Soil larger soil particles, and their mineralogy is often inherited from the parent material of the soil, but may include products of weathering (such as concretions of calcium carbonate or iron oxide), or residues of plant and animal life (such as silica phytoliths). Quartz is the most common mineral in the sand or silt fraction as it is resistant to chemical weathering, except under hot climate; other common minerals are feldspars, micas and ferromagnesian minerals such as pyroxenes, amphiboles and olivines, which are dissolved or transformed in clay under the combined influence of physico-chemical and biological processes. Due to its high
Granular material asteroids. Some examples of granular materials are snow, nuts, coal, sand, rice, coffee, corn flakes, fertilizer, and bearing balls. Research into granular materials is thus directly applicable and goes back at least to Charles-Augustin de Coulomb, whose law of friction was originally stated for granular materials. Granular materials are commercially important in applications as diverse as pharmaceutical industry, agriculture, and energy production. Powders are a special class of granular material due to their small particle size, which makes them more cohesive and more easily suspended in a gas. The soldier/physicist Brigadier Ralph Alger Bagnold was an early pioneer of the