Porosityof soil or
geological materialsis the ratio of the volume of pore space in a unit of material to the total
volume of material. In other words, it is the amount of air space or void space between soil
particles(1).Generally,larger particles have more space between them; they have alarger
porosity than smaller particles (2).Therefore, it was hypothesized that as sediment size
increases, porosity increasesas the larger particles would have larger spaces between them.It
was also hypothesized that as sorting increases, porosity increases as there will be little to no
smaller particles to fill in larger particles’ spaces (sincethey will all be the same size in a good
sorting).Sorting isthe process by which similar in size, shape, or specific gravity sedimentary
particles are selected and separated from associated but dissimilar particles by the agent of
transportation(4). In other words, sorting is the process of separating different particles in a
mixture of particles.It is known that generally, a mixture of grain sizes and shapes result in a
lower porosity, as the smaller particles fill the spaces in the larger particles (1).As an
additional factor to porosity,generallyas the angularity of the particle increases, the porosity
.increases due to the fact that the particles would pack tighter together (3)