Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

Studying the impact of other liquids on soil and sand erosion. We are going to use different fruit juices and see how they compare to water when it comes to erosion. We think the sugar in the juice would have some sort of impact slow the erosion, but we are having a hard time finding information to prove this. Can anyone help?

Hi,

Here is a Science Buddies project on beach formation. I think you could easily modify it to compare the effect of different liquids on beach formation:

https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science- ... p011.shtml

You may be interested in these sidtes talking about the factors that influence erosion They identify fluid velocity, turbulence, and fluid density, and Reynolds number:

http://meetingorganizer.copernicus.org/ ... 9-8838.pdf

These papers, though hard to read are extremely relevant to your question:

http://drillinglab.mred.tuc.gr/Publications/33.pdf

http://www.umaine.edu/marine/people/sit ... sition.pdf

http://www.envision.purdue.edu/pdfs/papers/JVVW06.pdf

Some references to Reynolds Numbers:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reynolds_number

http://physics.mercer.edu/hpage/frictio ... nolds.html

I am afraid that all these links except the first one may go way over your head. If you can’t make sense of any of it, don’t worry, and just have fun with your experiment!

Best regards,

Barrett L. Tomlinson

Thank you so much for the information. We went to the library yesterday and they were able to direct us to some junior non-fiction books. We found 2 on soil erosion and 1 on acids and bases.

They conducted the experiement today and it was interesting to see that the OJ reacted very differently from the apple juice and water. Now they have to find out why.

Thanks again!