Accuracy of subsampling mill for granular materials

A subsampling mill was constructed with 19 subsample spouts similar to the 1 or 2 subsample spouts on the conventional subsampling mills. Samples of peanuts, each of which contained 1 kernel made radioactive by neutron activation, were comminuted in the mill. For treatment M the discharge from each spout was kept separate. For treatment R, the discharge from all 19 spouts was blended together in a twin‐shelled blender and subdivided with a riffle divider into 16 subsamples which averaged the same weight as the M subsamples. Radioactivity counts/gram of each subsample were measured. Eleven samples were comminuted for each treatment which produced a total of 209 M samples and 176 R samples. An analysis of variance on the pooled data from each treatment showed a mean square error of 1318.3 for the M treatment and 1278.6 for the R treatment. The null hypothesis that the mean square errors for the two treatments are equal was not rejected by the F test (P=0.421).