Corvallis, Or. : School of Oceanography, Oregon State University
Abstract
Instrumentation for rapid, high precision size analysis of silt and sand size particles has been acquired and/or developed by the marine geology group of the School of Oceanography of Oregon State University. A Cahn automatic electrobalance with particle sedimentation accessories is used for size analysis of the silt fraction of pelagic sediment; a large diameter settling tube developed at Oregon State University is used for analysis of the sand size fraction. The data generated with these systems are recorded by a strip chart recorder as well as by a high speed paper tape punch. Computer programs to deal with large volumes of data and to calculate various size parameters for each sample have been developed for this instrumentation and are documented in this report. Instrumentation has also been developed to permit specific size fractions to be separated from the bulk sediment to allow compositional studies of the different size modes. All documentation necessary to understand this instrumentation system is presented in this report, and thus is available to all students interested in textural classifications of pelagic sediments
