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Soil Mechanics and Foundations: Soil formation and classification · Soil Formation and Weathering

How rocks weather into soil, how wind, water, ice and gravity shape deposits, and what that means for building on them.

Soil Mechanics and Foundations · 26 questions

Try 3 questions

1. In geotechnical engineering, what distinguishes a residual soil from a transported soil?

  1. It contains no clay minerals at all
  2. It formed in place from the rock below
  3. It was carried and dropped by rivers
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Answer: It formed in place from the rock below

Residual soils stay where their parent rock weathered; transported soils were moved by water, wind, ice or gravity before being deposited.

2. Why are deep residual soils especially common in hot, humid tropical regions such as much of Brazil?

  1. Strong winds pile up fine dust
  2. Frequent earthquakes crush the bedrock
  3. Fast chemical weathering outpaces erosion
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Answer: Fast chemical weathering outpaces erosion

Heat and abundant water speed up the reactions that decompose rock, building deep residual profiles faster than erosion can remove them.

3. Water seeps into a crack in a rock, freezes, expands and splits the rock. What kind of weathering is this?

  1. Biological weathering by lichens
  2. Physical weathering by frost wedging
  3. Chemical weathering by hydrolysis
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Answer: Physical weathering by frost wedging

Frost wedging breaks rock into smaller pieces without changing its minerals, which is the defining trait of physical weathering.

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