A chondrometer is a
measuring instrument
Instrumentation is a collective term for measuring instruments, used for indicating, measuring, and recording physical quantities. It is also a field of study about the art and science about making measurement instruments, involving the related ...
designed to determine the
bulk density
In materials science, bulk density, also called apparent density, is a material property defined as the mass of the many particles of the material divided by the bulk volume. Bulk volume is defined as the total volume the particles occupy, includ ...
of
grain
A grain is a small, hard, dry fruit (caryopsis) – with or without an attached husk, hull layer – harvested for human or animal consumption. A grain crop is a grain-producing plant. The two main types of commercial grain crops are cereals and ...
. Grain density is measured in kilograms per
hectolitre
The litre ( Commonwealth spelling) or liter (American spelling) (SI symbols L and l, other symbol used: ℓ) is a metric unit of volume. It is equal to 1 cubic decimetre (dm3), 1000 cubic centimetres (cm3) or 0.001 cubic metres (m3). A cub ...
(Imp. pounds per
bushel
A bushel (abbreviation: bsh. or bu.) is an Imperial unit, imperial and United States customary units, US customary unit of volume, based upon an earlier measure of dry capacity. The old bushel was used mostly for agriculture, agricultural pr ...
). It is thus also referred to as the hectolitre mass.
[Australian Measurement Institute Grain- Density Measuring Instruments]
accessdate=21 October 2017
Purpose
Density
Density (volumetric mass density or specific mass) is the ratio of a substance's mass to its volume. The symbol most often used for density is ''ρ'' (the lower case Greek letter rho), although the Latin letter ''D'' (or ''d'') can also be u ...
is a guide to
wheat
Wheat is a group of wild and crop domestication, domesticated Poaceae, grasses of the genus ''Triticum'' (). They are Agriculture, cultivated for their cereal grains, which are staple foods around the world. Well-known Taxonomy of wheat, whe ...
quality and determines the price and the space required to store and transport the crop.
Description
A chondrometer consists of a filling hopper, a measuring container, a straightedge, a weighing instrument. The filling hopper allows the grain to fall into the measuring container in a reproducible pattern as several measurements are taken, and all readings need to be within a strict degree of accuracy.
[ The measuring cylinder has flat top edge to it can levelled using the straightedge (a strickle) to give a set volume. Today, the measuring instrument can be a set of digital scales with an accuracy greater than 0.1 g, though in the past it was a ]steelyard
The Steelyard, from the Middle Low German (sample yard), was the kontor (foreign trading post) of the Hanseatic League in London, and their main trading base in England, between the 13th and 16th centuries. The main goods that the League export ...
balance with the measuring cylinder hooking directly onto the scales.
Calculation
* ''Bulk Density (kg/hL)= Mass of Grain Captured (in kg) /Volume of measuring container (in L) x 100''
:The measuring container will usually be 1L or 0.5L to make the calculations easy.
References
{{reflist
External links
How to Measure Test Weight of Grain
- YouTube
Measuring instruments