The tests were performed on 1/2-gram samples which had been dried 

 during the original water content determination and, subsequently, 

 powdered. Tin-coated copper and iron chips were placed in the 

 crucible to accelerate the reaction. 



Specific gravity . An air comparison pycnometer was used for 

 all specific gravity determinations. The pycnometer had two 

 chambers (designated as measuring and reference) calibrated to a 

 known volume. A known weight of oven-dried soil was subjected to 

 a partial vacuum in the measuring chamber. At this pressure, the 

 change in volume of the measuring chamber relative to the reference 

 chamber represented the volume of solid particles. The volume of 

 solids measured by this technique appears to be closely comparable 

 to those measured by the accepted ASTM method (Hironaka, 1966) . 



Atterberg limits . The Atterberg limits determination included 

 both liquid limit and plastic limit tests. The procedure for the 

 plastic limit tests was similar to the accepted ASTM (1964) method. 

 However, the samples were not air dried before testing. The 

 simplified single-point analysis was used for the liquid limit 

 determination (Lambe, 1951). The method was based on the assumption 

 that the slope of the logarithmic plot of blows versus water content 

 (also on log scale) was a straight line. If this assumption were 

 correct, the liquid limit could be obtained from one point on the 

 line. The following equation defines that relationship. 



0.121 

 LL - .. (S-) (3) 



where LL = the liquid limit (%) 



w = water content of the soil which closes in n blows 

 in the standard liquid limit device (%) 



n = number of blows to close the groove (between 22 and 28) . 



Miscellaneous 



Several other index properties were determined on the basis of 

 results from the aforementioned tests. The void ratio, defined as 

 the volume of voids divided by the volume of solids, originated from 

 the original water content determination. Equation 4 shows this 

 relationship. 



e = WG (4) 



