Sands and Aggregates Library

The Sands and Aggregates Library lists over a hundred samples of sand and aggregates collected from multiple sites that Penn’s Center for Architectural Conservation has worked, as well as from multiple reference sets, including Ward’s Sand Reference Collection. It prioritizes sands used in building construction, and therefore does not include aggregates used in civil engineering works, roads, and industrial processing.

Sands are defined as any loose, detrital, granular material occurring in accumulations of various kinds as a result of atmospheric, aqueous, chemical, volcanic, or organic action, and of any size between 0.01mm – 2mm diameter. Sometimes assumed to be a material consisting of small grains of silica, in the form of quartz or quartzite, or of other materials of a highly siliceous character including crushed fire brick.

Sand grains sized as silt (0.01-0.025), dust sand (0.025-0.04), fine sand (0.04-0.33), coarse sand (0.33-2.0).

Vials with ID RE0021.001