| Description |
Engineering has been defined as the art of organizing and directing men, and of controlling forces end materials of nature for the benefit of the human race, I*.an has been able to control some forces and has found new materials, like concrete, steel and brick, which he is using for his benefit, but soil is the oldest and probably the noat used of engineering materials, and yet working knowledge of the structural properties of this material Is meager as compared with the knowledge of the newer ones. The word soil carries different meanings with different engineers, according to the use to which it is put. The geologist, concerned with the study of soils as part of the earth as a whole, is interested in the formation of individual soil materials from the parent rock and the methods whereby these materials were mixed and deposited in the layers of the earth's surface. The agronomist, interested in th,i properties of soil influencing plant growth and the methods by which natural soils may be improved from the agricultural 1 standpoint, looks at it from quite a different point of view. The industrial chemist, using it for the manufacture of cement, glass, ceramic materials and other products, studies its onemical properties and defines it accordingly. The civil engineer stadias it as another construction material, bis every structure, whether a building, dam, bridge or a highway, rests on soil, which shows the importance of tnis material to him. Though man's experience with soil has oeen long, the properties tuat concern the civil engineer have been completely crystallized ana put together only during the last twenty-fice or thirty years. |
