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A splash experiment was carried out on a model soil–glass beads with a diameter of 425–600 μm using high‐speed cameras and sticky paper. Two different types of particles were involved in the process: droplets of water and glass beads. We argue that the result of splash of solid particles is best modeled as a stochastic point process, that is, a random number of randomly distributed points (beads) on a plane, and provide basic physical and statistical evidence that, in medium distance range (i.e., for our experiment, in the ranges of 29–64 mm), the splash may be modeled as the Poisson point process. We also argue that, in the range between 15 and 29 mm, a distribution different than Poisson is closer to reality. These two radically different types of distributions of numbers of beads in two regions reflect the fact that the solid phase of the splash involves two types of beads: those ejected in the early stage, traveling larger distances, and those ejected later, traveling shorter distances. Information on the distributions of and relations between the numbers of splashed particles in different regions may be instrumental in understanding mechanics and scale of the spread of pollutants/pathogens and plant diseases as a result of splash. Meanwhile, we describe the distributions of the total number of beads, the maximum range, and the average distance beads particles travel in a single experiment and discuss effectiveness of detection of beads by the cameras.

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Particle size distribution is an important soil parameter—therefore precise measurement of this characteristic is essential. The application of the widely used laser diffraction method for soil analysis continues to be a subject of debate. The precision of this method, proven on homogeneous samples, has been implicitly extended to soil analyses, but this has not been sufficiently well confirmed in the literature thus far. The aim of this study is to supplement the information available on the precision of the method in terms of reproducibility of soil measurement and whether the reproducibility of soil measurement is characterized by a normal distribution. To estimate the reproducibility of the laser diffraction method, thirteen various soil samples were characterized, and results were analysed statistically. The coefficient of variation acquired was lowest (3.44%) for silt and highest for sand (23.28%). Five of the thirteen tested samples were characterized by a normal distribution. The fraction content of eight samples was not characterized by normal distribution, but the extent of this phenomenon varied between soils. Although the laser diffraction method is repeatable, the measurement of soil particle size distribution can have limited reproducibility. The main cause seems to be small amounts of sand particles. The error can be amplified by the construction of the dispersion unit. Non-parametric statistical tests should be used by default for soil laser diffraction method analysis.

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