Activity 3: Soil is made up of different-sized particles.
Adapted from Making Better Sense - Planet Earth and Beyond - Ministry of Ed
publication.
Science understandings:
 Just like your soup mix sample, a soil is made up of different-sized
particles.
 In a soil, many particles can be quite large, such as small pebbles and
grains of sand. Many others are only just visible to the naked eye like silt.
 To see the smallest particles, such as clay you need a microscope.
If sand grains would be as big as a basketball, than silt would be a baseball
and clay a golf ball
Resources:
Soup mix
A piece of black paper
A paintbrush
Method:
1. Place 2 tablespoons of soup mix on the black paper
2. Use the paintbrush to sort and separate the different grains
3. Look carefully at the shape of each pile
4. Count how many grains there are in each pile
5. Record the data on the work sheet
Small grains
Medium grains
Number of grains
Draw the shape of
the grains
Questions:
What does your sample have most off?
What would the big grains be in a soil?
What would the medium grains be in a soil ?
What would the small grains be in a soil?
Big grains