Supporting the teaching of Earth sciences at all levels
VIRTUAL EXPERIMENTS
Experiment: Mike Tuke Realised by: Julian & Phillipa Priddle Sponsor: PESGB
Activity 10
Porosity of rectangular pieces of rock
In this activity you will calculate the porosity of rectangular pieces of oolitic limestone and sandstone.
Print the table.
In this activity you will first record the dimensions of the rock slab and then calculate its volume (cm3). Then you will weigh
the rock slab(g). After this the rock slab is placed in water for 24 hours and then weighed again.
The extra weight will be due to the water in the pores. Since each gram of water occupies 1cm3 we can calculate the
volume of water in the pore spaces and thus the volume of the pore spaces and the porosity.
Note
Strictly this experiment only measures absorbancy because not all the holes may be interconnected or the connecting
gaps may be too small to allow the water through.