The simulator demonstrates how a sediment sample's transport history and depositional environment are encoded in the shape of its grain-size distribution curve, letting you compare a well-sorted, narrow desert-sand distribution against a poorly-sorted, broad glacial-till distribution built from the same underlying Wentworth size classes.
Choose a source sediment mixture or build your own by adjusting the proportion of material in each Wentworth size class from boulder down to clay. Select a transport process, such as wind, river, beach wave action, or glacial deposition, to see how that process filters the mixture. Run the virtual sieve stack to shake the sample through progressively finer mesh sizes, then view the resulting weight-percentage histogram and cumulative distribution curve plotted on the phi scale, along with computed sorting and skewness statistics.
Sliders set the weight proportion of each Wentworth size class (boulder, cobble, pebble, granule, sand, silt, clay) in the source sample; a transport-process selector (wind, river, beach, glacial) filters the mixture accordingly; a run-sieve-stack button animates shaking through mesh sizes; toggles switch the output chart between weight-percentage histogram and cumulative curve, both plotted against phi/log grain size, alongside a readout of sorting index and skewness.
Loess deposits, the exceptionally well-sorted windblown silt that underlies some of the world's most fertile farmland, can travel hundreds of kilometers from their source yet still show remarkably little variation in grain size, a direct result of wind's narrow carrying capacity at any given speed.
The simulator demonstrates how a sediment sample's transport history and depositional environment are encoded in the shape of its grain-size distribution curve, letting you compare a well-sorted, narrow desert-sand distribution against a poorly-sorted, broad glacial-till distribution built from the same underlying Wentworth size classes.
The simulator demonstrates how a sediment sample's transport history and depositional environment are encoded in the shape of its grain-size distribution curve, letting you compare a well-sorted, narrow desert-sand distribution against a poorly-sorted, broad glacial-till distribution built from the same underlying Wentworth size classes.
Choose a source sediment mixture or build your own by adjusting the proportion of material in each Wentworth size class from boulder down to clay. Select a transport process, such as wind, river, beach wave action, or glacial deposition, to see how that process filters the mixture. Run the virtual sieve stack to shake the sample through progressively finer mesh sizes, then view the resulting weight-percentage histogram and cumulative distribution curve plotted on the phi scale, along with computed sorting and skewness statistics.
Loess deposits, the exceptionally well-sorted windblown silt that underlies some of the world's most fertile farmland, can travel hundreds of kilometers from their source yet still show remarkably little variation in grain size, a direct result of wind's narrow carrying capacity at any given speed.