THE CORRELATION OF SURFACE AREA WITH OTHER PROPERTIES OF NINETEEN BRITISH CLAY SOILS

The total and external surface areas of nineteen British clay soils were determined from measurements of their water and nitrogen adsorption respectively. In addition, four physical and chemical properties of these soils were determined; liquid limit, plastic limit, cation exchange capacity, and clay content. The correlation between these six measured properties was examined. Total surface-area, liquid limit, and cation exchange capacity, had correlation coefficients of 0.90 or greater. This is sufficiently high to enable an indication of these three properties to be obtained from measurements of any one of them. The correlation between these three properties and the rest was slightly lower for the plastic limit, and considerably lower for the clay content and external surface-area, although all were significant at the 5 per cent level.