Soil, soil everywhere, but not a grain to ...errm... build!

I knew soils (different types) were complicated, but let me tell you, I never expected it to blow my mind they way it did this semester. I tell you, you think you've learnt everything possible about soils, but then what you've really done is only touched the tip of the iceberg. Todays soil mechanics paper had me drawing 5 different graphs; each of which had to be extrapolated in odd ways, tangents drawn to curves where curves only barely existed, angles bisected using compasses, set squares used to draw parallel lines, protractor used to determine angles and to top it off, we had to draw one even on a semi-log graph. And a semi-log graph is not as simple as I thought it was...you can't just plot that axis and start drawing. A log graph is less complicated than this. Here is a link you can check out. click here

Anyway, all this boils down to soil being more complicated than we thought. Gone are the days when the sand box was nothing but sand and happy memories. Now it's just a box of particles with large grain sizes that are unsuitable for building foundations' as well as has low ability to retain water, hence ruducing the water table in and around the area making the soil around it settle by consolidation resulting in more construction work to stabilise the buildings nearby to prevent them from crashing to the ground. Boy I loved the sand box!