MAY WE RECOMMEND--
Particles of Doubt

items worth a trip to the library

by Bigelow Marshworth-Boles, AIR staff

We are three singular items from the boundless libraries full of professionally-bound research reports.

Think Big

"Grain-Size and Textural Classification of Coarse Sedimentary Particles," T.C. Blair and J.G. McPherson, Journal of Sedimentary Research, vol. 69, 1999, p. 6-19. (Thanks to Earle Spamer for bringing this to our attention.)
The authors revise the classic sediment-sizing schemes used by geologists worldwide. They provide classifications for particle sizes up to 1075 kilometers. Everything between 4.1 meters ("block") and 1075 kilometers ("megalith") is grouped as "megagravel"; the grades are (coarsening) block, slab, monolith, and megalith. The next-finer fraction from megagravel is "gravel", which incidentally includes the "boulder". Blair and McPherson provide precise measurement-boundaries for each grade, as no doubt it will be very useful to distinguish between "very fine" (33.6-67.2 kilometers) and "very coarse" (538-1075 kilometers) megaliths. Readers may be comforted to know that "sand" is still "sand," and that volcanic ejecta particles rarely exceed "coarse slab" size (ca. 300 meters).

Grit in Time

"The Dynamics of Granular Flow in an Hourglass," Christian T. Veje and P. Dimon, Granular Flow, vol. 3 no. 3 , 2001, pp. 151-64. (Thanks to Tom Gill for bringing this to our attention.)

Little Nothings to Sniff At

"Deposition of Fine and Coarse Aerosols in a Rat Nasal Mold," J.T. Kelly, et al., Inhalation Toxicology, vol. 13, no. 7, July 2001, pp. 577-88. (Thanks to Jim Pierson for bringing this to our attention.) The authors explain that

The objective of this study was to investigate the deposition characteristics of large, inhalable particles in rat nasal passages...

© Copyright 2001 Annals of Improbable Research (AIR)

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